Nepali school textbooks are of horrendously poor quality. To the authors and the private textbook publishing houses, the business appears to all be about profit and NOT about REAL education.
I found a grade 3 textbook which had a stimulus about a man who had two wives. Polygamy is illegal! My little nephew’s grade 1 computer studies textbook still had sections on floppy disks, something my nephew has probably never seen and will likely never see. And yet, the inside front cover of the book says it was revised and updated in 2016! But “Revised and Updated” does not actually mean that.
A grade 5 science textbook I looked at was just so way beyond what would be appropriate for that age group that, instead of it being a resource for the children, I think it would actually hinder the learning of 10-year olds that use it! A grade 8 social studies textbook, I discovered, has but just a single sentence entry on the Caste System, declaring it (and religion) to be “small issues.”
The English in pretty much every single book I have looked at was pretty pathetic too.
This one comes from a grade 9 textbook and it’s about marriage. The unit within which you can find the topic of marriage is titled “Family Life Education and Quality of Life.” Have a read of the “Learning Objective [sic]” and try not to get mortified!
As for love marriage…the book declares (see image below), “The marriage performed [(!)] by the boy [(!)] and girl without the consent of their guardian is called love marriage. This type of marriage is common at present.” 😂 😂
According to the 2011 census report, 3 out of 4 married women had been married (off) before they had turned 20. In the case of the females getting married, in Nepal, most indeed are girls and NOT women! As for the males, only 42% were below 20. So, technically, a male getting married, is not always a boy! 😀 😀
Check out the ”Difference Between Arrange Marriage [sic] and Love Marriage”, especially the ones within the red rectangle!
To reiterate, this does NOT happen to be an exceptionally poor quality textbook.
Anyway, my suggestion has been to completely do away with textbooks in Nepal. To NOT use them at all because they actually are responsible for binding the hands of the teachers and failing the students on a number of different fronts!
What do you think?
