Taboo

This week the small children started school. Before the school starts, it gives a list of all the material and school books you need. There was one in the house, about the history and geography in Niger and also a little about the rest of Africa. I skimmed through it as I was interested about this. And then I came to this page:


The chapter is called "The Races". It tells about the different "races" in Africa. The photos you see from the left are: "A black man", "a white man" and "pygmeans" (this is written under each photo). It says that "the white people lives in the north of Africa, the ethiopeans are a mix of white and black people and that one "race" (don't remember which) has some asian traits in it". When I found this I got a little (or very!) shocked because of:
1. This is an extremely taboo subject in Europe and I felt uncomfortable reading it. It would been a huge scandal to find this in a school book!
2. The children are actually using this book to learn stuff. Which means that they learn that "humans consists of different races". And apparently the school find this perfectly normal.

I think this is one of the biggest cultural differences I've experienced here.