Overview / Findings / Content

A current textbook still teaches colonial racial theory as fact

A Punjab geography book printed in March 2022, under the Single National Curriculum, describes equatorial peoples in nineteenth-century racial language — and returns to the material in a multiple-choice question eight pages later.

This is not one dated sentence. Elsewhere in the same chapter Amazonian peoples are “known as Red Indians” (p. 37) and northern Canadians “known as Eskimos” (p. 39). Eight pages after the passage the book returns to the material as a multiple-choice question — which is what moves it from old phrasing to examinable content a child must reproduce correctly. The volume was printed in March 2022, under the Single National Curriculum.

“Natives are black people that are settled along rivers and oceans in small settlements… Wild people with small height lives in Congo. People are uncivilized. People have no interest in religion, education”
Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, Geography 6, Experimental Edition, printed March 2022, printed p. 36

Limits

Elsewhere in the same chapter Amazonian peoples are "known as Red Indians" (p. 37) and northern Canadians "known as Eskimos" (p. 39).

Boards and confidence

Punjab high confidence

Confidence reflects the evidence tier this rests on. High means native or English-medium text verified by exact string match; medium means it depends partly on Urdu-medium material read at theme grade, or on an absence. See the method.

Source

Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, Geography 6, Experimental Edition, printed March 2022, printed p. 36

Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, Geography 6, Experimental Edition, printed March 2022, printed p. 36; the multiple-choice item follows at p. 44.

Cite this finding

Textbook Evidence Project, “A current textbook still teaches colonial racial theory as fact”. Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board, Geography 6, Experimental Edition, printed March 2022, printed p. 36. Corpus version 210 records. Retrieved from https://textbookevidence.com/findings/racial-ethnography-current/

Two citations are appropriate here, not one. The line above cites this finding. If you are quoting the textbook passage itself, cite the book — its full bibliographic record, edition and approval reference is on its own page, linked from each evidence entry above — and say that you found it here.

Challenge this finding

This is a claim about a printed book, so it is checkable, and it should be checked. If the citation is wrong, the edition is misidentified, the passage is quoted unfairly, or the finding does not survive its own evidence, that is worth reporting and it will be acted on whether or not the correction is convenient for the argument. Corrections are logged publicly in the corrections log; this applies fully to the boards themselves.

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