Focusing more on local and national leaders, the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE) is all set to overhaul English textbooks for Class I to XII with the next academic session, by replacing chapters and poems written by foreign authors with Indian writers.
Among the many changes in textbooks, a chapter on iconic leader Nelson Mandela will be replaced with a long chapter on ‘Tribals in Rajasthan.’ The poems of William Wordsworth will also be omitted.
However, British author Rudyard Kipling, is among the few lucky whose work will get a place in the revised textbooks.
According to sources, the new guidelines are based on Rajasthan education minister Vasudev Devnani’s concept of ‘local to global’, which has been conveyed to textbook re-writing committee formed by him.
The rewriting of textbooks will be done at two levels: RBSE will do it for XI-XII classes, and State Institute of Educational Research and Training (SIERT) is handling it for classes I to VIII. There have to be two sets of English books for each class – extensive and intensive. The complete curriculum is segregated into four broad sections: comprehension, vocabulary, grammar and speech.
To finish the rewriting before November, the committee is working overtime so that 8 crore new books will be available in the market before March next year.
