This textbook asks students to put kittens in boxes to prove they need air to live

A textbook in India has been removed from distribution after complaints that it advocated the murder of kittens.

The offending passage from the science textbook read:

Living things need air to breath. No living thing can live without air for more than few minutes.

Quite right.

It continues.

You can do an experiment. Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on lid of one box. Put a small kitten in each box. Close the boxes. After some time open the boxes. What do you see? The kitten inside the box without holes has died.

Crikey. This isn't Schroedinger. This is just catricide.

It even came with images.

Picture:

The textbook was being used in schools in northern India and was intended for Class IV pupils (aged 9 to 10).

The book is called 'Our Green World' by PP Publications.

PP stopped distributing the textbook in late 2016 when the passage was brought to their attention.

Parvesh Gupta, a spokesperson for PP told India News.

A parent had called us a couple of months ago and asked us to remove the text from the book because it was harmful for children. We recalled books from our distribution channel and will come out with a revised book next year.

The book remains in classrooms however, prompting more recent complaints to the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations (FIAPO).

According to FIAPO the publishers promised to bring out a new edition of the book, without the cat killing material, in 2018.

These aren't the only parts of textbooks that some have found unsettling though.

In 2016 a social science textbook for 17-18 years published by the Maharashtra State Board authority included a passage that said a man's family may demand a high dowry when the girl is 'ugly' or 'handicapped'.

HT India Express

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