NCERT Class 8 Syllabus for Social Science

SOCIAL
SCIENCES SOCIAL SCIENCES
CLASSES VI – VIII

Introduction
The revised syllabus for the Social Sciences in Classes VI-XII attempts to advance an on-going
process of assisting children and young people to understand that a healthy engagement with the
world must come as much from the way society takes shape and functions as from a proper sense
of its material and physical foundations. From this, it is expected, a vision will evolve that the Social
Sciences provide both essential skills of comprehension that are fundamental to any activity, and a
means of self-understanding and fulfillment that can be diverting, exciting and challenging. The
syllabus assumes that the knowledge apparatus of the child and the young person is itself complex-
both given the wide range of materials that the visual and print media have drawn into country and
Syllabus urban life and the nature of the problems of everyday life. To negotiate the diversity and confusion
for
and excitement the world throws up itself requires activity and insight that the Social Sciences can
Classes
at the substantially provide. To have a firm and flexible perspective on India’s past and the world from
Elementary which, and in which, the country develops, sensitivity to crucial social problems is essential. The
Level syllabus attempts to encourage such sensitivity and provide it with the ground on which it may
162 deepen – stressing that attention should be paid to the means through which sensitivity and curiosity
are aroused as much as the specific information that stimulates it.
The Social Sciences have been a part of the school curriculum before Class VI as part of the
teaching of Environmental Studies. The revised EVS syllabus has attempted to draw the child’s
attention in Classes III-V to the broad span of time, space and the life in society, integrating this
with the way in which she or he has come to see and understand the world around them.
In Classes VI-X, this process continues, but with a greater attention to specific themes and
with an eye to the disciplines through which Social Sciences perspectives have evolved. Up to a
point, the subjects that are the focus of college-level teaching – History, Geography, Political
Science, and Economics – are meant to take shape in the child’s imagination during these years –
but only in a manner where their boundaries are open to dispute, and their disciplinary quality is
understated. With such intentions, syllabus-makers have been more concerned with theme and
involvement rather than information. Textbook writers will be concerned to ensure that
understanding does not suffer through suffocation by obsession with detail. Equally, the themes
and details that are brought before the child for attention and discussion are also meant to clarify
doubts and disputes that take shape in contemporary society – through an involvement of the
classroom in discussions and debates via the medium of the syllabus.