Our Primary Level Text books and Social Constructs about Gender

Abstract

Text books are not only an expression of the beliefs of the writers who are a part of a particular social milieu, but also a shaper of the belief system of the coming generations. A reading of the primary school text books of various publications, including NCERT, shows that they seem to be guided by many age old social constructs about gender. ‘Social construct’ is an idea that seems to be natural and so obvious that it is accepted unquestionably, but, which in fact, may not represent reality, being actually an invention of a given society. In fact ‘gender’ itself is a social construct. Down the years, gender sensitivity as regards the text books has been limited to an increase in pictorial content depicting women and gender role reversals, but has not questioned the traditional gender power structure.