A private school in MP decided to ‘test’ children’s general knowledge in school by asking them to name the son of Bollywood actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. Thankfully, parents protested and this has now led to the education department issuing the school a show-cause notice.
The question figured in the current affairs section of the ‘General Knowledge’ part of Class 6 during the annual exams. In its question paper, Academic Heights Public School in Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa district asked the students to write the full name of the son of Bollywood actors couple (Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan).
The current affairs section of the test in part B carried as many as five questions, the first – Who was the first Grand Master of Chess in India? While the second question was — Write the full name of the son of Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan?
Three other questions on the same set are — Name the IAF Pilot whose fighter plane crashed in Pakistan? Which team won the IPL Cup in 2019? And the last question was – Who is the dictator of North Korea?
Question number 2 (Write the full name of the son of Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan?) did not go down well with parents who objected to it saying the school should have a better standard of questions on meaningful topics, rather than questions on family members of Bollywood actors.
Later the parents association of the school complained to the district education department in Khandwa, which further proceeded to the Madhya Pradesh School Education Department. Subsequently, the department issued a show-case notice to the administration of ‘Academic Heights Public School’ and has sought its response on the matter.
District parents’ association president, Anish Jharjhare expressed concern at the incident, wondering how the school administration can ask the students such non-serious questions like the name of the son of a Bollywood couple.
“A show-cause notice has been issued to the school. Further action will be initiated on the basis of their (school) reply,” said a senior official in the school education department.
For that matter, even IPL related questions in a school exam are questionable. And this degradation in standards and obsession with pop culture is not limited to just one or two schools.
A leading private school in Pune has included the following personalities in list of ‘inspiring Indian role models’ in the class 4 social studies textbook – Shah Rukh Khan (a Bollywood actor who remarked “Pakistan is a great neighbour” just an year after 26/11 terror attacks), Sunita Williams (an American citizen of Indian descent) and Mother Teresa (an Albanian citizen whose real name is Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, and who had an extremely dubious history of fake healing, fishy financial dealings and links with dictators etc).
Also, many of the stock images used to illustrate children’ textbooks don’t show Indians, but white people with blond hair!
A country which is out of touch with its roots, dominated by a mentally colonized elite whose chief goal in life is to shed their identity and be identified as American clones, will exhibit such symptoms.
(With IANS inputs)
