Thursday, February 26, 2009

Who is responsible for the mess?

“History is a boring subject and what am I going to gain by mugging up what happened two centuries ago and which king ruled over which country.” – Nikhil my son who is appearing for 9th std hates History and he tells that with pride. We always have a war of words when I ask him to study History.
I love reading about kings and their wealth but the way they depict and describe in school text books it does appear very boring. Moreover school text books are not updated regularly.
Yesterday I was teaching him Economics. In a chapter on Poverty, they have explained about poverty line, how it is determined and what was the poverty line in 1975 and how poverty is the result of British policies… blah blah. When I was studying Economics in college, these were the same things I had studied. Out text books haven’t changed at all. And most importantly for how long will we keep blaming Britishers for the mess we are in, how about the mess that our politicians have created since Independence and continue to create. Are they not more responsible for the state of our country and not letting our country grow?