Egregious errors and howlers including wrongly delineated national boundaries in class X history and geography textbooks prescribed for students of 21,000 schools affiliated with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE), has attracted major headlines in the media and provoked a storm of protests from parents and academics across Maharashtra. Better informed upper middle class parents are well aware of the syllabi, curricular and general infirmities of state boards of education and move heaven and earth to ensure their offspring are admitted in primary-secondary schools affiliated with the Delhi-based CISCE (Council for Indian School Certificate Examination) and CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), and tend to give state — including MSBSHSE — boards-affiliated schools a wide berth. The state boards’ slipshod texts replete with errors justify their caution.

Numerous spelling and grammatical errors apart, the MSBSHSE prescribed textbooks for class X SSC (Secondary School Certificate) students cite wrong dates of milestone events with the history textbook featuring a map of India without labelling the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and the geography textbook entirely omitting the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. This latter act of omission has ruffled feathers across the country generating a national political furore because the People’s Republic of China claims that Arunachal (which they describe as South Tibet) is historically Chinese territory wrested from China in 1914 by British India through an “unequal treaty’’.

According to MSBSHSE sources, an internal enquiry indicates that the cause of Arunachal being excluded from India was that the map was reduced from its original size when printing. However, Krishnamohan, managing director of Heritage Printers, Hyderabad, to whom the contract to print the geography textbooks was outsourced by the Pune-based Balbharti —Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research, denies knowledge of any MSBSHSE enquiry. “We have printed whatever approved material was given to us and haven’t received any intimation from the state education board for an enquiry. There was no error in printing at our end,” he says.

By the time the errors came to light, 650,000 of the 1.65 million geography textbooks printed were sold to unsuspecting students and 1 million have so far been recalled by Balbharti. Embarrassed by the errors in its prescribed textbooks, the state government dismissed the 11-member Board of Studies constituted by Balbharti to vet class I-XII geography textbooks.

“From where the mistake originated is irrelevant; the point is it’s a grave error. The Board of Studies is accountable since it comprises qualified experts and the content was vetted a number of times. The role of every individual in the textbooks writing, vetting and printing process will be thoroughly investigated,’’ says Fauzia Khan, minister of school education in the Maharashtra state government.

According to knowledgeable educationists in Mumbai, the entire process of commissioning, writing and printing textbooks is opaque and highly discretionary. The process begins with the SCERT (State Council of Education Research and Training) selecting “subject expert school teachers’’ and training them to write textbooks jointly or severally for a meagre fee of Rs.90 per printed page. The first draft is sent to Board of Studies experts (constituted by Balbharti) who ratify or suggest changes. After the changes, if any are made, the board sends the text to Balbharti for printing.

“Mistakes and howlers in state board textbooks are routine. That’s because there’s a huge measure of subjectivity in SCERT’s choice of authors selected from among school teachers. There’s little awareness in SCERT that good teachers are not necessarily good writers. Likewise selection of Board of Studies members is also highly subjective and often made on considerations other than merit. With the textbooks production process so opaque and discretionary, quality suffers,’’ says Dr. Jawahar Surisetti, an alumnus of the University of Washington, Seattle, and former director of the Ashoka Education Foundation, Nashik, and currently education advisor to several state governments.

Although the full brunt of official fury has been borne by members of the geography Board of Studies who have been summarily dismissed by the state government, Dr. Hemant Pednekar, former professor of geography at Mumbai’s Kirti College and former member of a Board of Studies for developing class IX geography text-books, is inclined to speak up for the members of the board. “Blaming the Board of Studies team is hardly the solution. It will make teachers wary of volunteering to serve on these boards considering that the remuneration they receive is a pittance. While some board members are inducted because of influence, most work hard to create quality content,’’ says Pednekar.

But while there is undoubtedly some truth that the system rather than individuals are to blame for shocking errors popping up in Balbharti textbooks, little sympathy is discernible for the 1.7 miliion class X SSC students forced to make do with substandard textbooks in 21,000 MSBSHSE-affiliated schools. The gap between them and students in CBSE and CISCE schools continues to widen.

Sunayana Nair (Mumbai)