“Fashionable, Selfish, Irresponsible”: This School Textbook Educates You On The ‘Modern Woman’

This school essay about 'The Modern Woman' has taught us so much. With this article our learning is now yours too.

This school essay about ‘The Modern Woman’ has taught us so much. With this article our learning is now yours too.

Imagine going to schools and teaching children that 2+2=8, that there are 35 letters in English alphabets or Jawaharlal Nehru is the Father Of Our Nation. That would be disastrous, the heights of misleading and the future of those kids, with all the wrong basic information, would be ruined right?

We at Women’s Web, were very recently alerted by a reader, to a similar threat that can be proved to be highly dangerous for our school going children. It was an essay titled ‘The Modern Girl’ published in a book called ‘Current School Essays and Letters’ by Purabi Chakraborty, which she first came across via Facebook. The content of that essay left us all speechless.

I personally was shell-shocked, I couldn’t believe my own eyes as to what I was reading. It is a simple two-sides-of-a-page essay that talks about the characteristics and behaviors of a ‘modern girl’. It represents and celebrates gender stereotypes and many other discriminations against women.

The essay begins by saying that women these days are imitating men, where they aspire to do all that men do like wearing jeans, pants and even they want jobs like men. They no longer are shy, obedient or homely but talks to male friends freely and enjoy all the pleasures of life that usually were only men’s.

 

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According to the author, all this is having a major impact on the concept of family. There is none to take up responsibilities of the home as women are busy charming up the functions, parties and meetings with their beauty, makeup and well-maintained perfect figures.

Another ridiculous claim from the essay is that women are following actors from films and TV programmes. All that they care about now is fashion, designers and brands. They have become selfish, self-centered with no sense of duty. Also, who are blamed for all this? None but the parents for not properly guiding their girls into the right path.    

So, our learning from the essay is that women are those creatures (word used in the essay for women) without the capacity to think, who get influenced by everything they see or hear and are now living just to enjoy life with absolutely no other purpose.

This is an essay intended for I.C.S.E, I.S.C, C.B.S.E, secondary and higher secondary students. Can anything be any more tragic than this? The the kind of impact this essay might have on our children is disastrous. We send them to schools to learn, to get educated and informed to rid society of all its evil practices. But academic books trying to induce false and regressive notions like this? Highly unacceptable!          

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Madhura Chandana

Apart from being the Associate Editor at Women's Web, where I get to read, edit and write a lot of interesting articles, my life is simple. It begins at 'M' (Movies) and ends with ' read more...

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