While the Karnataka government has agreed to carry out eight corrections in school textbooks after strong criticism over revisions carried out as per the recommendations of the Rohith Chakrathirtha-led committee, it has now emerged that each student will not get a copy of the corrigendum booklet. Instead, one copy per school will be given and it is up to the school authorities and teachers to ensure that each student carries out the correction in his or her copy of the textbook.
Booklets with eight corrections in the Class I to Class X Kannada and Social Science textbooks are being printed. The Karnataka Text Book Society (KTBS) is planning to distribute them to all government, aided, and private State syllabus schools across the State soon.
The State government had issued a notification making eight corrections on June 24. This was after objections were raised by members of the public, people’s representatives, and seers of various communities.
Logistical issues
There were 48,285 government, 6,312 aided, and 20,000 private schools with State syllabus in Karnataka and about one crore students were studying in them. Printing and distributing the correction booklet to each student is a Herculean task, said sources in KTBS. Lack of funding was also an issue. Therefore, KTBS was planning to distribute one copy to each school. KTBS would inform the teachers to use the booklet’s content while teaching the particular lesson. Already 85% of the revised textbooks had reached the schools.
“We will inform the teachers to use the appropriate corrections while teaching the particular lessons. Teachers will give a note on it to the students. Our teachers will definitely manage this,” KTBS Director M.P. Made Gowda told The Hindu.
Ajay Kamath, State secretary of student organisation AIDSO, differed from this view and argued that this would lead to confusion. “This shows total disregard for the opinion of so many experts. It also exposes the government’s anti-student attitude. We demand that the government distribute the old textbooks to all students immediately and put an end to the confusion.”
Major changes
Some of the major changes that figure in the corrigendum booklet under print include adding the prefix “Samvidhana Shilpi” (architect of the Constitution) to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in the Class IX textbook, which was dropped by the Rohit Chakrathirtha-led Committee. The government has also agreed to insert lines about the contributions of Siddaganga Mutt and Adichunchanagiri Mutt and achievements of Surpur Naikas, in an effort to assuage the “hurt feelings” of Lingayat, Vokkaliga, and Naika communities. A lesson on Bhakti and Sufi saints, including passages on Purandaradasa and Kanakadasa will be added back in Class VII Social Science textbook.
However, several other objections, on saffronisation of textbook content, have been brushed aside, leading to some arguing that there is a need to roll back the entire process and retain old textbooks.
