Countering Prejudice, Creating Resilience:

Concerns In Developing Gender Sensitive English Curriculum

Abstract

The pandemic has acted as a critical event which has necessitated digital education on a hitherto unprecedented scale. At the same time, it has triggered and exacerbated anxiety and other mental health issues in an alarming manner and stretched people’s -both children and adults’-coping mechanisms to the limit. In this context, language education is not just about learning to use a language to listen, speak, read and write the language but also about imparting life skills. The National Education Policy (NEP) advocates the curricular inclusion of inculcating psycho-social skills and aims to encourage holistic growth. In this context, the texts chosen are of utmost importance: at multiple academic levels-primary and middle school, high school, and college, in tertiary education sectors, as well as the ways in which we use the text to raise important and pertinent questions in the classroom. This article cites selective school textbooks for English to indicate the kind of study material, which is value based and gender sensitive, without being overly moralistic or preachy. At the same time, it will also attempt to suggest ways of creating workbooks/sheets which enable and encourage an active engagement with the text, while being alert to the risk of biases which tend to creep in. This essay is based on classroom exercises of English language and literature learning and pedagogy. It is partly founded on empirical research based on school workshops that I conducted and participated in.