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Government schools in Kerala welcome new gender-neutral curriculum
The new revised textbooks for government and aided schools in Kerala have been welcomed by both teachers and students alike for promoting gender equality and challenging patriarchal norms in its curriculum.
The new revised textbooks for government and aided schools in Kerala have been welcomed by both teachers and students alike for promoting gender equality and challenging patriarchal norms in its curriculum.
The Class 3 Malayalam textbook, revised by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), for example, has an insightful lesson on household chores. One such image as part of the lesson shows a scene inside a kitchen at a home where a man can be seen grating coconut, while a woman is beside the stove. The image subtly seeks to challenge patriarchal settings in which women are often seen as taking care of kitchen chores.
Another example is the Class 3 English textbook in which an image portrays a father preparing snacks for his daughter in the kitchen, and exhorting her to take some of it to school.
Christy Prakasia, who teaches Malayalam for primary class students at a government school in Binanipuram in Ernakulam district, said, “It’s certainly a refreshing change. When we teach such lessons in class, students themselves are saying that they see both parents dividing duties equally in the kitchen. They are realising that it’s a good thing.”
SCERT director RK Jayaprakash added that the decision to revise textbooks on a large scale was taken last year as it had been over a decade since changes were made.
“During the revision exercise, we had many focus groups on different subjects and one of them was on gender education. We decided that it was time to do a gender audit of existing textbooks. As part of the audit, we built a framework and we wanted to address the changes that have happened over the years in society. The idea was to present concepts going beyond gender differences,” said Jayaprakash.
“We have realised that pictures are an important learning aid as part of lessons in textbooks and students tend to imbibe a lot from them. That’s how we tried to bring in gender neutrality through pictures,” he added.
While state government revised textbooks of classes 1,3,5,7, and 9 last year, those of classes 2,4,6 and 8 will be done this year.
As part of the new changes, the Class 9 social science textbook, due to be delivered to students by October this year, will have an entire lesson dedicated to gender justice by including the verdicts of the Kerala high court and the Supreme Court, said Jayaprakash.
“Gender lessons are now part of the curriculum objective. Overall, we are happy that people have positively reacted to it. We will spend the rest of the year taking feedback from teachers too,” he said.
