Making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral

My friend, Jaijit and others are working on making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral. The CBSE syllabus touches the lives of around 201 million students and the current syllabus mandates specific brand names and is not vendor-neutral. We believe that this benefits monopoly software vendors and leads to a technology dependence that is not healthy for our country in the long run.

All we are asking for is that brand names should not be mandated because:

A) The education system must teach *principles* and not *products.* For example, we should teach "word processing" and not XYZ brand of word processor.

B) This deprives students and teachers of the ability to use products that suit their needs and their budgets.

The CBSE Syllabus can be examined at:

1) Secondary Curriculum 2010,INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY(CODE No. 165)

Unit 2-IT TOOLS mandates Windows GUI basics while Unit-3 mandates MSOffice and its practicals.

RECOMMENDATION: This should be changed to "User Interfaces" and "Office Productivity Applications."

2) Senior School Curriculum 2009,Informatics Practices (Code 065)


Unit -I Computer System And Business Applications:Windows,Unit 2 Introduction to Programming:Visual Basic,UNIT 3 RDBMS:ORACLE XII:Unit 2:Visual Basic,Unit 3 RDBMS:PL/SQL

RECOMMENDATION: This should be changed to "Operating Systems" and the mention of specific brand names in "Introduction to Programming" and "RDBMS" should be dropped.

Shyam, Anivar and others helped put together the Syllabus Review Wiki from where this information was culled. Thanks folks!

If you (or someone you know) can help in making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral, please do pitch in and help.