Accomplishments
Examining Indian Curriculum—Reading the Inferred Messages of Equivocation or Propounding of Cultural Divides.
- Abstract
Curriculum can be an instrument for the implementation of national ideologies but it can also turn into prominent sources of intra- societal conflicts in diverse societies. School textbooks can be understood an important form of cultural objects. The present paper explores the curriculum and examines how diversity is represented or treated in the Indian textbooks. The paper highlights the stance adopted by the curriculum in terms of either avoiding issues related to culture or in disguised way advocating certain cultural divides. Citing some instances from textbooks, the paper highlights that selected textbooks do not live up to the requirements in the policy documents. There is gross misinterpretation and distortions projected though the textbook and at many places the textbooks are tinted. The paper suggests that textbooks have to be crafted sensitively and should mirror the national culture of education. They have to be modelled as essential and complex instruments for building, constructing and reproducing it.