Cultural Diversity and Peaceful Coexistence: A Reflection on Some Selective School Textbooks

Abstract

Bangladesh adheres to the principles and values of respecting cultural, religious, and ethnic diversities and has enriched school textbooks for meeting demands of the society and preparing young generations as much as possible for future with adequate facts, well-known perspectives and diverse worldviews. School textbooks are one of the critical instruments of preparing young generations for future—with the values of respect, tolerance, mutual understanding, cooperation, unity, prosperity, partnership and humanity. However, sometimes textbooks could produce counter-productive outcomes if contents were not developed with well-thoughts and prudence. They also constitute a compulsion for a country to realise how the young children could be prepared with the values of maintaining and ensuring peace, accepting cultural diversity, and respecting the ethos of peaceful coexistence of multi-ethnic and multi-religious communities living in a society. As an elementary level effort, this paper has focused on some selective secondary level textbooks in Bangladesh to understand how the issues of cultural diversity and peaceful coexistence have been represented. There has been a plenty of textbook contents described and touched on the aspects of cultural diversity in various ways to enlighten students about pluralism and values of social cohesion. However, a more delicate and detailed presentation of some issues could help students socialisation process and of learning about respecting and accepting the diversity of all kinds better. Some more visual representations of diverse cultures and practices, and more practical tasks on valuing rights, dignity, tolerance, and empathy could benefit them further. Nonetheless, there is an essence of having skilled and qualified teachers who could play sincere roles in teaching such values in appropriate educational environments.

Social Science Review, Vol. 37(2), Dec 2020 Page 59-86