A federation of animal rights groups has lodged a protest against the publishing house behind a textbook that asks students to keep a kitten in an unventilated box to understand the importance of air. The book, meant for Class 4 students, suggests that they wait for the animal to die to understand that “living things breathe”.
“We spoke to the publishers and told them about the objectionable material. They agreed to discontinue the book,” Vidhi Matta, spokesperson for the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations, told The Indian Express.
Our Green World by PP Publications is an environmental science textbook widely used in prominent schools across North India. A group of parents who objected to the content brought it to the notice of animal rights activists last week.
The experiment suggested by the book says: “Take two wooden boxes. Make holes on the 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.”
An official of PP Publications said they had stopped distributing this particular textbook after a parent pointed out the error in the suggestion. “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,” Parvesh Gupta told The Indian Express.
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