A class 4 environmental textbook used in some reputed Delhi school asks students to kill a kitten as part of an experiment! The textbook titled ‘Our Green World: Environment Studies’, published by PP Publications, has a lesson in which the children are instructed to kill a kitten as part of an experiment to tell the difference between living and non-living beings.
On Feb 2, 2017, a Twitter user @Priya_Menon put out photographs of the textbook. The experiment as printed in the book is: "Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on lid of one box. Put a small kitten in each box. Close the boxes. After some time open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten inside the box without the holes has died.”
There are even picture illustrations on the next page of the book, showing the two kittens, one alive in a box with holes and another seemingly dead in a completely sealed box.
The tweet set off a social media storm around the lack of scrutiny of curriculum taught to our children, and, according to an update by @Priya-Menon, Union Minister for Women and Children Maneka Gandhi, who is also an animal activist, was notified about the textbook.
Later, on the same Facebook thread, an update was posted which leads to a letter from P P Publications, the publishing house that printed the book. In the letter addressed to Federation of Indian Animals Protection Organisation (FIAPO), the publishers have assured that the textbook would be withdrawn from distributors and that that they would be more careful and serious regarding similar issues in the future.
Here is PP publications' letter
The website and phone numbers of the publication as listed in the letter are unreachable.
A check on Amazon.com for the said book turned up the environmental science textbook 'Our Green World" authored by K V Vincent for PP Publications.
On further search for the author's name in academic circles, it has been found that a person of the name K V Vincent is the principal of Huddard High School, Kanpur. However, it could not be verified whether the principal of Huddard School was the author of the controversial textbook. There was no response on calls to the phone numbers listed on the website of the school.