Today was the first day at school of Sharmina, the 3-year-old daughter of one of our staff. She came to the office proudly showing off her brand new LKG school books, the "Little Pentagon" series published by Samba Publishers, Chennai. I flipped through and found this gem.
The year is 2011. It is 86 years since Periyar's self-respect movement; 64 years since Indian independence; 48 years since MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech. Can someone please tell me why the F*** we are still feeding our kids this crap?
Never ending effects of a 200 year old colonial hangover.
ReplyDeleteWFT!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy job has meant that I've had to read more textbooks in the last couple of years than I ever did in school. And yes, we are still feeding our kids this crap, over and over again. And reinforcing it in the illustrations in less obvious ways.
ReplyDelete@aishwarya Is there any sort of movement anywhere to put an end to this? How do we start one?
ReplyDeleteUnbelievable! Letters to NCERT? The thing is, textbooks are so randomly chosen across kinds of schools, school boards etc., that it's impossible to have a unified action plan.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a general petition that is brought to the attention of educators and principals of schools nationwide?
I think you just put people who care about this sort of thing into publishing houses. I make textbooks, and I would not put this poem into one of mine. And I've been lucky enough to have bosses who also will not tolerate this sort of thing.
ReplyDelete@aishwarya Seems to be flourishing though. Maybe we need to get into kids textbooks.
ReplyDelete@spacebar This is a private publication, don't think NCERT is involved in any way (though I have some seen plenty of weird stuff in NCERT books.) General petition: want to write one?
In a couple of weeks, sure. Will draft and bung in the mail. (Seriously).
ReplyDelete