Paradigm Shift in School Curriculum: Need of the Hour

The school curriculum has to be analyzed occasionally to create a scope to encompass new disciplines and areas to make the curriculum appropriate to the prevailing situation. The conventional curriculum sometimes becomes obsolete and desires substitute to offer scope for new areas to be included in the curriculum. The effectiveness of a curriculum depends on how lots the curriculum is fulfilling the social needs and the educational objectives. Our generation has the right to explore new disciplines and areas through the updated curriculum in education. This paper offers the inclusion of environmental education rationalization of education, human rights education, and health education as part of a paradigm shift in school curriculum primarily based on the need of the hour.


Introduction
The most effective weapon developed by a human being is education. Through education, we human being conquers over other animal and commence to explore the universe. The system of education in the different countries varies according to the varied socio-cultural diversity and social needs. Society could be a very dynamic and ever-converting phenomenon. Its modifications happen very swiftly because of which the social desires additionally get modified on occasion. The curriculum is fantastically stricken by the social change as such social needs additionally get modifications consistent with the social change. So the curriculum additionally desires to be revised on occasion to suit the social extrude and satisfy the social demand. There is constantly a scope for the development of curriculum to make it higher and to satisfy the social desires. In this context, the areas such as environmental education, rationalization of education, human rights education, and health education need a better space in the present curriculum due to its present impact on our society and future perspective. It is a well-known fact that our environment is degrading day by day, which needs proper intervention in the form of awareness by future generations. There is an infringement of human rights mostly due to ignorance, and the cases of human rights violation-related issues are emerging now and then. The educational system in our country doesn't give much opportunity for the rationalization of education, due to which the unemployment rate of the educated youth is increasing day by day. Recently there has been a sudden attack of the covid-19 virus on humanity, and we have been unable to get rid of it for the last one and half years. So the health education can play a key factor in overcoming this kind of pandemic shortly.

Environmental Education
Environmental Education is one of the notably critical disciplines to be included in the school curriculum. There is non-stop degradation of the worldwide environment every day which needs a right and clear-cut intervention from the whole international bodies of the world. In this context, education can play a giant function in sustainable development and save the earth from degradation. The present school curriculum is mostly dominated by the conventional subject. It doesn't deliver plenty of scope for the addition of new subjects to the existing curriculum. So it desires a paradigm shift in the existing school curriculum to provide greater scope for the students to maximize their understanding, love, and caring to save the deplorable condition of the environment. The present situation of our global environment shows that there are huge changes occurring in the natural global phenomenon. Those changes happening in our earth's atmosphere are reflected in the form of global warming, tsunami, flood, earthquake, the meltdown of glaciers, and plenty of more. It is the duty of the present enlightened people to pass on this dangerous global atmosphere to the upcoming generations in a proper way. In the Indian education system, even before the country attained independence in 1930, certain aspects of the environment were already included in the school curricula. The inclusion of Environmental Education as a part of basic education was also suggested by Kothari Commission  which also suggested relating the Environmental Education to the life need and aspiration of the people. Environmental Education provides environmental awareness among the children and also engages them to resolve environmental problems. Environmental Education was already introduced from Class I as EVS to help the child learn about the environment and nurture the right attitude towards the environment from childhood. It could be very vital to expand proper knowledge, mindset, and know-how in the direction of Environmental Education for the school-going children so that it will deal with the right attitude and sustainable development of the country. The worldwide vision on sustainable development can also be achieved if proper education and cognizance on Environmental Education are furnished to our younger generation on mission mode. It is vital that we capture this enthusiasm and that no opportunity is lost to develop knowledge, understanding, and concern for the environment through school education. The curricular, cross-curricular attempt of environmental education also should be a joy for the learner. In this direction, NCERT has published in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Education, Ahmadabad, a book titled "Joy of learning" with many environmental activities, a handbook for teachers (Shukla, 2016). The importance of Environmental Education cannot be merely written in few sentences. The following are some of the important areas of Environmental Education that make it an utmost necessity for inclusion in the School Curriculum: • The natural resource is depleted very rapidly due to excessive demand from every corner of the country. So the mechanism for sustainable development has to be developed as early as possible, and through environmental education, it can be taught to the younger generation. • The emerging issues like depletion of the ozone layer, uncontrolled air and water pollution, global warming, and loss of biodiversity could be tackle effectively by environmental education at any level of the education system. • The sensitization of present efforts to control the environmental problems could pass on to the younger generation through environmental education. The efforts of various international bodies through conferences and submits on the environmental problem will make them know about the seriousness of the issues about the environment. • It is very pertinent for all humanity to be aware of environmental issues. So the role of environmental education becomes essential to capture the attention of each individual for their contribution to save our environment. The inclusion of Environmental Education (EVS) in the school curriculum is a welcome selection to conscious the young generation to broaden proper knowledge, feeling and mindset closer to the environment. At the same time, it's also vital that the proper teaching method must be used by a teacher to sensitize the school-going children closer to the environment. By looking into the present situation of the world environment, the upcoming generation must be well sensitized about the future issues of the environment. This could be easily sensitized through education using the incorporation of Environmental Education in the curriculum, which is the right platform for them to save the environment from its degradation and to save humanity. It could be a proper intervention at a proper time to save the human race from extinction earlier than the time.

Human Rights Education
The Human rights education in the school curriculum will help impart the value of the right attitude, awareness, and feeling towards human rights among the school-going children from childhood. Human rights education is about knowing own rights and respecting the other's rights for the best interest of society. According to the UN decade document for human rights education (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004), human rights education means "a lifelong process by which people at all levels of development and in all strata of society learn respect for the dignity of others and the means and methods of ensuring that respect in all societies." This definition shows that people living in any society have to discharge their duties with utmost sincerity at all times without any deviation. Recently, the term intolerance and mob lynching are becoming very common among the people belong to different strata and communities. The ever-rising of intolerance among the nation's youth is often circulated in various social media, newspapers, and television. The social media are flooded with information about the atrocities committed on women, children, and poor communities of the society, which indicates human rights violations. Through the proper education, the values, including peace, non-discrimination, equality, justice, non-violence, tolerance, staying in peace and safety, and recognize human dignity will be exceeded directly to the younger generations. In the curriculum, sufficient scope has to be furnished to the human rights education to keep the upcoming generation on the track of 'universal brotherhood' and to respect each other without any caste, creed, color, and community distinction. The human rights education in the curriculum can be very powerful in accomplishing the concepts of democracy, the rule of law, and social justice. Further, it's going to assist in setting up peace and safety. It, in addition, it permits us to obtain an allspherical socio-economic, political, and cultural sustainability. Human rights education in the curriculum will be helpful: • To endorse respect for the human rights of all individuals. • To develops the knowledge, skills, and values of human rights. • To develop the personality and sociopsychological of the individual. • To curbed out the problems due to human rights violations. • To foster understanding, tolerance, gender equality and develops friendship among all nations, and eliminates racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic differences. The human rights education topics are incorporated in the various subjects of the school curriculum, such as political science, history, EVS, science, etc., and limited knowledge is passed on to the younger generation about human rights education at school. Another important matter is the teaching method and approaches applied by the concerned teacher to sensitize the students about human rights education. Suppose the right kind of approaches and methods are applied by a teacher to sensitize the students about the knowledge, awareness, and attitude of human rights. It will have a long-lasting impact on the upcoming social development of the nation. The nation will have a more balanced society to respect each other's religion, culture, customs, traditions, and humanity will prevail over the intolerance.

Vocationalization of Education
Mahatma Gandhi, in his 'basic education' recommended for skill-based education or 'earn while learn. The National Education Policy (NEP) 1968 also recommended work experience as an integral part of education. It was also recommended in National Policy on Education 1986 that vocational education should be a distinct stream after the second stage of education with some scope of making it available after grade eight. It proposed that vocational courses should cover 10% of higher secondary students by 1995 and 25% by 2000. But it never got proper attention from the concerned stakeholders, due to which it fails to achieve the target at the set time. The recent policy on education called National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has also given space to the rationalization of education. It has aimed to provide every child the exposure to at least one vocation, commencing from the middle stage of school education, right up to higher education. The policy has recommended that, by 2025, at least 50% of students, both in school and higher education, would be given exposure to vocational programs. For that, the possibilities of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) would also be explored and that the Ministry would constitute a National Committee for the Integration of Vocational Education (NCIVE). It has also recommended the revision of the National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF), which would be required obviously for creating some more levels to accommodate the middle stages of school education and aligning different levels with the upcoming trades (Prakash. 2020).
In the education system of the country must introduce fractionalization of education in the real sense. The advice for rationalization of education was recommended by all the academic committees, and commissions constituted after independence. But its implementation in a real sense is yet to be accomplished by the country's school curricula. The younger generation of the country is going through a massive unemployment issues and frustration. It is going on because of the whole mismatching among the market demand and the educational qualifications of the educated youth. The market demand calls for knowledgeable qualifying particular vocation or professional skill person; however, our school curriculum has a few scopes for vocational courses. The education system of the country should be flexible enough to give vocational courses based on the social and market demand. There is a mismatch between the current market demand and the academic qualifications. The young generation should be well equipped with vocational qualifications to suit the market demand and be self-sustainable. The school curriculum should be a frame in such a way to best suit the recommendation of National Education Policy 2020 to achieve its recommendation of the exposure to at least one vocation to 50% of students of the school and higher education. The rationalization of education will help to: • Develop a healthy attitude towards work and life.
• Curb out the unemployment problem.
• Reduce the market demand for skilled manpower.
• Prepare students for identified vocations spanning several areas of activity. • Self entrepreneurship and employment attitude, knowledge, and skills will develop among the students. • Deprived section of society, women and rural students will also get the opportunity to fulfill their dream through rationalization of education. • Make the skilled student technician.
The rationalization of education got attention in various educational committees and commissions of the nation after independence. At the same time, its potentiality has been realized by the academician and experts. But it is not easy to introduced rationalization of education in the true sense, although it was started long ago in the system of education. The present scenario of the market demand for skilled technicians and the unemployment problems revealed that the rationalization of education is the best solution. The present school curriculum needs a paradigm shift from a traditional based curriculum to a need-based curriculum to eradicate many emerging issues and problems. Vocationalization of education will solve many emerging problems of the younger generations in particular and the nation as a whole.

Health Education
It is pertinent to cited right here that the entire world community is attempting to offer health education to every and every citizen in their country because of a covid-19 pandemic. Health Education is set endorsing the fitness and decreasing behavior brought about by the disease. It is involved with setting up the right mindset and behavior to promote more healthy living. Health education makes a specialist of growing focus on the proper habit, mindset, and knowledge referring to individual and social health. The fundamental health-associated areas are already covered in the science and social science textbooks of the school curriculum. It needs a right backup in methods and teaching strategies to develop true feelings and attitudes in health education. The right kind of health education in the school curriculum can bring tremendous changes in the mental and physical health of the citizens of the country. ..It is evident from the present covid-19 pandemic that the country whose citizens are following appropriate behaviors to avoid the spread of the deadly covid-19 virus are facing a lower mortality rate in comparison to the other nations. The absence of proper health education in the country is a big drawback to face the pandemic situation due to less awareness of the masses towards the harmful effect of pandemic disease. Health education will also provide dos and don't during the pandemic situation. The health education will help to: • Take precautionary measures to avoid disease and live a healthy life. • Maintain appropriate behaviors to prevent a pandemic. • Understand the various forms of good health.
• Take adequate precautionary measures to avoid communicable diseases. • Identify the physical and mental disorders of school-going children for early treatment and educational interventions. • Endorse mental and emotional health of students.
• Act responsibly for social and personal health.
• Understand the function of various body parts by the students. • Develop healthy eating habits among the students.
The health education in the school curriculum will lay a foundation for good habits on health and hygiene among the children. Many diseases such as Diarrheal diseases, skin diseases, worm infestations, and dental diseases are most commonly associated with poor personal hygiene. The lack of health education will lead to poor self-maintenance on health and hygiene, which finally invites many unwanted diseases. The present outbreak of covid-19 has affected every individual, and the people around the world are very desperate to get rid of this covid-19 pandemic quarantine. The lockdown had serious implications on mental health, resulting in psychological problems, including frustration, stress, and depression. The COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating this learning crisis. The schools are also closed, and as many as 94 percent of children worldwide have been out of school due to closures (Bhula and Floretta, 2020). Health education could have played a vital role in controlling the covid-19 pandemic up to much extent. The lack of health education among the masses more aggravates the pandemic situation to bring under control. It is the right time to learn the importance of health education and introduced the same in the school curriculum as a part of a paradigm shift due to paradigm shift.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that the academician should explore more areas to be included in the school curriculum while framing a curriculum. Environmental education is one of the most important areas or disciplines to be explored and enjoyed by our young generation. It gives huge knowledge about our environment and to save our earth atmosphere from further defloration. The children will explore peace, respect, equality, fraternity, and more in human rights education. The rationalization of education will allow the students to make themselves skilled in various technical courses of their choice and entrepreneurship opportunity. Health education is the demand of the hour as the pandemic is going on due to the spread of covid-19. It will make the child learn various health hazards and maintain a healthy life. So looking into the importance of the above-mentioned paragraphs, it is assumed that there should be a paradigm shift in the school curriculum by exploring the various areas and remove the obsolete information's from the curriculum. The traditional subject should be explored and analyze properly to give space for a flexible and need-based curriculum.