Where Are the Books We Read & What Are We Reading Now?

-

I was reading my Daughter's, Class-7 Hindi Literature book, and it struck me that something has quietly collapsed in our education system.

Not buildings.
Not technology.
But books.

The books that once shaped thinking, conscience, and character have been reduced to tools for passing exams. What students read today is no longer literature, it is content.

Safe, diluted, and forgettable.

From Literature to Low Risk Text

Earlier, school books carried stories that were uncomfortable. They showed hunger, inequality, moral conflict, and social truth. Stories like 

Writers like Premchand did not protect the reader from reality. They forced you to look at it. 

Authors like Munshi Premchand, Poets Suryakant Tripathi, Mahadevi Verma, Mathili Sharan Gupt, Banmkim Chandra Chatterjee,  defined hindi literature with realism, social commentary and lyrical depth. Influencing generations through Poetry and Stories


Today’s textbooks avoid discomfort at all costs.

Characters are polite. Conflicts are shallow. Outcomes are predictable.

Stories exist not to challenge the mind but to fit neatly into assessment rubrics. Nothing questions power. Nothing questions society. Nothing questions the student.

And that raises a serious question:
What kind of thinking do such books produce?

Replacing the Known with the Unknown and the Unnecessary

When you read Dinkar, you don’t just read words, you enter a lived moment. You feel the dust of the road, the weight of injustice, the heat of rebellion. It’s clear the writer didn’t imagine life from a distance; he stood inside it.
What he wrote, he had first seen, suffered, and survived.

Today, our books feel different.
They are written by interchangeable names, produced like assembly-line parts. Polished, safe, carefully engineered to offend no one, and therefore awaken nothing. There is no social soil beneath these stories, no emotional gravity pulling you in.
They skim the surface of life without ever daring to dive.

This is not evolution. This is erosion.

When you erase voices that confront reality, you don’t protect students; you hollow them out.
You teach them to accept diluted truths, comfortable lies, and cardboard emotions. You replace experience with compliance.

I once read a story where a frog lived in a pond where rice grew.
It sounds funny, yes, but it’s also tragic, because rice doesn’t grow in ponds.

And when writers don’t know this, it’s not just geography they get wrong, it’s life itself.

These are the stories shaping young minds today.

Not lived. Not grounded. Just printed.

Education Without Thought

Modern education proudly speaks of:

  • Learning outcome

  • Skill mapping

  • Measurable performance

But where is thinking?

Students are taught what to answer, not how to think. They are trained to reproduce, not to reflect. Literature is treated as a subject, not an experience.

If books do not disturb, inspire, or provoke doubt, then they are not educating, they are conditioning.

A Generation Raised on Soft Pages

When stories are softened, minds are softened. When conflict is removed, resilience is never built. When literature loses honesty, society loses thinkers.

This is how degradation happens, not loudly, but slowly, chapter by chapter.

We didn’t stop reading good books. We stopped giving them to children.

And unless we ask hard questions about what our textbooks contain and what they carefully exclude, we will continue producing educated students who have never truly been taught.

sinhasynopsis

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Makes a Data Strategy Truly Great

-
In today's world, everyone talks about data being the "new oil," but collecting vast amounts of it isn't enough. What truly sets successful organizations apart is how thoughtfully and strategically they use their data.The idea of a "great data strategy" is changing, driven by amazing strides in AI, higher expectations from businesses, and the constant need to be adaptable. Having guided many organizations through their data and analytics transformations, I've seen firsthand that a successful data strategy isn't just about IT, it needs to become a fundamental part of how the business operates. Here’s what I believe truly defines an exceptional data strategy today. 1. It's About Business First, Not Just Data Too often, organizations kick off their data journey by focusing on technology, picking tools, building data lakes, and setting up pipelines. But in 2025, a truly effective data strategy begins with understanding your business goals. Ask yourse...
Read more

A Superhero Without a Cape: My Father

-
When we think of superheroes, our minds often drift to the ones in comic books, flying across the sky, saving lives, fighting villains. But my superhero never wore a cape. He wore a simple kurta or shirt, sometimes crumpled from a long day’s work, and the quiet confidence of a man who carried his entire world on his shoulders without ever asking for applause. My earliest memories of my father aren’t filled with dramatic declarations, they’re full of everyday moments soaked in silent strength. They’re full of  chai,  shared during early mornings, the faint sound of his bicycle bell outside the gate, and the comforting rustle of the newspaper in his hands. I’ve seen him pedal that old bicycle with me tightly clutching onto the back seat, no helmet, no worries, just trust, a freedom I have never felt before. I’ve seen him come home carrying bags heavy with vegetables, from the  sabzi mandi , in those bags, I eagerly waited for some surprize for me, a toffee, my favourit...
Read more

The Girl I Once Loved

-
It was a quiet Sunday afternoon when I saw her again, almost twenty years later. For a moment, my heart forgot how to beat. Could it really be her? Time is a strange thing. It slips through your fingers when you’re young and races past you when you’re older. But in that fleeting moment when our eyes met, time did something magical, it stood still. She stood by the edge of the park, sunlight wrapping around her like a familiar shawl. She wore a floral dress, pink shoes peeking beneath the hem, her hair swaying gently in the breeze. Those same warm brown eyes looked at me, still holding that quiet mischief I remembered. But this time, there were soft wrinkles at the corners, streaks of silver in her hair, and a kind of calm in her smile that only life can bring. And yet, to me, she was still the most beautiful girl. We first met in school, back when dreams were scribbled in the margins of notebooks and love meant stealing glances across the classroom. She used to sit two benches ahead of...
Read more