Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

We have to acquire a deeper understanding of the total cost of modern life in the context
of a finite planet. Every benefit and convenience has hidden effects that we inflict on the
environment. Children need to learn their lessons from first hand experience at slaughterhouses,
farms, factories, water sources, hydroelectric and nuclear power plants, sewage
treatment facilities, garbage dumps, pulp mills, logging and reforestation areas, mining
sites, et cetera. Even in the largest urban centres, we are still interconnected and dependent
on our surroundings far beyond city limits.
(Reading and Literature, English Class 8 (2007), p. 99)
Below is another example of a textbook passage relating to economic
sustainability and awareness of the impact of globalization on the economic and
social life of a farming community:
Despite cries from farmers to increase protection from cheap imported food in their market,
some politicians are even considering joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
If they do not remove all barriers to outside investment and trade, the WTO will lock them
into binding trade liberalization rules and impose sanctions on their fledging industries.
Bhutan is at a cross road. Either it signs up to the WTO rules that will give foreign multinationals
and investors rights over their laws in trade, resources and services or it continues
to protect small local producers and rural economies from the vagaries of the global
economy.
(Reading and Literature, English Class VIII (2007), p. 58)
An example from the Bhutan Class VIII Geography textbook of a discussion of the
situation of indigenous people is also illuminating:
The Lakhaps, who are able to live at altitudes of between 3000m and 3500m, grow buck
wheat and barley in summer. These crops can be cultivated in cold places where there is
scanty rainfall. People use animal waste mixed with leaves as manure. Yaks and sheep give
some additional income as these animals thrive in cold conditions. The population in these
areas is very sparse. There are relatively few Lhakhaps, as conditions here do not support
a larger population.
(A Geography of Bhutan, Our Man-made Environment,
Course Book for Class VIII, p. 15)
As textbooks from Nepal could not be examined for the present study, we cannot
say whether the lack of integration of sustainable development concepts noticed
in policy documents there extends to textbooks. However, Bhutanese textbooks
appear exceptional in terms of the extent to which they encourage critical
engagement with sustainable development issues. The same can be said of the
effort to revamp curriculum and textbooks made by India’s apex curriculum body,
the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) from the
mid-2000s. As will be elaborated in the next section of this chapter, the ‘national’
and the ‘state’ or provincial pictures in India remain very different matters, so
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Chapter 5: South Asia