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Highlights from a Critical Analysis of School Textbooks

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Note: This analysis was done in year 2003-04, for NCERT textbooks for classes 1 to 8, and Tamilnadu and Uttaranchal State Boards as well for some subjects.


Value: Small Family, Happy Family
A small urban family is shown to be happy while a big family is shown to be poor and unhappy.
Source: Lesson 'Our neighbours', Environmental Studies, NCERT, Std. 3, Pg 64
On Education
In India, Education signified knowledge of the Self. Education meant character building and drawing out the best in each individual. For the people of India, Education and learning has always been everything to do with Life and Living. For every individual, his Education enabled him to realise within himself the strength and freedom to take control of his life without fear or favour. The aim of such education was to bring out the best abilities in every individual, family, community and the society, in offer for the service of the land and the people. …


Source: English - Tamilnadu Textbook Corporation Textbook for class VII, Pg 95, 96 (Picture), 97

The advantages of a small family elucidated by means of a conversation between 2 friends at school, where one girl talks about the number of chapattis that she would get being decreased because of another baby being born in the house. The girl representing the small family has short hair, looks stylish and urban while the girl whose father is a "poor farmer" sports bindi, has plaited her hair, and wears a torn shirt.
The dialogue concludes with: "How sad! Ours is a small family with only two children. We get whatever we want. All right. Let us share our food now."
… The final outcome of such a blind drive for literacy is the pressure to score high marks in the examinations that is forced upon the students defeating the very purpose of learning. Such a motivation for schools, teachers and students results in the very fast movement of learning in the textbooks. One of the Hindi textbooks for Class I gives the feeling of a beginner's crash course in the Hindi language. It rushes from pictures to letters (alphabets) to sentences and gives the child no time at all to cope up. There are about 10 pages with simply pictures which the teacher and the students will together look at and learn what the objects are called. The numbered lessons start after this and go on to 30 lessons. This is simply too much to take in for a 5-year old, keeping in mind that he will have about at least 3 other subjects to tackle and all of them at this speed.…

On Development

The caption in the textbook reads, "since ancient times strange and magical creatures have been attracting Man. This attraction led him to invent a robot, the machine man"
Source: English - Tamilnadu Textbook Corporation Textbook
… THE MACHINE, whether we understand it or not, has become so essential, that it is said "For a comfortable living, we need not only food grains, but also clothes, house, electricity and machine." The modern man is more inventive than his predecessors, and is constantly inventing and discovering new things. It is a "fast-changing world" and he is "engaged in making his life more and more happy and comfortable" by making "such machines that does his work much faster". The Machine is also made in to a wonder that runs modern society and world. For all intents and purposes, the textbooks liken all modern technological application from mobile phones and computers to guns and submarines to a Machine. …

… the children read that the developed, modern woman is much better because "A woman's role is no longer confined to households. . .". The implication here is that all the women in our country who have been doing household work alone, have been doing nothing worthwhile. It is only when she comes out of the house and is on display in the mines and the mills, she is contributing to the progress of the country. Her energies utilised within the home are not contribution towards the country. It might also contribute to our understanding to recall that we have had women as some of the greatest rulers, soldiers, revolutionaries in this country. The woman's role may not have been confined to household that it should no longer be confined now. …

On Science and Technology
… The way science and technology has been projected in the books under review here have a component of all the factors of a free India - the admiration of science and technology as a magical entity, the promotion of science as THE tool of progress and development, the learning of science as the pre-requisite for any form of development and the future of a world with science and technology dominating it. In fact, even the history of India, is interpreted from the scientific perspective and most things of pre-modern science period have been labelled as 'superstitious', 'primitive' or plainly 'un-scientific' and hence not desirable. …