A school curriculum steering committee meeting on Tuesday decided to prepare supplementary textbooks for Plus One and Plus Two higher secondary subjects for which the State uses the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks.
The NCERT had recently deleted portions related to history of Mughal courts, references to communal riots in Gujarat in 2002, Hindutva extremists’ dislike for Mahatma Gandhi, Naxalite movement, Industrial Revolution, the Cold War, and so on, from its textbooks.
‘Distorting history’
The State government had opposed the NCERT move to drop certain portions, particularly in History, Political Science, Sociology, and Economics, in the name of rationalisation of syllabus. Tuesday’s meeting reiterated the State’s opposition to what it termed attempts by the Union government to distort history.
Since the State government could not use the new NCERT textbooks in the wake of its position on issue nor could it reproduce the old textbooks without running into copyright issues, it was decided that supplementary textbooks covering the deleted topics would be brought out by roping in subject experts.
A final decision will be taken after Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty holds talks with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Timeline for textbooks
The meeting approved the schedule for preparation of textbooks as part of the curriculum revision. The first phase of textbook writing will be completed by the end of August this year. Workshops for this will begin soon. The new textbooks for Classes 1,3,5,7 and 9 will be introduced in the 2024-25 academic year.
It was also decided to revise the textbooks prepared by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) for Plus One and Plus Two. Though no timeframe has been set, the process for textbook revision for language subjects such as English, Malayalam, Hindi, and Sanskrit; others subjects such as Computer Science; Commerce, Electronics, etc, will begin soon. The SCERT prepares nearly 80 titles for Plus One and Plus Two. It has been nearly a decade since these textbooks have been revised.
