Distribution of textbooks for free among the primary and secondary-level students has been an eagerly-awaited event for these learners across the country since 2010. The occasion is now one of the festivities that have been visiting school students every January for the last eight years. However, with the jovial atmosphere marred by some unwarranted developments involving the textbooks in 2017, the teachers, guardians and the civil society members brace for recurrence of the depressing scenario also in January next year. The most troubling thing that sparked much resentment and annoyance among the academics early this year was the changes brought to the contents of the books, especially to that of Bangla literature. The textbooks for child and teenage students in 2017 were mostly shabbily edited and produced; it added to the raging controversy over the changes made in the list of writing pieces and the authors.
The free distribution of books, among pre-primary students, which began on a limited scale in 1981, was given a formal and countrywide shape in 2010. In spite of the printing shortcomings and irregularities in the distribution of books, the event finally emerged as a virtual festival.
To the great confusion of students and bafflement of the teachers and guardians, the whole scheme was threatened to get spoiled last year. The teachers and academics were startled to find a raft of mindless changes in the contents of Bangla textbooks for that year. The poems and prose pieces of certain writers were removed. They were replaced by new entries. The act was interpreted as a result of alleged dictates coming from mysterious sources, the objective being an overhaul of the textbooks' content. Apart from this assault on the books, scores of others have detracted a lot from their age-old elegance and importance inherent with these tools of school education. Those included printing errors, sub-standard drawing, sloppy binding and low-quality paper. The decline in the production quality of textbooks has begun afflicting students for a little over a decade. It came to be compounded by a number of malpractices. Those included underhand dealings in the printing job and the clandestine sale of 'free textbooks' on black market.
The 2017 detection of the publication maladies plaguing the textbooks and the abrupt changes brought to the list of writers sparked, quite naturally, a great outcry. The fallout of the catastrophic bungling is yet to be comprehended and dealt with effectively. Media reports have it that the coming year's new books are set to reach the students with only a few corrections. The changed list of the authors and their pieces are reportedly still in place.
Had there been no protests, the distribution of the books, appallingly unedited and re-edited mindlessly, would have passed off as part of normal routine. Few would have been capable of mustering the moral strength to denounce the abrupt fall in the overall standard of the books. Printing mistakes, and, for that matter, weakly done illustrations accompanying the texts are faults viewed as unconscionable to any nation having a semblance of scruple and propriety in place. That any other quarters other than the authorities concerned can play a role in the making of textbooks' contents defies logic.
The school textbooks in the 1950s carried the rich legacy of those used by the students in the previous times. The liberal policy of the Bengalee academics in the British-India did never lack the generosity required for making the textbooks a true source of knowledge, creativity and enlightening thoughts. That the topics of these books could spark parochially-skewed discomfort had never occurred to them. The entries of textbooks used to be chosen following series of discussions on their impacts on the child and teenage minds. As a result, once the subjects of a textbook of Bangla, English or history were compiled, they continued to be in place for years. In spite of the time being the British colonial era, the textbook writers and editors took extra care in selecting the subjects. They would ensure that no community felt hurt by any content dealt with in a certain book. In the British period, post-publication demands by a third party, or a social component, for exclusion or inclusion of a writing piece or an author had little room; for the education system in the sub-continent was based on strict British discipline.
Except the stress laid on English as the medium of instruction for various curricular subjects, barring Bangla literature, the students in the greater Bengal have hardly had any unease with their books. There were few grievances by any quarters. Even after the partition of the sub-continent in 1947, school textbooks in the then East Pakistan maintained the British tradition of keeping a balanced focus on the otherwise sensitive subjects. Except the entries on the considerations of Pakistani nationhood and national interest, the general curricular sections reflected a broad-based inclusion of the subjects. This tradition had been kept almost fully alive for a decade after the independence of Bangladesh. The rot began insidiously from the tenures of the post-1975 governments. The saner segments in society have already started bracing for worse times.
If not checked on time, the textbook tampering is set to deal further blows to school education leading to the emergence of boys and girls with stunted intellectual growth. Few nations are prepared to groom morally, and culturally, bankrupt generations one after another comprising, in the words of T.S. Eliot, hollow men. One might shudder at the mere thought of a generation produced by distorted lessons at school. The nation looks to the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) for steps to clear the haze having potential to get thicker.
shihabskr@ymail.com