More biographies to crowd Telangana, Andhra Pradesh textbooks

Hyderabad: Taking after the practice of installing statues of important personalities, the demand for inclusion of biographies of more important personalities in the school curriculum is only increasing.

As it is, SSC Board students will be reading the life stories of 70 personalities from Class I to X in Telugu, English, Hindi and Social Studies. Political leaders want more.

Interestingly there are more number of biographies in Telangana state textbooks than in AP. This is due to the recent inclusion of TS icons who were allegedly ignored in undivided AP.

Experts say that while certain demands like inclusion of biographies of prominent personalities are legit, some of the demands are due to political reasons or based on caste and community-based prejudices. The State Council of Educational Research and Training, the authority that makes the state’s curriculum bases it largely on the national curriculum.

Former MLC and educationist K.S. Lakshmana Rao said, “SCERT includes the biographies of only those personalities who had worked towards the aims of the Constitution like promoting sovereignty and national integrity and have strived towards protecting democracy and secular values. Those who have worked hard in the freedom struggle will be featured in the textbooks. However, there are certain identity movements in this century basically for caste, region and religion. The SCERT should be cautious about including personalities who were part of these identity struggles.”

The TS government has included the Dalit icon Bhagya Reddy Varma in the Class X Telugu textbook following Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s public announcement of the inclusion. The biography of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao has been included in the Class VIII Telugu text.

There are fresh demands for the inclusion of Daripalli Ramaiah a Padma award winner who planted millions of trees, Dalit icon  Eshwari Bai (mother of Congress ex-minister Geeta Reddy),Telangana freedom fighter Anabheri Prabhakar  and writer and Sahitya Akademi winner Sadasiva, have been made.

There was also a demand to include a lesson on the life of writer-poet C. Narayana Reddy, who died recently, in the textbooks.

TS SCERT director B. Seshu Kumari said, “States design the syllabus based on the core principles of the National Council of Educational Research and Training and are in sync with national curriculum fram-ework. Subjects like math, science can be common across the country. But languages and social studies will differ as we have to bring in local context and local culture. SCERT’s textbook committee and editorial board with experts on board decides whom to include after much deliberations. Nothing is done arbitrarily. The textbooks are vetted by a team of university professors and subject expert teachers.”

Some of the demands are politically sensitive too. In 2016 September, Telangana BJP leader Indrasena Reddy, while taking up a Tiranga yatra, demanded the inclusion of Hyderabad liberation in the school curriculum and it was incorporated. Congress leader Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy has been demanding inclusion of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s biography in the TS school curriculum for long now. He said Chief Minister K. Chandra-sekhar Rao had agreed to the inclusion.

Apart from biographies, there could well be some more significant changes in the near future. In AP, the SCERT has developed the State Curriculum Framework in 2011 and Position Papers in tune with the National Curriculum Framework of 2005 and the Right to Education Act.

The Sports Authority of Andhra Pradesh (SAAP) has been asking the AP government to make physical education as part of school syllabus wherein students are required to pass the examination like any other subject. AP government was also intending to include Kuchipudi dance in school syllabus like a regular subject.

Prof M. V. Rajya Lakshmi, director of AP SCERT, said, “We haven’t revised the syllabus as yet but we are planning to do so next year. We have done some modifications after the re-organisation of the state, to highlight some AP features. When we revise the syllabus we will call for proposals and invite references from the public. There is nothing wrong in incorporating the biographies of Andhra personalities.”