The textual narrative highlights the tensions and dilemmas faced by parents and students regarding their school’s expenditure, teachers’ attitudes, administrative norms for the duration and timing of holidays and vacations, and the balancing of home responsibilities with the school’s demands.
Aiyar’s scholarship is significant in this context, as she critiques the dominant ‘plumbing’ view in public policy, where problems are seen as technical bottlenecks to be fixed by better design.
The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, banning children under 14 from hazardous jobs and regulating others, was passed in 1986, followed by the 1987 National Policy, which emphasized rehabilitation and education. Subsequently,
The chapters cover topics that include the study of leaves, seed germination, seed dispersion, floral structures, biodiversity in the living world, food, sensitivity, the animal kingdom, microorganisms, reproduction in plants and animals, animals’ internal organs, animal life cycles, plant nutrition, and the growth and development of both living and non-living entities.
Marketed as a real-life practical manual for teenagers, Beyond the Syllabus proves to be apt even for adults dealing with such questions.
It highlights the silting of rivers and the changing of their courses, which students would otherwise read about without really understanding the phenomena as they happened in the past, or reflecting on them through the prism of today’s disasters.