The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has asked all schools affiliated to it to use only NCERT books from the academic session 2017-18.
The decision has been taken after recent reports of an eccentric experiment. A Class IV textbook asked students to suffocate a cat to death to understand the difference between living and non-living things. The book which is part of the curriculum of a Delhi school states "living things need air to breathe and non-living things can live without air for a few minutes." And then it asks the students to put two cats in two different boxes for the experiment.
The CBSE has now asked all its schools to follow only NCERT curriculum, both for textbooks and workbooks. The board has also asked NCERT to print adequate books before the commencement of the upcoming academic session.
Schools that are affiliated to CBSE and follow NCERT books, also use some books by private publisher, mostly for work-books and experiments. With this instruction, the practice is likely to go away from the new session, sources said.
"NCERT will be printing and supplying adequate quantity of NCERT textbooks for all classes from I to XII through its empaneled vendors and distributors," a circular sent by CBSE to all its affiliated schools read.
A link has also been created on the CBSE website where schools can fill up their demand of books.
"A review meeting was held recently with senior officials in the Ministry of HRD, and it was decided that all schools should follow NCERT curriculum as it will give uniformity to the syllabus taught in schools. Private publishers generally do not follow the guidelines while designing their syllabus, and hence instances like the recent cat-killing experiment surface," said a senior official in NCERT.
"The other thing that NCERT follows is involving various authors in designing the curriculum, unlike private publishers that mostly have just one or two authors for a book. Having multiple authors gives a varied perspective, specially when it comes to experiments," he added.
Cases of unusual examples from history and different interpretation of an issue have been a regular thing in the textbooks in India. A Sociology textbook in Maharashtra State Board teaches students that ugliness is the reason girls have to pay more dowry.
