By Zoya Mateen | BBC | India |
That’s the question being asked in India, where a controversy has been raging for weeks over what children are taught in school after reports about the deletion of some topics in their textbooks.
The textbooks are not new – they were published earlier this year by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and are already being used in more than 20,000 schools. The NCERT, an autonomous organisation under the federal education ministry, oversees syllabus changes and textbook content for children taking exams under the government-run Central Board of Secondary Education.
Among dropped topics are paragraphs on attempts by extreme Hindu nationalists to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi and chapters on federalism and diversity.
The NCERT has also dropped content related to the 2002 Gujarat riots; removed a chapter on Mughal rulers in India; and moved portions on the periodic table and theory of evolution in science books to higher grades, sparking criticism.
The council had said earlier that the changes, which were first announced last year as part of a syllabus “rationalisation” exercise, wouldn’t affect knowledge but instead reduce the load on children after the Covid-19 pandemic.
But now some academics who were part of committees that helped design and develop the older textbooks say they don’t want to be associated with the new curriculum.
India history debate after chapter on Mughals dropped
On 8 June, political scientists Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav – who were advisers for political science books originally published in 2006 for classes 9 to 12 – wrote to NCERT, asking it to remove their names from the print and digital editions of the books.
The academics said they objected to the “innumerable and irrational cuts and large deletions” as they failed to see “any pedagogic rationale” behind the changes.
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