Anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela had once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” What we learn in our formative years stays with us forever, and there is absolutely no substitute for good education. It is the only way to open our minds to free us from the prejudices of our forefathers, to create a better society.

So, it’s extremely disturbing when in-built prejudices in society gets passed to our children through the education system. DNA came across one such shocking instance, in the Maharashtra HSC text book on Sociology in a chapter titled Major Social Problems in India.

In the chapter, the textbook appears to dissect the dowry system which continues to be prevalent till this day. In one of the ‘Reasons for Dowry’, along with other reasons like religion, caste system, social prestige and compensation principle, one of the more bizarre reasons given for dowry was 'Ugliness'.

The book described Ugliness as:

“If a girl is ugly and handicapped, then it becomes a very difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls, bridegroom and his family demand more dowry. Parents of such girls become helpless and pay dowry as per the demands of the bridegroom as family. It leads to rise in the practice of dowry system.”

If this is what passes for education in Class XII, we will be hard-pressed to free our young students' minds from the prejudices that haunt our society. Instead of teaching children that beauty is a social construct which is skin-deep, and what really matters is what a person stands for, we seem to be passing on the notion that one's looks is somehow linked to their acceptance, and what place they have in society.

With inputs by Kranti Vibhute