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Kolkata: A school education syllabus committee,
appointed by the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government, has
decided to trim heady doses of Marxism and include globalisation,
movement of former South African president Nelson Mandela and
contemporary women's movement in the new history syllabus for
Higher Secondary students.
The committee, constituted after the Trinamool Congress came to
power in May last year, will submit its recommendations to the
government next week.
"We have decided to restructure the history syllabus for the
students of Classes XI and XII. If one goes through the present
history text books, she or he would feel there are only three
countries in the world - India, England and Soviet Russia. But we
have decided to present an unbiased and pluralistic history to the
students," Avik Majumdar, head of the syllabus review committee,
told IANS Friday.
"Thus in the recommendations, we have suggested to include
movements of Latin America, history of Africa, Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka," Majumdar said.
He said the committee has tried to draft a new balanced syllabus
of history, by cutting out excesses on Marxism, which had been
there in the old syllabus, and including globalisation, Mandela
and even the women's movement.
"Marxism will be there in the books where it has relevance," he
clarified.
Some political observers and educationists had time and again
raised the issue that history books during the erstwhile Left
Front government were 'overloaded' with Marx, Engels and Bolshevik
revolution.
"Text books are not a tool to brainwash students with a particular
political ideology," Majumdar, also a professor of comparative
literature at Jadavpur University, averred.
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