A Textbook Case

In school, back in 1980s, just the name was enough. When a teacher, with a grim face, would shout at us that next year we were appearing in Board exams, all class would fall silent, and the dread followed us to our homes. This Board-Exam sounded like a Day-of-Judgement. Then roll number slips issued, examination centres allocated, exam papers on our desk, evaluation process, long wait thereof, and finally – Dapaan Gazette Chu Dramut, Board results are out.

People would rush to the bookseller’s shop in the town. As they shouted roll numbers, digits flew in air like dust billowing from an old carpet. In this thick cloud of roll numbers, some would stretch arms over the shoulders and heads of others to handover a slip to the man holding the gazette - Hay yeth vuch te kya chu. What is the result for this roll number, my son’s. Then the son was either caned or garlanded.

That was a time when the J&K State Board of School Education was ‘Boad’ to us, and this one-word carried a mystique of its own. Who knew the Board was actually a blackboard and it was for the State to write on it what the state wanted to write. It is only in the advanced years people realise that the mystique lies in the State, not the Board.

The State has again spoken through the Board, and people can only listen, and obey. Yours frightfully; sorry, faithfully is the prescribed word. The J&K Board of School Education has issued a decree that the already standardised curriculum, in the form of syllabus, would now be taught in all the schools in J&K – Private and Government – through a uniform set of books published by the Board itself. Earlier the choice was with the schools, at least upto the 7^th class.

Should our children bank exclusively on the Board prescribed and published textbooks, or look beyond, the answer is no difficult to find. Just a look at any decent publisher’s textbook, and none would even look at the Board’s. Yes, prices are too high and that is where the government should actually strike.

Like regulating the fee of Private schools, it is not about education, it is more about control. When the psyche of power becomes a substitute for decision making, king becomes the law. When the examination session was changed from October to March, even the geography and climate was violated, leave aside the decades long practice of holding the exams in autumn. If power declares sky as earth, people walk on their heads. Power is always two dimensional, it flattens everything. The only argument that remains in this two dimensional space is the power itself.

Power has many attributes, it is not just brute. It’s clever too. By accusing private school owners and the publishers of a nexus, it wants to have all the parents to its side. Do all private schools and all publishers make money by overpricing text books? Let’s take the accusation as true. But does that mean we will compromise on the standards of education. If tomorrow, essential food items are way too overpriced, shall the government ban sale of all food items, unless from its own farm? Then the government has a more blatant case of exploitation in the form of private hospitals. Why not declare a uniform protocol-and-pricing for all private hospitals? This debate over Private and Public, State and Individual is not so simple as it might be made to sound by making emotional defences. The extremes on both the ends are exploitative. If a market driven economy and a capitalistic private sector can exploit, nationalisation of everything is the most appalling of things under the sun.

Private schools and private publishers cannot be allowed to exploit people. The government must put in place a mechanism to stabilise rates. The best way could have been to publish the best of text books, at the most competitive prices. But that needs a certain degree of commitment towards quality, and care for people.

One doesn’t know in the ensuing tussle, who wins. But the micromanagement of private schools, and shrinking the space for low and mid cap private schools, is now a given. How ugly a scene where a ZEO or a CEO is inspecting a school, checking students’ bags for any ‘objectionable textbooks’. A textbook from Pearson, from Oxford, from Macmillan, from Cambridge, from Ratna Sagar or from Cordova is like a cache of arms, or a consignment of drugs. And ‘our’ officers, at all rungs, are so efficient to sniff the ‘objectionable’. Sir!

What will happen in the end? Parents will buy two sets of books. One from J&K Board, another from some private publisher. One for the Caesar, another for the child. Eventually, parents will have to spend an extra buck.

Thank you private school owners for always focusing on how to make an extra penny, and compromising your dignity. Thank you publishers for relying on the power of penny. Thank you J&K Board for resorting to clumsy in the name of ending exploitation.

Tailpiece: Dear parents, and dearest children, leave textbooks for a while, and take this passage from a sacred book.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.