Transcript

COMMENTARY

Economic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24
19
Discussions and incisive comments by Suresk
K Reddy who meticulously read drafts of this
commentary helped me bring it to its
present form.
Disha Nawani ([email protected])
is with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai.
North-east Indians and Others
Discrimination, Prejudice and Textbooks
Disha Nawani
School textbooks play a
significant part in perpetuating
stereotypes and prejudices about
tribals, minority communities and
other marginalised groups. The
north-east states of the country
and their people and cultures
are very often not mentioned
at all. However, the new NCERT
(National Council of Educational
Research and Training) social
science textbooks, besides being
pedagogically superior, attempt
to grapple with the real lives of
people and sensitise and help
children to critically engage with
issues of diversity, inequality
and discrimination.
T
he lynching and subsequent
death of Nido Tania, a college stu-
dent from Arunachal Pradesh in
New Delhi, and more recently, the vio-
lence against six residents of Gurgaon
who hailed from the north-east, leading
to two of them losing their hearing are
among a spate of such incidents which re-
peatedly remind us of the deeply divided
nature of Indian society. Our society is
not just stratified but actively nurtures
prejudices. In an effort to understand
such behaviour, this article makes a mod-
est attempt to locate a significant part of
this problem in experiences of our school-
ing, especially textbooks.
Stereotyping Others
It is important to understand the rich-
ness of the Indian social fabric and the
location and importance of caste, class,
region, religion and gender in under-
standing it. However, the manner in
which our education system is orga ni-
sed, the curricula framed, policies
formulated and textbooks written often
highlights not just the “distinctiveness
but separateness” of those who are
diffe rently (often disadvantageously)
placed. Stereotypes about weak girls,
ignorant villagers, shrewd city dwellers
and certain lazy, superstitious and dirty
caste and community groups are often
promoted unabashedly in our homes,
propagated by the media and surrepti-
tiously reflected in textbooks.
Tribals in India find themselves espe-
cially targeted as far as misconceptions
are concerned. In the eyes of non-tribals,
all tribals constitute a homogeneous
group and the fact that each tribe is only
partly defined by habitat and geography
but essentially by social, cultural, lin-
guistic and religious distinctiveness is
rarely acknowledged. This ignorance is
perpetuated to a large extent by our
textbooks. For example, while school
history textbooks are replete with
histories of other civilisations and socie-
ties, there is hardly anything on the histo-
ry of a large section of our society, espe-
cially the north-east. Therefore, it is not
surprising that the people of the region
feel alienated from the rest of India and
the rest of Indians treat them as outsiders.
Celebrating Right Values
The Preamble to the Constitution, the
National Policy of Education 1986 and
all other important policy documents
reiterate the need to provide an equita-
ble, quality education for all children.
Unfortunately, however, most of these
values, often seen as slogans on school
walls or even in the prefaces to school
textbooks, remain mere rhetoric and
schools continue to be potential sites for
inequalities to be perpetuated. Schools
thus by no stretch of imagination are
“neutral egalitarian spaces” where all
children are treated with respect and
dignity but sites where their identities
are reconfirmed, ensuring the status quo
of a hierarchical and unequal society.
Inclusion and Diversities
Textbooks by virtue of occupying an
indispensable position in most Indian
classrooms are rarely ever questioned by
those who read them and those who use
them to teach. Even though the central
pegs of our education system are the cur-
riculum (even syllabus), pedagogy and
examinations, the first is rarely ever seen
by teachers, leave alone students. Nor do
they really check the syllabus. The only
tangible and substantial material that
reaches students and teachers is the text-
books and because the questions asked in
exams often replicate questions given in
these books, it becomes the only teaching/
learning resource for everybody.
Analyses of school textbooks in differ-
ent subjects show the ways in which
they either remain silent about knowl-
edge, experiences and world views of
several communities living in India or
blatantly misrepresent and denigrate
them. Not just the language but the il-
lustrations that the books use reflect
prejudiced notions about them. For ex-
ample, women are shown as unintelli-
gent and meek, men as achievers and
intelligent, poor people as inefficient
COMMENTARY
June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
20
and lazy and the middle class as hard-
working and in respectable professions.
Hindus are over-represented while other
religious communities are portrayed in
stereotypical roles, clothes and even
names. This selective presentation of
communities in textbooks thus:
• Conveys a generalised, fuzzy and
homogenised understanding of the other.
• Juxtaposes the other in a way such
that it pales in comparison with the
“norm” and appears “less adequate”.
• Subtly conveys a message that if the
other “seeks to belong” then it must
adapt to the dominant culture.
• Provides fertile ground for misconcep-
tions to grow and prejudices to flourish.
If one examines the textbooks, partic-
ularly social science ones, one rarely
comes across any proper, leave alone ad-
equate, representation of the diversity of
tribal cultures and lives. Some people
live in the forest areas. They have their own
life style, language, culture and traditions.
They have a limited contact with the urban so-
ciety. As these people live in jungles and have
a unique life style, they are called ‘Adivasis’...
The needs of the tribal people are limited. They
depend on nature to fulfil their limited needs
(Social Science textbook, Class 6, Madhya
Pradesh (MP) Rajya Shiksha Kendra, 2013).
Questions such as, “give four charac-
teristics of the tribal people” also
highlight the supposed peculiarities of
tribals, as against non-tribals. The way
tribals have been presented here, would
lead one to imagine that all tribals live
in forests only, have limited needs and
are entirely dependent on nature.
Chapters like, “We Are Proud of Them”,
for instance in Ratna Sagar’s “My Big Book
of Social Studies” for Class 5, 2007, does
not find mention of any north-eastern
scholar, artist or activist. Similarly a chap-
ter on “Our Festivals” from Class 3 Envi-
ronmental Science (EVS) textbook from
MP, 2013, is restricted to festivals ranging
from Holi, Diwali, Dussehra, Eid, Christ-
mas to national festivals. MP incidentally is
also home to a large number of tribes, cele-
brating a variety of festivals, which do not
find representation in generic chapters of
this kind. It is another matter that most of
these textbooks are also pedagogically
weak and present a stilted picture of reality.
Festivals bring joy and happiness in our life
and teache how to live life. These festivals
help us promote goodwill and brotherhood.
We should celebrate festivals in such a way
that others feel equally happy specially those
who are socially and financially weak (sic).
Way back in 1993, the Yashpal Commit-
tee Report, while analysing the burden on
schoolchildren, showed the way in which
textbooks totally alienated millions of chil-
dren, particularly from rural and tribal
contexts, by their skewed representation
of an urban, middle class child’s way of
life. This was reiterated by the Public Re-
port on Basic Education of 1999:
In case of tribal children this alienation is
severe, since their very existence and iden-
tity is portrayed ambiguously and problem-
atically. In a textbook for Class 6, questions
about ‘where in the state are tigers found?
were framed in exactly the same way as
‘where are tribals found?’ No effort was
made to even semantically differentiate
between where people are found and where
people live. No tribal children, and no tribal
names, ever appear in the textbooks.
While textbooks (both government
and private), prepared at the national
level, have largely remained silent about
depicting diversities in different states,
the books prepared by State Council of
Educational Research and Training
(SCERT) besides emulating books pre-
pared by the National Council of Educa-
tional Research and Training (NCERT)
insert a few local names, festivals and
places or have separate chapters on the
state’s geography, history and people.
For example, English Reader (Class 8,
SCERT, Chhattisgarh 2006) talks about
Teejan Bai, a Pandavani folk artist from
the Paridhan adivasi community of
Chhattisgarh. The geography Class 4
textbook published by the Maharashtra
State Bureau of Textbook Production
and Curriculum Research 2009, has a
chapter on “Maharashtra” which men-
tions various tribes in the state, the
houses they live in, clothes they wear,
food they eat and areas of their settle-
ment, etc. Similarly, the SCERT, Naga-
land developed its textbooks for Classes
1-7 in 2010 with the objective of making
them more relevant to the social lives
and culture of Naga children. In these
books, one can see local names such as
Lima Jamir, Moa, Atu, Yanger and Lime-
ro, a description of the clothes they
wear, the special type of houses they
live in and, division of labour in their
s ocieties, etc. There are descriptions of
cowrie and conch shells which Nagas
use in their ornaments and log drums
which they used to communicate, etc.
They have detailed information on vari-
ous tribes living in Nagaland such as the
Ao, Lothas, Chakhesang, Pochury and
Sumi, Changs, Sangtamas, Yimchun-
grus, etc. There are also chapters on fes-
tivals celebrated in Nagaland, its flora
and fauna, mountains and rivers and
Naga history, etc.
Textbooks, besides being situated in
the readers’ social contexts must also be
developmentally appropriate and peda-
gogically sound. Most of the state text-
books mentioned above are densely load-
ed with information, conceptually weak
and rather simplistic in their assumptions.
Meaningful Representation
The National Curricular Framework
(NCF) 2005 acknowledges the different
sociocultural-economic locations that
children come from and underscores the
need to connect textbooks with them.
The National Focus Group Position
Paper (2005) on “Problems of Scheduled
Caste and Scheduled Tribe Children”
besides recognising the problematic con-
ceptualisation and execution of policies
meant for such groups acknowledges the
curricular and pedagogic challenges
confronting the education of tribals and
also the insensitivity of non-tribal teach-
ers towards children from such groups.
The textbooks developed by NCERT
post-NCF 2005, make a sincere attempt
to meaningfully represent the lives and
knowledge systems of communities that
are marginalised and that rarely ever
find a place in textbooks. Efforts are also
being made to present a nuanced under-
standing of the actual lives that people
lead and challenges they face. A variety
of pedagogic aids like illustrations, nar-
ratives, storyboards, cartoons, posters,
pictures, songs, poems and biographies,
etc, are being used to help children
make sense of the world that they live in.
Reflective in-text and end text questions
and exercises do not expect students to
locate and reproduce information but
encourage them to sensitively and criti-
cally reflect on several issues and ideas
presented in these textbooks.
COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW June 14, 2014 vol xlIX no 24
21
The Social and Political Life (SPL)
textbook, NCERT 2006 of Class 6 has
chapters on “Understanding Diversity”
and “Diversity and Discrimination”
whose objective is to enable children to
understand and appreciate diversity in
its various manifestations. Rather than
shying away from discussing prejudices
and other contentious issues in society,
they acknowledge their presence and
support children to deal with them. Sim-
ilarly, the textbook for Class 8 has two
chapters on “Understanding and Con-
fronting Marginalisation”. These books
distinguish between the idea of formal
equality and that of substantive equality
and stress the need to move towards the
latter. While the Classes 6 and 7 text-
books examine the connections between
discrimination and inequality through
the childhood experiences of B R
Ambedkar and Om Prakash Valmiki,
these chapters look more closely at ways
in which inequality affects different
groups and communities by introducing
the concept of marginalisation or exclu-
sion from the mainstream and by focus-
ing on dalits, adivasis and Muslims.
Similarly, in the history textbook for
Class 7, NCERT 2007, a chapter on
“Tribes, Nomads and Settled Communi-
ties”, shows the complexities of different
caste-based and tribal-based societies
and the relationship of conflict and de-
pendence between them, which affects
them both. There is also a mention of a
north-eastern tribe, albeit not adequate,
in this chapter. Likewise, a chapter on
“Foods We Eat” in the EVS textbook for
Class 3, NCERT 2006 gives a sense of the
variety of foods that children living in
different parts of India may eat – banana
and drumstick flowers, crab, rat, lotus
stem, red ants, besides rice and wheat.
Most textbooks present the social and
political lives of people in a rather sim-
plistic, uncomplicated and uniform
manner, and do not substantially ad-
dress the social diversities or challenges
and conflicts confronting people. How-
ever, the new NCERT social science text-
books besides being pedagogically supe-
rior atte mpt to grapple with the real
lives of people and sensitise and help
children critically engage with issues of
diversity, inequality and discrimination.
Conclusions
While stereotypes and prejudices
against people like Nido Tania grow in
spaces outside schools as well and need
to be addressed at multiple levels,
schools shape childrens’ thinking in sig-
nificant ways. Illustrations from various
textbooks highlight ways in which text-
books are likely to affect their percep-
tions about others vis-à-vis themselves.
While “good” textbooks can facilitate a
nuan ced understanding of the social
world, a lot also depends on the compe-
tence and sensitivity of the teachers to
help children in this process. Since
schools are the most important institu-
tions for imparting formal education in
modern societies and textbooks play a
critical part in performing this role, it is
essential that textbooks prescribed and
used in schools are sensitively written
and critically examined, so that they do
not perpetuate “symbolic violence”
against any member of the society.
References
Ministry of Human Resource Development
(MHRD) (1993): Learning without Burden: Re-
port of the National Advisory Commission,
Government of India, New Delhi.
Position Paper on “National Focus Group on Prob-
lems of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe
Children”, (2005), NCERT, New Delhi.
PROBE (1999): Public Report on Basic Education in
India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).