[Reader-list] politics of church: yet another text book controvrsy

[Ranjith Thankappan]

Class Struggle
At a time when debates over textbooks are spilling violently on to the streets, APOORVANAND examines the politics of textbooks — and education — in the country
THE CURRENT agitation in Kerala demanding withdrawal of the class VII social science textbook has turned murderous. James Augustine, 45, a headmaster of a primary school was killed in an attack by the Indian Union Muslim League youth activists on a teachers' training program. And this was done after the Kerala government announced that it had decided to remove the controversial portion of the textbook. Would this utterly meaningless death of a teacher at their hands stop the agitators in their track? Would we allow warriors of different shades of identity politics a free run? Would the sacrifice of a life turn into an occasion for all of us to once again ponder over issues related not only to the politics of textbooks but also the principles on which textbooks in a diverse country like India should be prepared?
It is very easy to see that the allegation on this particular book — that it promotes atheism — cannot be substantiated, as the story in the text in question closes with the response of the parents of Jeevan, who belong to different religious identities, that he would be free to choose his religion when he grows up. It only shows that they are very relaxed about his identity and are ready to give him the freedom to decide on his identity. Surely the agitating groups are neither sure nor relaxed about their relationship with the members of their denominations. Do they fear that texts like the one dealing with the religious identity of Jeevan can give ideas to children about their right to take decisions in the matters of marriage and identity? Even if one leaves this aside, the charge leveled by the Opposition that the book is substandard deserves a reasoned discussion. It needs to take into account the role textbooks are expected to play in a country
 like India, the process of textbook writing, the implication of the federal character of India for school education in general and textbook writing in particular.
Do we realise that textbooks are the only resource for the crores of children who have gained entry into the school space for the first time in their communities? In other words, a textbook is like a midday meal for them. It has to be nourishing, wholesome and yet should have the ability to awaken the taste buds of the children. Textbooks bear a huge responsibility in our country, to make up for parents who are often unable to address their children's queries and concerns, and supplement classroom discussions. Their role is to help teachers create an anxiety-free classroom situation which would be inviting enough for a first generation learner to make him feel at home in the school.
Ideally, an average Indian classroom should represent the rich diversity of the country. Instead, we witness the upper and middle classes segregating themselves from the resource-less population and creating their own special educational zones. Successive governments, for their part, have only helped these zones get more fortified, creating Boards which only help in legalising inequality in education. You have the elite CBSE and ICSE looking down upon the state Boards. Then the government has created Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs), Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs), and now a scheme is waiting in the wings under which hundreds of schools would be opened all over India with private partnership, on the pattern of the JNVs. It would be surprising for many of us to know that the NCERT, which prepares textbooks for this system, caters to only 3 percent of the school going children.
The modern nation state is unique because it is also a huge educational apparatus. It takes it upon itself to educate huge populations into certain national principles. Schools become very crucial in this whole scheme as there is a realisation in the ruling classes that the majority would be leaving the field of planned education after they have completed their school education. In countries like ours, while planning our curricula we also legitimise different exit points for children coming from different sections of the society. Education is, therefore, not treated as a continuous process. Since it is treated as a mere tool for socialising the child into citizenship, political groups and other formations, having their own notions of it, want it to be represented at every level because they are not sure at which stage the child would drop out of this mechanism and would therefore be deprived of their ideas. An uproar on a class VII social science
 textbook without uttering a word on what the class VI or class VIII book is doing, results from this myopic view of school education.
We also think that textbooks are syringes filled with curative or magical potions that are to be injected into the bodies of the children. The textbook programme
resembles the immunisation scheme devised by modern medicine to keep children free from diseases hovering around them. A child who passes her 12th class with 98 percent marks fails to understand why communal riots take place or why is it that majority of the children failing the examinations belong to certain caste or religious groups.
Our social science textbooks fail in their main task of helping students gain an understanding of the structure of our society. Instead of asking our textbooks to perform this task we put wrong questions to them. While it is not unimportant to ask whether Gandhi or Nehru or Bhagat Singh have been included or excluded, what is more important is to know if the textbook opens up windows to the different streams which were active in the freedom struggle and enable both student and teacher to discuss their roles critically.
We should be asking these questions when discussing the Kerala book controversy. We should also be asking how is it that children and their parents studying in more than 600 schools across Kerala are simply untouched by this whole controversy? They do not have anything to do with these books written originally in Malayalam, as they live in safe CBSE havens reading books written in English.
IT IS legitimate for a state to develop its own curricula and textbook. But care has to be taken so that decentralisation is not reduced to a mere slogan. Does a Kerala book discussing the freedom struggle depict the same Gandhi-Nehru-Bhagat Singh iconography or could it find some other way to make it more Kerala specific? These are difficult questions that would demand a fundamental change in our approach towards different aspects of school education.
Our political parties should also ask if they care for standards to be maintained in textbook writing, and if sufficient budgetary allocation is made for training in textbook writing. If textbooks are not something to be memorised and reproduced in examinations faithfully, it would mean giving our teachers opportunities to reorient themselves accordingly, which has huge implications for teacher training institutions and concerned departments. It would mean giving freedom and dignity to the textbook, giving it autonomy and at the same time extending the same dignity and autonomy to the teacher and student who are not expected to treat the class room as a space for initiation into some ideology, however progressive it is, but as an opportunity to question the given truths of the State.
We know that ours is an insecure nation state, which keeps on enacting extraordinary laws to save itself from falling apart, which fears its people cannot even dream of such a space, let alone make adequate provisions for it. But should that stop us from asking these crucial questions? 
 
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 30, Dated Aug 02, 2008 
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~



      From Chandigarh to Chennai - find friends all over India. Go to http://in.promos.yahoo.com/groups/citygroups/