Sub-standard Textbooks Wrecking K-12 Education

The deep divide between the quality of textbooks prescribed by elite schools affiliated with pan-India and offshore exam boards such as CISCE, CBSE, CIE (UK) and IB (Geneva) and the slapdash and sub-standard textbooks imposed upon the majority of hapless children enrolled in schools affiliated with the 31 state exam boards, is wrecking K-12 education and dividing India – Summiya Yasmeen Already suffering the disadvantages of crumbling infrastructure, ill-qualified and untrained teachers, poor learning outcomes, teacher truancy, and obsolete curriculums, India’s 260 million children in K-12 education — the world’s largest school-going child population — are confronted with a new calamity. Across the country, a flood tide of haphazardly authored and prescribed error-ridden textbooks is adding to the burden of Indian school-goers struggling to keep up with their international counterparts.  According to The Economist (June 8, 2017), India’s best 15-year-olds are unlikely to fare better than the bottom 2 percent of an American public school class. Despite this, the great majority of India’s school children — especially in 1.1 million government schools — who began school in June-July are being force-fed inaccurate, erroneous, biased and unreliable textbooks. In Karnataka, 10.55 million children enrolled in 76,000 state board-affiliated schools including 12,289 English-medium schools have been presented newly printed texts for the academic year 2017-18, filled with an estimated 200 egregious errors including factual inaccuracies, spelling mistakes, missing diagrams and questions/answers. For instance in the class VII Kannada language textbook, pages 24-57 are missing altogether, while in the class X English textbook, pages 53-84 are printed upside down, and badminton ace P.V. Sindhu’s feat of winning a silver medal at the Rio Olympics has been downgraded to a bronze medal. In Maharashtra, teachers have highlighted several factual gaffes in classes VIII and IX social science texts prescribed by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education. The class XII sociology textbook ascribes “ugliness and handicap” as the main reasons why Indian parents have to pay high dowries (banned by law) for the marriage of their daughters. In Gujarat, a primary Hindi textbook describes Jesus Christ as a demon and roza (fasting by Muslims during the holy month of Ramzan) as an infectious disease.  Reports from other states of the Indian Union are on a par. The quality of texts published and printed by Soviet-style state government textbook committees across the country for students enrolled in 1.4 million state board-affiliated public and private schools is going from bad to worse.  The causes of this malaise run deep and are rooted in official corruption for which India is globally infamous. Starting from appointment of textbook committees, selection of writers and proof-readers to awarding printing contracts to private publishers, the State-controlled textbook production process is mired in nepotism and corruption. Politicians, officials and educrats of state governments pack textbook selection and commissioning committees with unqualified kith and kin who award writing and printing contracts to a growing number of small-time, fly-by-night authors, printers and publishers who have contributed heavily to dumbing down Indian…