When Textbooks Leave Out International Literature, Students Are Robbed of A Window to A Larger World
5 July 2024 | The Indian Express
There is a Robert Frost poem that students of a particular vintage would be familiar with: “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence:/ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — / I took the one less travelled by,/ And that has made all the difference.” One of the joys of literature is to lead the reader to the unexpected thrills of this unfamiliar road: A writer one has never heard of; a world view that shocks; a piece of writing so achingly beautiful that one does not want it to end. It leads one to a world beyond the familiar and the comfortable, turning readers into seekers. In its newly revamped English textbook for Class VI, Poorvi, developed in line with the New Education Policy 2020’s call for a curriculum “rooted in the Indian and local context and ethos”, the NCERT has sought to locate this universe in India’s diversity. The poems, essays and stories it now features are by some of India’s best-known writers, including S I Farooqi, Sudha Murty and others. It offers students a glimpse of the heterogeneity that exists in the country. But in leaving out international writers largely, it does young people a disservice — it robs them of a window to a wider world…