Author: Ashoke Dasgupta
Publication: Orgnaniser
Date: September 12, 2004
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=40&page=8
Introduction: The sense of national
belonging is being wiped out from the minds of young students and they
are kept ignorant even about the basics of their own country and people.
A recent survey shows that only
six lakh students manage to appear in the Secondary Examination in West
Bengal out of a crore students who enter primary education. The endemic
ills in education in the state are evident alongwith rural poverty, as
can be seen from this simple fact that 94 per cent students are forced
to opt out before reaching Class X.
It means 94 per cent students in
West Bengal have to live with the impressions gained in their early lives
when reading upto Class V, VI, VII or VIII. The government knows it and
in its efforts to indoctrinate the students with some ideas that may serve
their political interest, is following such a course in which the young
people who form the bulk of the population acquire hazy and fragmented
misinformation about history. As a result, the education of 'history' in
West Bengal is in great peril so far as the question of teaching 'history'
upto Class VIII and thereafter is concerned.
Students who happen to leave schools
before reaching Class IX or X, shall constitute the bulk of the next young
generation in the urban, particularly the rural society, and become the
political backbone of Marxist politics. This is the reason why such distorted
'history' is prescribed for students in the state's schools.
Let us see the 'history' textbooks
of Class VI, introduced in 1994 and continued till late 2004. The textbook
is published by the secretary, Madhya Sikhsa Parishad, Government of West
Bengal. Comprising 112 pages, the text includes:
1. Why do we read history? Annals
about ancient human civilisations-how do we come to know about them?
2. Man in ancient times, ancient
Stone Age, New Stone Age.
3. Copper-Bronze Age.
4. Civilisations: Mesopotamia,
Egypt, Babylonia, Sindhu, China and the special features of river-centric
civilisations.
Well, this is for Class VI. Upto
Class IV no 'history' is taught as evident from the curriculum. Teaching
of history in the nascent class is devoid of any history of India. The
student learns nothing about his own country in Class VI; instead he is
introduced to such terms, informations, language and facts which his young
intelligence and power of conception are unable to comprehend. This is
a planned scheme to keep the history of India out of the frontiers of knowledge
of our young generation.
Next to that, let us take a glimpse
at the 'history' textbooks of Class VII. It is a still more splendid work.
The textbook is cleverly contrived from a textbook taught earlier in sixth
grade, in USSR (when Russia was a communist state) and authored by E.V.
Agibalova and G.M. Donskoi (published by Publishing House, Moscow, 1965;
see Table).
The content list given here is in
abridged form. Each and every stage of these two books will clearly show
that the current texbook of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, prepared
and prescribed for Class VII is just a copy of the Russian textbook for
sixth standard during the communist regime. Why should the textbooks of
history for Classes VI to X follow the textbooks of erstwhile communist
Russia?
It is because the communists are
trying to indoctrinate students to their creed through propagation via
education. Wrong, concocted, mutilated, obsolete 'histories' are being
taught in West Bengal to enhance the views of the ruling power. Students
are not taught about their own state, own country, own people, own land.
The people and culture of India are wilfully and cleverly kept out of the
bounds of academic curriculum, rendering the young learners victims of
dull, unintelligible, incomprehensive textbooks.
The sense of national belonging
is being wiped out from the minds of young students and they are kept ignorant
even about the basics of their own country and people. In a state where
94 per cent students drop out from academic life after reading till Class
V to IX, what can they learn about their own state, country, society by
going through draconian 'history' books in use in West Bengal schools?
Rationality demands that such textbooks
be immediately banned, scrapped and new textbooks published giving correct
information to save the students of West Bengal from the onslaught of fundamentalism
of Marxist ideology.
(The author can be contacted at
59/B Kankulia Road, Kolkata-700 029.)
Contents of Russian book
1. Establishment of feudalism.
2. Establishment of the feudal
system in Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire.
3. Arabs in 6th-11th centuries.
4. Development of feudal system.
to Church.
5. The Christian Church in 11th-13th
centuries.
6. Formation of centralised States
in Western Europe.
7. China in the Middle Ages; feudal
age and system.
8. India in Middle Ages.
9. Feudal system, economic system.
Contents of Bengal textbook
1. Feudalism in modern Europe.
2. Eastern Roman Byzantine Empire,
Medieval Europe, Hun invasion.
3. Arabia, Islam and its impact.
4. Western Europe in medieval period
in relation
5. Fedualism in Medieval Europe,
Crusades.
6. Medieval China, feudal system.
7. India in the Middle Ages.
8. Towards the end of the Medieval
Age.
9. Decline of fedualism.
