“There is a vast difference in the shape of males and females, 36”, 24”, 36” shape of females is considered the best. That is why in Miss World or Miss Universe competitions such type of shapes is also taken into consideration.” This is the knowledge imparted to a class 12 school through his or her Physical Education textbook.
The textbook, authored by Dr VK Sharma goes on to explain how “due to shape of females, they are not able to run properly.” Why physical education is at all taught using a textbook, rather than involvement in sports is another question altogether.
Gender stereotyping is not just restricted to describing the physical attributes of the female as seen in the physical education textbook, hold on till you read page 131 of the Economics textbook prescribed for Class 9 (Goel 2017). Under the topic ‘Social Discrimination against Women’, the author states: “As women earn more money – as has been repeatedly shown – they spend it on the further education and health of the children, as opposed to men, who often spend it on drink, tobacco or other women”.
This is not the first time schools under CBSE have come under public scrutiny for ‘educating’ students with irrelevant and offensive content. About two months ago, a Class IV book for Environmental Studies in Delhi titled “Our Green World” went viral on social media for prescribing an experiment to illustrate that living beings need oxygen to survive. Authored by K V Vincent and published by PP Publications, it asked the students to put a kitten in a box without holes and observe that the animal would have died.
Read full story here.
In February 2017, a class 12 sociology textbook published by Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education became a talking point because despite having six authors, writing and editing it, it printed the following sentence: “If a girl is ugly and handicapped, then it becomes very difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls, bridegroom and his family demand more dowry. Parents of such girls become helpless and pay dowry as per the demands of bridegroom family”.
This explanation of “ugliness” and “dowry” on page 78 of the textbook just goes to show how poorly scrutinised the content of school textbooks are.
A Scroll.in report revealed that this aspect was not the only thing flawed about the content of the Sociology textbook. The article picked up several random paragraphs from the same text book that make one wonder what the authors understand about sociology and whether they were qualified to author books to teach the subject at all.
Here are a few highlights :
“[M]any people, especially the rural and tribal people do not have sufficient means of recreational facilities. Their only form of enjoyment is indulging in sexual activity, without even considering its outcomes. If these people are provided with certain recreational facilities, then the number of births would definitely come down.”
“[I]f wife is also more ambitious, she concentrates on her career and attempts to get promotion. She becomes somewhat negligent about her home and so her husband expresses his anger. Children are somehow neglected if both husband and wife are in service and as a result children can become deviant. For that they both blame each other. Many of the working women are not in a position to take care of their husbands or even some of them are not willing to take care of in-laws. As a result husband becomes angry”