The revision of school textbooks (state syllabus) last year in Karnataka has not gone down well with academicians and school managements. Schools say the syllabus revision was vague and was not done properly, given the new and emerging trends in society. Some even alleged the “content was disputable.”

Now, the department of education is mulling to include all stakeholders — from private schools running state syllabus to ICSE to CBSE boards — for another revision of textbooks.

School managements and academicians say the new textbooks are no longer relevant. Besides, some say no private school management was consulted before going ahead with the revision. D Shashi Kumar, principal of Blossoms School and general secretary of KAMS said, “The revisions which were done in the state syllabus textbooks were not up to the mark.

It was more of a juggling between other texts from other boards and some of them don’t make any sense at all. We urge the department to include private school managements and other stakeholders in the revision committee. Only then it makes sense because a few experts from government schools or professors are involved and these textbooks are used across the state irrespective of the fact that it is a government school or a private school.

When we are also part of it at the receiving end,then we should also be included in the textbooks committee.”

To rewind a bit, when the revision of textbooks took place last year, more than 400 errors were spotted in textbooks.

The then head of the textbooks committee brushed it as just “grammatical errors and typos”. There were several criticisms over the content of textbooks as well.

‘Some chapters glorified’

A social science teacher said, “The concepts were diluted. Some chapters /personalities in history were intentionally glorified and some not given importance at all. It is after all history and students need to study every aspect, be it religious or patriotic.” An official from the education department said, “It is not wrong to include private stakeholders in the textbook revision committee. Yes, there was a lot of feedback after the revision last year.

This year, when we plan for the revision, there will be a set of guidelines laid down.” H N Gopalakrishna, director of Karnataka Textbooks Society and DSERT told BM, “We are working out a plan on the revision of the textbooks. We will change bits and pieces wherever we have found mistakes this year and also some minor changes. The committee is yet to be formed and they will take a call on it soon.”

However, academicians said that even the adoption of NCERT syllabus for Mathematics and Science syllabus for class 8 and 9 were mere a copy and paste work There were no specific changes made to suit the standard of state syllabus students.

Source: BangaloreMirror

  Errors, Government, Karnataka, Outdated content, Text books to be reprinted, Typos