few short sentences by the teacher. India is described as filled with pollution, cows, and poverty-stricken people. Hindus love to bathe in rivers where they throw the ashes of their parents and yes, they do worship elephants and monkeys. "Do you speak Indian?" I'm asked at least two times a week. "I heard there were two thousand gods and every full moon you had to give a sacrifice to them. Do you do that?" No, I try to explain that all the gods are really aspects of one almighty being. I've never sacrificed anything except my dignity, which slowly dwindles with each question. The release of popular award-winning books such as Homeless Bird, which portrays the typical Indian girl who is forced to get married at thirteen, didn't help Indians anywhere. And, who could have guessed, the author hadn't even been to India! No kidding. Six entire chapters in the textbook were devoted to Christianity, whereas one page is given to the history of India and the teachings of Hinduism. A second page is entirely about Lord Shiva, accompanied by a rather unbecoming picture of an ancient dancing Shiva statue. Buddhism gets one paragraph. This doesn't make sense, as most of the school already knows so much about Christianity, but hardly any even knew Buddhism or Hinduism existed. Now that they did, we would be ridiculed publicly. Thank you, Board of Education. At last, high school starts. I almost die of shock when I see the 9th grade textbook has