Assam School Textbook Goes Red With Errors

A page from the computer textbook marked with mistakes. Telegraph picture

Guwahati, Dec 29 : How many spelling mistakes can you expect in a school textbook supposedly prepared by a body of experts and released to the students after several rounds of revision?

If you go through a computer textbook, provided under the Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme and being read by thousands of students in the government schools of Assam, you will find an average of six to 12 mistakes on a page.

These books, written in Assamese and distributed to students from Classes V to XII, have been prepared by NIIT, a well-known institute of the country.

Thousands of students have been reading these books since 2004, the year the programme was introduced in the state.

The errors include misspelt words, missing symbol and letters, wrongly and unnecessarily placed symbols and strange words and phrases inserted in sentences.

For example, instead of the symbol used for the vowel “o”, one will find recurrent use of the symbol meant for “hraswa u”. Again, instead of the letter “mudhoinnya ta” one will find “kha”. The textbooks are a storehouse of hundreds of misspelt words. Incorrectly used personal pronouns make some sentences extremely funny.

The All Assam Computer Teachers’ Association (AACTA), which brought the problem to light this afternoon, has appealed to organisations like the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad (AJYCP) and the Asom Sahitya Sabha to take steps against such “distortion of the Assamese language”.

The association alleged that the state education department was turning a blind to this “extremely important aspect” and by distributing these books among the students the state government would ruin their future.

“The misspelt translations of computer technical terms confuse the students. They often cannot make out the head or tail of the sentences,” a teacher, who is a member of the association, said.

The association said Dispur’s entire effort to impart computer education to students had become practically useless because of mismanagement, lack of infrastructure and negligence.

It also alleged “misutilisation” and “siphoning” of money sanctioned by the Centre for the project.

“The Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme has failed to serve the students properly as the state government has entrusted profit-oriented private companies to implement the task. Instead of concentrating on providing proper education, these companies are only concerned with churning out maximum profit,” the association’s general secretary, Hiranya Kumar Bora, said.

He said neither were the computer textbooks distributed on time this year not could the examinations be conducted on time because of numerous problems.

“Moreover, as the supply of electricity remains disrupted for days in most of the rural areas, we cannot teach the students,” he added.

Bora said the 3,500 teachers appointed under the Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme would start a statewide agitation from January 1 to press for removal of these problems.