Former education minister B K Chandrashekar has opposed Primary and Secondary Education Minister S R Srinivas’ plan to have NCERT textbooks translated and prescribed for schoolchildren in the state.
In a statement, Chandrashekar called it a “discouraging” decision.
“Is the department convinced that the NCERT textbooks are superior to ours? If so, it should publicise the matter,” he said.
The decision to prescribe translated books for our schools is wholly objectionable, Chandrashekar said, given ‘Karnataka’s history, its colourful pluralist culture and the state’s flora and fauna’.
The senior Congress leader reminded Srinivas that education was on the concurrent list of the Constitution, which meant that the state was free to design its own policies.
“While one doesn’t want the state to ‘defy’ anything and everything that is truly in the national interest (as perceived by the states as well), green flagging everything that ‘comes down’ from the Centre might do a disservice to the legitimate pride of self-governance of the state.”