The Ministry of Education will proceed with the replacement of an image in the 5th grade Physics textbook that, as it was discovered, depicts people being ground in a blender.
The drawing is found on page 19 of the book and was used, along with other images, to illustrate the chapter on mixtures. According to the online edition of the newspaper Proto Thema, it is the work of Japanese artist Aida Makoto, who is considered one of the leading exponents of contemporary Japanese art.
The dimensions of the image in the book were such, however, that it was impossible to discern that the Japanese artist was depicting people. It is characteristic that the book has been taught in elementary schools for ten years without teachers or students having noticed the exact content.
In his announcement, Deputy Minister of Education Alexandros Dermentzopoulos states that this is generally acknowledged to be a very good book and that in no case was there the intention to project the image of a work of art with this content.
The authors, for their part, stated that they obtained the image from an official website, like hundreds of others, without ever suspecting the blender's content. It was an oversight.
However, after the content was revealed, the ministry ordered the image to be immediately withdrawn from the electronic version of the book, as well as to be removed when the book was reprinted.
Source: newsonly.gr
