What the Nation Imagines of Children: An Analysis of Government School Level Textbooks

Abstract

This research tries to seek answers on the question: what the nation imagines about children ? It is an attempt to make an interpretation of the schools texts of find out what kind of citizenry is imagined by the existing education system. By exploring values and discourses pitched in the prescribed lessons of school level texts, I argue that the school level textbooks, which are the materialization of what is designed in the curriculum, practice a particular form of knowledge that prompts children toward "obedient but critical citizen to be." The little space for the critical pedagogical practice on the part of learners gives rise to the larger space for the domination of official knowledge.The study is motivated by how the school becomes an opportune place for such a project of nation and what nation imagines of the children through school educations. Though value neutrality and serene primary goal of teaching of four skills of knowledge in order to educate the students, the values related nation, democratic culture, history, national objectives of the nation, and values of civic life and citizenships and salient features of the Nepalese societyand facilitation become dominant in content; the designers of the curriculum have agendas which are something more than materials to enhance the learning skills of the students. The present study explores the treatment of those values embedded in schoolbooks and reveals implication. Despite the seriousness of social divisions and tensions, the texts present the issues in a conciliatory tone; the tensions and gaps are downsized in a milder way. The school level textbooks become an opportune forum to exercise certain kind of form of historical knowledge to produce the desired citizen. However, pupils should be encouraged to play an active role in the life of both the school and their community.