Ramjas College Internal Assessment 1 hour, 24 marks

ELTL B.Com 25.04.25

Attempt any one of the two parts.

PART A: Imprisoned by textbooks?1

My neighbour in the aircraft is ploughing determinedly through a fat textbook with

title, which has a title that is both simple and quite definitive- Chemistry. As is quite normal
with textbooks, this one too is full of some passages that are underlined, others that are
highlighted and still others with scribbled notes around them. His lips are moving as he reads,
quasi-aloud, in an attempt to freeze the waves of transient knowledge that come with difficulty
and depart quite easily.
A textbook can be memorized, it can occasionally be understood, but can it be liked?
Can it ever inspire one to read more? Can it foster an abiding curiosity in the subject it covers,
and make one a seeker of knowledge? Such questions seem out of place when we talk of
textbooks for clearly they are designed for a much more limited purpose. Textbooks deliver
knowledge in a capsule form; they present information deemed important in an organized way,
one that is amenable to being tested. The attempt is to eliminate any bias that the writer might
have, and focus as far as possible on what can be objectively described. They use language
functionally, removing from it any vestige of emotion, perspective or character –the dryness of
textbooks is deliberately manufactured as all could be considered ‘juice’ is carefully extracted
from it.

The textbook regards knowledge as an affliction that one must strive to get infected by.
Neither the process of acquiring knowledge of the outcome of possessing it has the slightest
residue of pleasure in it. The underlying worldview is clear- studying is work, and knowledge
is pain. The textbook treats the world as a knowable place that can be summed up in a series
of chapters, with questions at the end of each chapter. Knowledge is imparted, received,
studied, revised and tested. By imagining learning as a closed system with distinct and separate
boxes that do not come together as a whole, the world is presented as a collection of loosely
related facts- dates, names, formulae, equations, theories of some people and so on.

We rarely pause to think about the incredible conceit that textbooks carry off so
casually- of being able to provide a single window to a complex subject. Bear in mind that the
idea of a ‘subject’ itself is hardly the self-evident and singular category it professes to be. Can,
for instance, geography be separated that cleanly from history, physics or geology? By drawing
sharp boundaries and creating elaborate categories of knowledge and then collapsing this
complexity into a narrative that is fragmented and sequential, the typical textbook makes
knowledge independent of the questions that gave rise to it in the first place. The subject and
the material are transmitted for their own sake, rather than as an outcome of an enquiry.

This is further complicated by the idea of the syllabus. The syllabus accords an arbitrary
slash of unbeing to vast sectors of a subject. For students, the glee of finding that is something
‘is not in the syllabus’ is matched only by the haste with which that little patch of knowledge is
deleted from memory, if at all such an event had accidentally occurred. Working backwards
from what is needed at examination, the student is interested in what she needs to know, how
much she needs to study, what chapters in which books she needs to remember- in others
words how much knowledge is sufficient for her to escape more knowledge.

1
by Santosh Desai, published on May 2, 2016 in TOI Column City City Bang Bang
 If we detach ourselves a little bit from the naturalness with which we regard the idea of
education and the way we are taught, we would be horrified at the scandal that education is.
We have all read textbooks of many subjects for many years and yet even ten years after having
learnt all this, few could claim to having retained anything meaningful from most of the
textbooks we pored so assiduously over. Apart from the other benefits of formal education, and
those are of many kinds, in its central and most basic premise- of imparting a certain minimum
amount of knowledge to those studying it, is almost always a failure. We tend to live
uneducated lives in spite of our education, for education is something we pass through rather
than gather.

The textbook carries much of the blame, although it is a result of the mental model of
education and not its cause. As the key deliverer of a certain kind of education, the textbook
deadens the pursuit of knowledge and makes it a tiresome chore. It converts a knowledge into
the currency of a qualification and it does so by sucking the life out of the processing of seeking
it out. The label of being educated in worn proudly and used cuttingly with respect to those
that are not similarly endowed, ignoring the fact most of said education has in fact leaked out
almost immediately after being received. The hardening of education into qualification has
increased its desirability while simultaneously reducing its effectiveness.

Why should we use textbooks at all? Given that information is now freely available to
most, what is the value of a primitive compendium of generic information? Admittedly, by
sacrificing nuance and eliminating perspective, textbooks represent an efficient way of
transmitting information in a standardized way, but the process doing so effectively kills many
of the benefits that education is meant to provide.

Multiple texts that offer diverse perspectives, reading lists that correspond with the
questions in one’s heads, the use of other forms of media that bring alive aspects of a subject,
the telling of stories about the great debates in any field, the application of concepts and ideas
in our everyday lives – those are some of the things that would help us radically reimagine the
idea of the textbook. The textbook has served its purpose; it is time to close the book on it.

Attempt any two questions from the following. 12 marks each.

1. Make notes for the above passage, making sure to organise the information in a clear
and concise form.

2. How does the idea of textbooks impede or challenge the pursuit of education i.e.
knowledge seeking? What is the stand of the author on textbooks by the end of the
passage? Is it to discard the textbook altogether, or to reimagine them?

3. The author begins the passage by presenting a personal anecdote, a story. Why is that?
Is this an effective strategy to present an argument/idea this way, by beginning with a
personal story?

4. Are you in agreement with the author on his stance on textbooks? Have you come
across textbooks that, according to you have done a good job of relaying the subject
matter? Write a letter to one of your instructors (school or college) in a
discipline/subject/paper of your choosing, telling them about your experience of
learning, reflecting on the role of textbook for that discipline/subject/paper.
 PART B: Love, I'm Done with You

By Ross Gay

You ever wake up with your footie PJs warming

your neck like a noose? Ever upchuck
after a home-cooked meal? Or notice
how the blood on the bottoms of your feet
just won’t seem to go away? Love, it used to be
you could retire your toothbrush for like two or three days and still
I’d push my downy face into your neck. Used to be
I hung on your every word. (Sing! you’d say: and I was a bird.
Freedom! you’d say: and I never really knew what that meant,
but liked the way it rang like a rusty bell.) Used to be. But now
I can tell you your breath stinks and you’re full of shit.
You have more lies about yourself than bodies
beneath your bed. Rooting
for the underdog. Team player. Hook,
line and sinker. Love, you helped design the brick
that built the walls around the castle
in the basement of which is a vault
inside of which is another vault
inside of which . . . you get my point. Your tongue
is made of honey but flicks like a snake’s. Voice
like a bird but everyone’s ears are bleeding.
From the inside your house shines
and shines, but from outside you can see
it’s built from bones. From out here it looks
like a graveyard, and the garden’s
all ash. And besides,
your breath stinks. We’re through.

Attempt any two questions from the following. 12 marks each.

1. Who is the “you” in the poem? What according to you is the nature of the relationship
between the speaker and “you”, what kind of love? How do you know? Argue with
evidence.

2. Do you think the speaker is ending the relationship because “your breath stinks”? How
do you know?

3. The stinking breath image has been repeated in the poem. Read closely into the use of
this image every time it appears, in order to point out the significance of the last line
“your breath stinks. We’re through.”