Errors of text books feature, yet again. This time, the mistake is about Indian professional badminton star, P.V. Sindhu. In the Kannada medium text book, it correctly says the star secured a silver medal, while the English textbook says it is bronze. A page from one of the revised (Karnataka) State syllabus textbooks says: “She has wone one bronze and one gold medal in common wealth games”, the spelling error inclusive. Factual and spelling errors aside, several printing and binding errors resulted in pages being printed upside down, blank pages and so on.
This is not the first time. Recall the earlier one. “Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on lid of one box. Put a small kitten in each box. Close the boxes. After some time, open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten inside the box without the holes has died”. This excerpt, featuring in Class IV book “Our Green World: Environment studies” went viral on social media, apart from attracting the ire of animal activists and education experts.
In another incident in Pune, a class XII Sociology book mentioned “ugliness” and physical disability of a girl as a reason behind the dowry issue prevalent in the country. The official decision to conduct periodic review of the textbooks of private publishers prescribed in our affiliated schools comes only after the above controversies sparked a wrangle on the poor scrutiny of academic curriculum.
Errors galore
A couple of years ago, in Gujarat text books, Mahatma Gandhi was “assassinated on October 30, 1948”; Japan launched a nuclear attack on the United States during World War II; A new country named “Islamic Islamabad” was constituted after the Partition with its capital Khyber Ghat in the Hindukush mountains; All South Indians are Madrasis. We have seen Gandhi listed as “Gandi”.
If Gandhi was “assassinated on October 30, 1948”, aren’t we murdering him again? “Islamic Islamabad” is like telling “I and my brother are brothers”. If all South Indians are “Madrasis”, then are all North Indians “Gujratis”? Suez Canal referred as a “sewage area” and Burma as “Bhramadesh”.
Earlier Maharashtra State Board of Secondary Higher Secondary Education was riddled with about 80 mistakes including incorrect definitions in the textbooks. Also observed that Ajanta is “located 60 km from Jangaon”, instead of Jalgaon. Jangaon is not in Maharashtra, but in AP. A certain amount of “history” is always open to differing accounts, as it depends upon the viewpoint of the historian. However, when facts are easily checked and corroborated by uninvolved third parties, there is no excuse for errors to appear in a text book. Vetting of text books is a serious matter and there should be a high-power panel of historians and scholars. The new ‘definition’ of ‘rewriting’ history makes one hysterical.
(This is the first part of the article and the remaining portion will continue tomorrow)
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
