Maths textbook corrigendum misses out on more errors

The corrigendum issued by the Department of Public Instruction on errors in class 10 mathematics textbook points out only 27 mistakes, far much less than those pointed out by the teachers.

After reports that the class 10 Mathematics textbook of the State syllabus had scores of errors, a corrigendum was issued at a zone-wise meeting of teachers, held in Bengaluru.

However, teachers said that a lot more errors have been left unaddressed. 

Rama, a private high school teacher from North Zone, Bengaluru, told Deccan Herald that they were asked to make a list of mistakes in the one-day workshop.

She said the corrigendum refers to only 27 errors while there were much more typos in the textbook.

For instance, in exercise 5.2 on page 122 in the Maths textbook, the answers do not correspond to the questions.

The answer for question 9 has been interchanged with that for question 10 and the answer for question 12 is interchanged with that for question 13.  

In exercise 10.6, problem 5, in the triangle diagram that has been printed in the text, the letter ‘M’ has to be there in the place of ‘N’. Problem 3 states that “ RP=c”, while the diagram represents that ‘RP’ is ‘b’.

“These are just a few mistakes to name. So far, we have, just by one sight spotted 150 such errors,” Rama added. 

Apart from these errors, the introduction of new chapters too has created problems, say teachers.

“We were told that a briefing about the new chapters will be given in the workshop. However, it was not done due to lack of time. It will be helpful if they had briefed us about trigonometry, co-ordinate geometry, probability and other chapters that are introduced from the current year,”  said a teacher from Vijayanagara, who did not wish to be named.

The teachers at government schools face another set of problems. At the workshop, English version of the textbook was used to point out errors leaving most teachers unable to note down the errors.

Difference of 12 pages 

“There is a difference of about 12 pages between Kannada and English version of the textbook. In the English text, a few errors have already been rectified. But in Kannada most of them remain so. The workshop was conducted with English version of the textbook and the page numbers did not match with those of the Kannada version. Hence, we could not down most of the corrections," complained a teacher at a government school in Rajajinagar area. 

When contacted, Mohammed Mosin, Commissioner, Department of Public Instruction, said: “Let them give a list of errors and we will look into it. Since the chapters are newly introduced, there will be options in examination question papers”.