Will Oxford honor the request?
BTW: My former Sikh student told me that only a few months ago he and his
entire family (incl father) has their turbans removed after their father
explained that mistrust against Sikhs ever since Hindu-Skih riots in 1984 when
his mother's uncle and aunt were burned in Delhi with car tires around their
necks --allegedely by Congress party workers after Indian Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi was shot dead by her Sikh body guards. P
Perhaps his father was afraid about 2 -3 Sikhs getting killed in US (as my
student told me - 12 yearold only) after Sep 11, 2001 attacks by Al-Queeda.
Umesh
Bowing to Sikhs Call, California Wants Textbook Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/us/10textbook.html
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: March 10, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, March 9 The picture on Page 95 of An Age of Voyages:
1350-1600, a seventh-grade history book used in California schools since last
fall, had been unremarkable to state education officials: a stiff 19th-century
portrait of a man with a trimmed beard holding a few beads and wearing a crown.
But for Sikhs, that image of Guru Nanak (1469-1538), their religions
founder, is anathema to everything they believe about the prophet, a simple man
who preached to the poor and certainly, they say, never wore a crown.
So, after months of lobbying by Sikhs, the California Board of Education
voted unanimously on Thursday to ask the books publisher to remove the
portrait from future printings, and to provide a sticker with another image or
text to place over the portrait in existing copies.
The image itself was offensive to the Sikh community, said Thomas Adams,
director of the Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources Division of
the State Education Department. And it wasnt defensible on the issue of
accuracy, because it is from a later period than the one in which Guru Nanak
lived.
Sikhs, who trace their religion to the late-15th-century Punjab region of
what are now Pakistan and India, number some 24 million around the world and
about 500,000 in the United States, says the Sikh American Legal Defense and
Education Fund, based in Washington. According to Kavneet Singh, the funds
Western regional director, 75,000 to 100,000 live in California, though some
estimates put the number at twice that. Many arrived in the United States in
two waves, immigrating either as laborers during the early 20th century or as
skilled professionals since World War II.
Sikhs in California had pushed to have the picture removed from the text ever
since the book first arrived in schools at the start of the academic year.
Gurcharan Singh Mann, a Sikh who lives in Fremont and who was active in the
effort, said that in addition to the crown, the trim of Guru Nanaks beard was
in the style of a Muslim or a Hindu rather than a Sikh.
It is not a suitable picture, Mr. Singh Mann said. Every Sikh at their
home has a picture of Guru Nanak, and it looks like the modern dress of the
Sikh, of the 21st century, with a turban and a fully grown beard.
The books publisher, Oxford University Press, did not return a call for
comment. But education officials and other publishing houses said the episode
was just the latest example of a textbook change prompted by concerns about
giving offense to various racial, ethnic or religious groups.
Californias school board has a public and often lengthy process of
reviewing textbooks before they are made available for purchase by individual
school districts. Last year, for example, the board took comments from a
variety of groups, including representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Hindu
religions, each looking for changes to a proposed social sciences curriculum.
The textbooks were approved last March, but only after the board had given
publishers a 126-page list of suggested tweaks, trims and fixes.
This has always been the story of the California adoption process, Mr.
Adams said. It is intended for the public to participate. Its not intended
for a bureaucrat like myself to sit behind a desk and do it comfortably.
But publishers say that with the rise in cultural sensitivity and in new
educational standards, including those from federal programs like No Child Left
Behind, the cost and time consumed in making schoolbooks have also increased.
We jump through a lot of hoops, and a great deal of money is spent in terms
of developing materials, said Jay Diskey, executive director of the school
division of the Association of American Publishers. And theres a very strong
correlation, particularly in California, that the new standards do indeed lead
to more pages and lead to more costs.
Still, publishers usually make the changes, if only because of Californias
size and buying power. The schoolbook market in the United States is roughly
$4.2 billion, Mr. Diskey said, and California schools are the nations No. 1
purchaser: the state government allocated $403 million for schoolbooks in 2006,
Mr. Adams said, not counting federal money or lottery revenue.
It is not just ethnic or religious groups that lobby over the issue, either.
Last year the California Legislature approved a bill forbidding any negative
portrayal of lesbians and gay men in textbooks, though it was vetoed in
September by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the ground that existing
antidiscrimination law was sufficient to address the matter.
Mr. Singh Mann said the depiction of Guru Nanak was important not only for
historical reasons but also to help keep students from confusing Sikhs with
other ethnic groups. He said that several Sikhs were assaulted after the
attacks of Sept. 11 and that some non-Sikh students still treated Sikhs with
suspicion or worse.
Youre in the school and some kids have a turban, theyll be called Osama
bin Laden, Mr. Singh Mann said. And the kids want to drop out the school. We
dont want to be a burden on the country, but if a kid drops out, it is a
problem.
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Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park,
(Washington D.C. Metro Region)
MD 20740
1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
website: www.gse.harvard.edu/iep
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