Deen Muhammad sits at his desk at TCF’s Jacobabad Campus in Village Haji Sahib Soomro. Like other students around him, the eight year old eagerly flips through his ‘Hamari Dilkash Dunya’ (Our Beautiful World) textbook, and waits for his teacher to commence this week’s topic. And why wouldn’t he? After all, each time he delves into his Social Studies book, it takes him on an exciting journey of self-discovery and gradually introduces him to the vast, complex world around him.
This week’s lesson builds up on ‘Society and Culture’. Last week, Deen learnt that his world is inhabited by many others like him, similar in many ways, but differing in dress, language and food of choice, all determined by their climate, geography and culture. His teacher also told him that just as flowers of various hues and scents add vibrancy to our world, these various cultural expressions also add meaning and make our world beautiful. Each page of the chapter takes him to a different region of his country and further out to Japan, Saudi Arabia and Italy, where he gets to learn about their culture, all while sitting in his classroom in Jacobabad.
Similarly Fakiha Fatima from TCF’s Burki campus in Lahore opens her ‘Hamari Dilkash Dunya’ book for Class 5 to Chapter 11: Conservation of Resources. Today, she will learn about recycling and how she can play a role in protecting her environment which includes forests, animals and resources which together play their role in making her world habitable.
Each day, Deen, Fakiha, and countless other students enrolled throughout TCF’s network of 1200+ schools in Pakistan go through the same lesson plan, consistently receiving the same quality education which TCF strives to impart. The 8-part Social Studies series gradually introduces various concepts pertaining to Geography, History, Civics, in line with the National curriculum and contextualized to reflect local culture and dynamics. TCF has introduced an additional strand of ‘Social Excellence’, which aims to foster respect, tolerance and diversity in the TCF student. Each book in the series is complemented by engaging student activities and comprehensive teacher guides, helping the teacher to effectively bring out the essence of each lesson.
Carefully designed with an eye for holistic student development, the series broaden students’ perspectives as they start seeing themselves as part of the larger world, understand how this world is constantly subject to change, and learn to reconcile and adapt with change. The series facilitates this development by giving students opportunities to investigate society, explore issues, make decisions, and work independently and cooperatively with others.
TCF is actively engaged in the process of developing textbooks and teacher guides for Social Sciences and other subjects. By doing so, we seek to contextualize the knowledge delivered in classrooms to make it more relevant for the TCF student, presenting it in a format which is stimulating and encourages exploration and discovery, both within the classroom and beyond.
