-The Hindu The insights in the NCERT cartoon report can help to make the curriculum and the classroom more inclusive While the NCERT textbooks report has generated much heat, it has also shed positive light on the issue. It is time to reflect on this side of the debate and deal with the questions it raises. The committee’s mandate was to identify educationally inappropriate materials in textbooks and suggest alternatives, if necessary. The...

-The Times of India AJMER: Information under Right To Education Act from each school will now reveal which caste and Religion are deprived of qualitative education in the state. Thegovernment has asked every block to send information on 25% free admissions in private schools stating caste and Religion of the child. The elementary education department is now collecting information from every private school for implementing 25% seats to students of deprived and...

To replace ‘Dalit’ with ‘SC’, as the Thorat panel recommends, is to be inaccurate A commission led by S.K. Thorat, and charged with reviewing NCERT political science textbooks in the wake of the cartoon controversy, has singled out a specific word in the text for removal. All instances of the word “Dalit”, it is recommended, should be replaced with “Scheduled Caste” (SC). The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the motivation...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

-The Deccan Chronicle Following the age old practice of trying to circumvent the law, schools which did not enjoy a minority status, have begun vying for it to avoid admitting poor students under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Sensing trouble, the state government has come up with a strategy of its own to defeat them at their own game. Much to the horror of the institutions concerned, it announced after...