Teaching the Gita in school
Observed this while visiting the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission at Belur Math last year. Fro those who don't understand the text, it is Bhagavad Gita accompanied by Adi Shankara's commentary with annotations in Bengali. The Gita when sold without commentaries can be a small booklet, bur when the commentary is included, it can become a behemoth of a text. And this is only one commentary. In the Advaita circles, in addition to Adi Shankara's commentary, there is also the commentary of Sridhara Swami and Madhusudana Saraswati. And this is only the Advaita scenario, as the Gita's inclusion in Prasthanatrayi means that anybody who writes a commentary on the Brahma sutras must also write a commentary on the Gita as well. So we have Gita commentaries composed by Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha, Keshava Kashmiri, Abhinavagupta and so on. I assume that each commentary will be as voluminous as Adi Shankara's commentary as shown in this picture. Some commentaries also have their own sub-commentaries, for example Adi Shankara's commentary has a sub-commentary by Anandagiri, Ramanuja's commentary has a sub-commentary by Vedanta Desika, and Jayatirtha has composed a sub-commentary on Madhva's commentary. At this point, we can consider that studying the commentary with its sub-commentaries can be quite tedious. And the more recent commentaries by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh and Paramahamsa Yogananda are also worth mentionable. Ay this point I would also liketo mention that all of these commentraies are unique, caliming independent origins without being inspired by works from other denominations. Which shows that a small booklet of 700 verses can punch way up it's weight.
This brings the question of inclusion of the Gita into school curriculum. Now and then I hear in social media that the government has proposals to include the text of the Gita into primary school curriculum of government-run schools, in order to make students more religious-minded. While the goal is noble, the execution is messed up. As shown in the previous paragraph, the Bhagavad Gita is far from being simple, with the brilliant minds of grown-up philosphers struggling and pondering over the text to produce collosal tracts of work as shown in the picture. If the aim is to foster religiosity through study of the Gita, then rote memorization (hallmark of the Indian education system) of the text is not the right way. In order to truly effective, a knowledge of the commentaries is also necessary. But if the government was to prioritise one commentary over the other, it will open up another can of worms (that is completely avoidable) thay will cause much harm than good. This shows that the people who want to thrust the Gita down into the immature brains of children by government decree have no idea about the complexity of the text itself. Their idea is basically imitation of the evangelical Christian politics of having the Bible included into school curriculum in the US. And describing the position of the Gita in Hinduism to be equivalent of the Bible in American Protestant Christianity is a big category error in itself. This error was actually propagated by ISKCON, who started the practice of distributing their version of the Bhagavad Gita in imitation of the evangelicals distributing study Bibles to passers-by in the US. This follows a line of other such steps done in plain imitation of US evangelical politics.
As a student of Ramakrishna Mission, I had a class (specifically designed by the institution, which being a religious body, had the freedom to add some additional religious courses) where we had to memorise select verses of the Gita. While I did benefit from it, I can tell that most of my peers absolutely loathed that class, but they couldn't avoid it because it was an easy source of marks, which added up to the finals. So they attitude towards that class (& other such classes that had religious content) was one of resentment. If you say that a similar government-enforced move can benefit many more like me, I will say that developing religious attitude from childhood is a matter of predestination, it can't be artificially cultivated. Prahlada turned out to be a devotee despite his surroundings due to his destiny, while Naraka became Narakasura despite being the son of Bhagavana Vishnu and Bhudevi also due to his destiny. Both Arjuna and Duryodhana had the opportunity to view Krishna's divine form, but while Arjuna believed in Krishna's divinity, Duryodhana chose to disbelieve because of his destiny, despite both growing up under the likes of Bhishma and Vidura. So religiosity is something which can't be artificially manufactured in children.