School Textbook Monitoring

Within the framework of the project “Georgia as a Multi-ethnic and Multi-faceted Country”, we present the second consecutive monitoring report on the Georgian languageand literature textbooks. When examining Georgian language and literature textbooks, our main task was to evaluate:

• To what extent and how frequently are representatives of national or religious minorities living/active in Georgia found in literature textbooks;

• To what extent do the creators of school textbooks realize that for a diverse Georgia, a Georgian does not exclusively refer to “Georgian Orthodox man” and the Georgian literature encompasses all those authors and figures who have contributed to making literature texts in our country;

• To what extent the idea is implemented that the literary heritage of Georgia means everything created by writers living in Georgia, regardless of the language of the original text – considered and accommodated.

Report ?

The main aim of the project is to promote the formation of the population of Georgia (regardless of people’s ethnic and religious backgrounds) into a unified civic nation. We believe this task is difficult to accomplish without integrating relevant views and philosophies into school education. Therefore, our project also serves to fundamentally analyze problems and find ways to eliminate them. To this end, we consider a thorough audit of school textbooks at the initial stage to be the most important task in order to find out to what extent school education helps people of different ethnicities and nations living in Georgia to feel a part of history, development, and statehood of Georgia.

Report ?