Textbooks and forces control them.

The textbooks provided to our schools are largely influenced by several factors. Sometimes it is very visible and sometimes it is not. The history which has been taught in our schools is under debate all the time whether it is saying only some biased information about our freedom struggle or not. I just mentioned it to show that the control over the textbooks may be there from the beginning of our school system due to political, religious, economic and cultural issues. And it is related to the power structure and the interests of the people who are holding these powers. Michael. W. Apple talks about this in ‘Cultural politics and the text’. He talks about the political pressures in US in implementing textbooks and the ‘knowledge’ which had been available to public for studies. If we look in to textbooks in our country we can see the struggle between different forces. The force of economy is comparatively less in India in the sense that school textbooks are mostly in the hands of Government only. So the influence by corporate publishers can be said to be minimal. In Kerala few years back the CPI (M) led government introduced a chapter in social studies which talks about the possibility of living in our country without having a religion. As soon as the textbook was released all the religious communities started protests against government to withdraw that chapter. Due to the mass protests and all the pressure, the government had to withdraw that particular chapter of the textbook. In this incident the ruling party tried to give the knowledge to younger generation which may turn to be good for the party and the religious communities protested it since it may trouble its existence in the future. So these power games play really influential role in our education systems and the knowledge provided is so much neutral rather than imparting critical thinking in the minds of children for a better civilized community. The education system and the power structure pose lots of questions to us, let’s try to get answers.