Teachers in Mumbai, India will be using historically based comic books to facilitate learning and draw students into the subject.
In an effort to make difficult middle school classes more interesting, students in Mumbai will be using comic books to be taught historical events. This new method is being met with both enthusiasm and wariness.
The comic books, called Amar Chitra Katha, are being met with hesitation because it might lead the students to believe that everything involved in the books will be taken as indisputable fact. In reality, the comic book is a hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, heavily dependent on reliable sources coupled with popular legend.
One scholar voiced apprehension due to the depiction of the characters through comic illustration. Women’s figures are idealized in the popular hourglass manner, and the men are drawn to represent a particular region of India. These graphics could contribute to children being encouraged to give faces and actualization to what a stereotypical good guy and bad guy would actually look like instead of being more objective about people based upon their actions and not on their facades.
(Source.)
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