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On March 24, 2021, CBSE Comics were released on account of CBSE’s notions to transform the education system from tedious to more fun and holistic. Hon'ble Minister of Education Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank announced the release of 100+ Comic Books for up to 16 subjects of Class 3 to 12.
These comic books are just another “innovative” initiative by CBSE to improve the education practices for students in CBSE-affiliated schools. Over 1000 school teachers from CBSE-affiliated schools from all over India put in their efforts to create these comic books.
The central idea of these comics is to promote holistic learning in students so that they are able to build strong internal values and confidence, while learning NCERT concepts more clearly, in a fun way.
While these comic books deconstructed the academic content with fun illustrations, worksheets, and real-life examples, the teachers were directed to display issues of gender sensitivity, women empowerment, value education, etc. sensibly.
But where did the idea of these comic books come into imagination?
In 2020, the New Educational Policy (NEP) was launched for the educational community to adopt and implement changes in pedagogical practices. Laying emphasis on Art-integrated education, the policy aims to to develop interest for extra-curricular learning in students. According to the Draft National Policy of Education 2019 as mentioned in a CBSE circular, “Art-integrated education will be embedded in classroom transactions not only for creating joyful classrooms, but also for imbibing the Indian ethos through integration of Indian art and culture in the teaching and learning process at every level.”
Soon after this, CBSE made Art-integrated education mandatory for the Class 1 to 10 students from the 2020-21 session, which now includes the CBSE Comic Books.
While the significance of these comic books for Class 10 and 12 Board exams is yet not clear to us, here are some things that were fundamentally highlighted in the Press Release regarding these CBSE comic books on March 24th.
Now, before we move on towards our observations on these assertions, let us look at the ways teachers and students can have access to these CBSE comic books.
CBSE has provided several ways through which students and teachers can gain access to these comics digitally. Each of them are explained below.
With these comic books, CBSE focuses on helping the students be holistic learners by indulging in knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and transformative competencies, and hence be imaginative in their learning process. Most of them has a set format, which includes the following parameters:
From the look of the content after these parameters, these comic books have the following advantages:
However, a question still arises: Where do these comic books help Class 10 and 12 students to prepare for and perform well in their exams?
After the in-depth analysis of the content of each subject, we found some major shortfalls in these comic books as well, which are as follows.
In conclusion, many students will find these comics interesting to read and as per our observations, these books will also help teachers instil creativity and an innovative pedagogical method for student’s learning. But, using these CBSE comics to clarify the concepts of NCERT chapters is far-fetched. It will only create inconsistency for teachers and students by adding more content to the curriculum; which may already be overwhelming or challenging for many students.
For more information regarding the latest CBSE news and updates regarding education policies and student wellbeing, check out this section.
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