Karnataka’s 10.2 million students enroled in 76,000 state board-affiliated government, private aided and unaided primary-secondary schools who began the new academic year 2015-16 in June, are obliged to make do with previous years’ error-ridden textbooks. Several textbook committees constituted by the Congress state government after it assumed office in May 2013 following the rout of the scandals-tainted BJP in the state legislative elections of that year, have failed to amend errors and party propaganda in school texts.

Following widespread complaints from academics and educationists that the previous BJP government had infused hindutva myths and propaganda into textbooks, the Congress state government promised to ‘de-saffronise’ school textbooks as well as correct several ‘printed errors’. But after it was elected, it didn’t address the issue until last December when it formed 27 textbook revision committees (TRCs) comprising 185 members to revise 352 texts. Given a time window of only six months, the 27 committees have failed to submit their recommendations before start of the new academic year. Therefore in May, the Congress government appointed a ‘super committee’ chaired by Kannada writer Baragur Ramachandrappa to supervise all 27 committees revising class I-X textbooks.

According to Ramachandrappa, the ‘super’ TRC has already received thousand pages of complaints about textbooks, mostly relating to their saffronisation. “After 2012, there was a big debate on mistakes in textbooks. Saffronisation or Congressisation is not the solution. Constitutionalisation should be the agenda behind revision or review of textbooks,” he said, addressing the media on June 10.

Among the saffronisation-in-textbooks instances reported are a reference to Dronacharya, the iconic guru of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, as the world’s first test-tube baby in a class IX science text; surfeit of Sanskrit quotes in all subject textbooks; and a conspicuous absence of any positive references to Dravidians and Dalits, even as Brahmins and Kshatriyas are glorified. Saffronisation apart, several teachers and school associations in the state have reported a plethora of factual, spelling and grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, and repetitions. 

The deluge of commonplace errors in school texts has once again focused attention on the textbooks formulation process and the Bangalore-based Karnataka Textbook Society (KTBS) which commissions writing, printing and distribution of texts to 76,000 schools affiliated with the Karnataka State Secondary Examination Board. In the academic year 2015-16, KTBS published 53.4 million textbooks at a cost of Rs.178 crore.

Describing the process, a KTBS spokesperson says textbooks for government and aided schools are written by academics and scholars jointly selected by KTBS and the director of DSERT (department of state educational research and training).

Subsequently all final drafts of textbooks are sent to the education minister, the commissioner of public instruction and state editorial board for approval, following which they are sent to District Institutes for Education and Training (DIETs) and Colleges of Teacher Education (CTEs) statewide for feedback and comments. “Our textbook writing and printing process is very detailed and elaborate,” says KTBS managing director Nagendra Kumar.

However, this ‘elaborate’ textbooks writing and review process doesn’t inspire much confidence within the state’s academics and educationists because it’s an open secret that all appointments — directors of KTBS, DIETs, textbook writing and review committee members — are made arbitrarily by politicians for ideological and/or commercial considerations, rather than on merit and track record. Moreover, the ‘academics and scholars’ selected by KTBS to write the texts are mid-level government school/college teachers. Reputed academics and experts from the private sector are rarely invited to write or review textbooks. In this flawed and tightly government-controlled Rs.178 crore textbooks printing business, quality, factual accuracy and excellence are secondary considerations.

Comments D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the Karnataka Associated Management of English Medium Schools (KAMS) which has 1,400 member schools statewide: “The entire textbook writing and review process needs to be urgently professionalised with subject experts, editors and proof-readers chosen only on merit given full freedom to develop content under broad National Curriculum Framework (NCF) guidelines. Moreover, there should be better coordination between KTBS, DIETs and the state government to ensure error-free textbooks.”

With the KTBS indicating that the new super review committee headed by Ramachandrappa will need almost a year to submit its recommendations, and tenders for printing textbooks for the academic year 2016-17 to be floated next month, the state’s 10.2 million children in state board affiliated schools will have to suffer error-riddled textbooks for yet another two years.

Rahul Lahkar (Bangalore)