M M Jasim :
The Ministry of Education Ministry and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education are in embarrassing situation for the mistakes in this year’s textbooks.
The Ministries have also lost their previous reputation as the new textbooks have not been reached a good number of students across the country.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education on Tuesday made two officials OSD ‘officer on special duty’ of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) after facing fire over errors in the textbooks.
Chief Editor Pritish Kumar Sarkar and senior expert Lana Humaira Khan of the NCTB were put on OSD based on the findings of a primary investigation, said Subodh Chandra Dhali, Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Education.
Since the beginning of the year, dissatisfactions over the content and mistakes of textbooks printed by NCTB are being expressed in social media.
After the textbook festival day on January 1, one after another ‘evidence’ of NCTB’s intentional changes to original texts coupled with numerous spelling and printing mistakes started surfacing in the social media.
In Grade 1 textbook, a minor girl is seen saying, “O tey Orna Chai”, or I want a chest-scarf. The tendency behind choosing the word “Orna” for “O” has been termed as gender discriminatory in the social media.
On the other hand, in the Bangla textbook for grade 3, a very popular poem of 12 lines by Kusumkumari Das – “Adarsha Chele”, or the Exemplary Boy – appears in the textbook full of changed words and spelling mistakes. In a line, NCTB has supplanted half of the sentence with imaginary words.
In Hindu Religion and Moral Education textbook printed for the third grade, the NCTB printed “Do not heart anybody”, instead of “Do not hurt anybody”.
In these circumstances, the Ministry of Education called an emergency press briefing for today (Tuesday) at the Secretariat to make clear of the ministry’s stance.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid will admit the mistakes and declare action against the concerned authorities, the ministry officials said.
They said that the Education Ministry has been feeling embarrass since January 1.
The ministry also formed a three-member committee headed by NCTB member Professor Quazi Abul Kalam to investigate the matter. The committee has been asked to submit its report as early as possible.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education has asked for an explanation from NCTB for the numerous mistakes in this year’s textbooks.
Nazrul Islam Khan, Additional Secretary of the Ministry said, “The ministry has issued a show cause notice to NCTB in this regard. We have asked the NCTB to explain to us why there were numerous mistakes in textbooks they printed this year.”
The Ministry also asked NCTB to give detail information and reason for the printing mistakes.
