Talk:Support removal of derogotory portrayal of India and Hinduism in textbooks
Namaste,
I am reaching out to you for your financial support to remove racism and bigotry against India & Hinduism from textbooks. We got Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s History-Social Science programs rejected from California for the next 10 years due to your presence in Sacramento supporting our achievements with the State Board of Education & its Instructional Quality Commission You may not be aware that the Instructional Quality Commission cited 52 reasons mentioned in the letter to them from Hindupedia against Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in their rejection.
The State Board of Education approved McGraw Hill’s textbook which is almost as bad as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s. We have completed a completed a 95-page letter on the problems w/ McGraw Hill’s texts with each school district. This letter was signed by 40 professors in Social Sciences and/or Indic Studies including 29 that are based in North America and some of the world’s leading experts on Ancient India & Hinduism. This letter has gone out to the nearly 1,100 school districts in California and is already having a positive impact (i.e., getting districts to not move forward with McGraw’s materials). Below is a 1-page summary of the letter which was shared along with the letter.
However, we fell short of our fund-raising goals by 30% in January. With the funds we received, we brought Prof. Kundan Singh on board and began working (resulting in the above-mentioned letter as the first deliverable).
We are also in a position, for the first time able to set the narrative for how Hinduism and India will be taught in textbooks used across the nation. Towards that end, we have begun engaging with the top 3 publishers (excluding McGraw Hill) and are developing the narrative on India & Hinduism that we would like for them to adopt for their national curricula. So far, they have already agreed on an engagement process as well as the evaluation criteria that will be used to evaluate their revised materials.
The materials adopted at the national level (coming out of our effort) will come back to California in two years.
We expect to run out of funds in the coming weeks. I am appealing for you to donate. If everyone who receives this note donated $100, we would close our funding gap and finish as strongly as we have started.
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Best Regards,
Krishna
Founder, Hindupedia.com
Hindupedia is a 501(c)3 non-profit (non-profit tax id: No. 27-148-8493). Donations can be made via PayPal or check: payable to Hindupedia and sent to 10367 Menhart Lane, Cupertino, CA 95014.