Father in kitchen, girls playing drums: Andhra Pradesh’s textbook bid to end gender stereotypes

In Andhra Pradesh, textbooks for classes 1 and 2 have been revised to eliminate gender stereotypes from a young age. The new books depict father working alongside mother in the kitchen, girls playing drums and violins, and men and women standing in line to collect water from a common public tap. The state aims to introduce children to both "good" and "bad" sides of Artificial Intelligence, showcasing the technology's positive and negative aspects.

According to Andhra Pradesh IT and HRD minister N Lokesh Naidu, the objective is to avoid gender stereotyping from the first grade itself. The curriculum improvement has focused on value-based education, gender sensitivity, technology-enabled learning, and industry-linked skilling. In addition to changing household chores, the textbooks now feature women selling vegetables, men weaving flower garlands alongside women, and men and women working together in agricultural fields.

The Education Department has undertaken two rounds of curriculum improvement for the purpose. Primary schools now implement "No Bag Day" on Saturdays for value-based and practical learning, including lessons on managing family budgets and agricultural budgets, field exposure visits, and an introduction to AI.

To shift students from passive to active learners, the state is "gamifying" classrooms through technology. After every 45-minute class, students watch a 60 or 90-second video summarizing the lesson and answer four to five questions using clicker technology. This creates a more interactive learning environment, and the data feeds into the state's Learning Management System to identify individual learning gaps and provide targeted homework and learning material.

The minister also mentioned that the state is working to improve the teacher-to-student ratio, with one teacher per class now present in 33% of schools, up from just 3% in 2024. The state recently completed a major teacher recruitment drive, recruiting 16,000 teachers to achieve this goal. The Education Department is also reviewing university curricula to ensure relevance and alignment with market requirements.