KATHMANDU, APRIL 8
A Texas school has been teaching students that Nepal was a British Colony where people speak languages that fall under the Sino-Tibetan language family. However, a ninth grader spotted the mistakes and wrote to the authors of the textbook, who have promised to rectify the errors in future editions.
A school textbook being taught in Houston, Texas, authored by Jon C Malinowsky and David H Kaplan wrongly depicts Nepal as a former British colony and a Sino-Tibetan language family country. Manaswi Panthi, a ninth grader at Memorial High School, Houston, noticed the errors and wrote to the authors of 'AP Human Geography' who admitted their mistakes and pledged to correct them.
Panthi, whose parents are of Nepali origin, wrote a mail to his family friend Manish Pandit, stating, "As I was reading the textbook, I noticed some misinformation about Nepal. I found three mistakes: Nepal was labelled as a British colony two times (on page 16 and 400) and Nepal was categorised as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family (on page 143). Thousands of students read this book every year and they all had the wrong information about Nepal. I was surprised that even though this book has been published for a long time now, no one pointed out the mistakes."
Manaswi said she reached out to the authors of the textbook to let them know about the mistakes.
She says the authors have apologised and assured her that the mistakes will be corrected.
Manaswi has a mail from Kaplan that states, "Judging from what I can tell, you are absolutely correct on the status of Nepal.
Nepal was never a British colony.
You are also correct that the Nepali language fits under the Indo-Aryan rather than the Sino-Tibetan language family. I apologise for these errors and promise you that we will correct these in any future material."
A version of this article appears in the print on April 9, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
