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Born in 1951 in Allahabad, Krishna Kumar grew up and
had his school and college education in Tikamgarh,
M.P. He won the Gold Medal for BA and MA from the
University of Sagar. Later, he did M.A. and Ph.D.
in Education from the University of Toronto
(Canada). Scholarships given to him during his
student days include the National Merit Scholarship,
Commonwealth Fellowship, Ontario Government
Scholarship, University of Toronto Open Fellowship,
and Visiting Scholarship of the Swedish Institute.
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Krishna Kumar started
his teaching career in 1971 at Kirori Mal College in Delhi
University. During 1980, he worked with the late J.P. Naik at the
Indian Institute of Education. He joined the Central Institute of
Education in 1982 and served as its Head and as Dean during
1988-91. He has been a National Lecturer of the UGC and Fellow of
the Nehru Memorial Museum. He has also been a North-South Fellow of
the IDRC, a Shastri Fellow, and a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for
Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin. He was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru
Fellowship for a comparative study of history textbooks used in
schools in India and Pakistan.
He was invited to
deliver the Hiratsuka Memorial Lecture in Tokyo, the I.P. Desai
Memorial Lecture at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat and the
Qureshi Memorial Lecture at St. Stephen's College, Delhi. During
the Golden Jubilee of India's independence, he was invited to
deliver a special lecture at the University of Edinburgh, UK. In
2007, he was invited to deliver the Gladwyn Lecture in the House of
Lords of the British parliament on 60 years of Indian education and
its future challenges.
Krishna Kumar has
participated in a wide sphere of professional and social
activities. He was a member of the committee appointed by the
Ministry of Human Resource Development in 1991 to recommend
strategies for reducing curriculum load. He has served as the
nominee of the Government of India on the governing councils of
several professional institutions, including the Indian Institute of
Advanced Studies (IIAS), Simla, and NIEPA (now NUEPA). He has served
a member of the Executive Committee of the National Literacy Mission
and the Raja Rammohan Roy Library Foundation. He has been involved
in several committees set up to draft the educational components of
the XIth Plan. Krishna Kumar has been involved in several
non-government organisations and social movements.
Books written by him
include Raj, Samaj aur Shiksha; Vichaar ka Dar; School ki Hindi;
Learning from Conflict; What is Worth Teaching ; The Child’s
Language and the Teacher; (translated into several Indian
languages), The Social Character of Learning; and Prejudice and
Pride: School Histories of freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan.
His latest book is a collection of papers, Education and Social
Change in South Asia, jointly edited with Joachim Oesterheld). His
latest books are Battle for Peace (Penguine, 2007) and A Pedagogue’s
Romance (Oxford, 2008). A columnist and a short story writer in
Hindi, Several of his books on education are in Hindi. Professor
Kumar also writes for children.
Since September 2004
Professor Kumar has been Director, NCERT. During his tenure, NCERT
has brought out a new National Curriculum Framework and a new set of
textbooks in all subjects for primary, secondary and senior
secondary classes. Significant steps have also been taken during
this period to provide assistance to the States to initiate
curricular reforms. Other recent initiatives of NCERT include a new
assessment strategy for primary schools, recognition of schools
representing the heritage of the independence movement,
satellite-based in-service training, and introduction of new
subjects, such as creative writing and translation, heritage crafts,
at the senior secondary stage.
Professor Kumar is
currently working on a study of girlhood. It examines the family
socialisation of girls and its implications for education.
E-mail:
krishnak.ncert@nic.in,
director.ncert@nic.in |
