⭐⭐⭐ (3/5) — Useful, but oddly unsettling. The Good: This book tries hard to be a bridge. On one side, it’s crammed with classic Uzbek literature excerpts, moral parables, and the kind of patriotic math problems (“If 3 cotton pickers work 8 hours…”). On the other, it awkwardly nods to 21st-century skills: critical thinking boxes, group work icons, and QR codes that lead to dead YouTube links. You have to admire the ambition. The section on “Odob” (etiquette) is genuinely charming — where else will you learn how to properly greet an elder AND solve for variable x in the same paragraph?
Maktab 4 Qism is like a family dinner where your grandmother’s best recipes are served on paper plates next to a PowerPoint about AI. You eat it because you have to, not because you’re hungry for knowledge. Useful for rote learning, but don’t expect a revolution. Give it to a student, and they’ll learn something. Give it to a reformer, and they’ll need tea. Strong tea. Would you like a version more focused on a specific subject (literature, math, or ethics) from the Maktab series? maktab 4 qism
The gender roles are frozen in 1985. Boys fix tractors; girls set tables. One exercise asks students to “write a letter to your future spouse explaining your duties at home.” In a 2024 textbook. That’s not tradition — that’s time travel without a return ticket. ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5) — Useful, but oddly unsettling
But here’s the twist — this “4 qism” feels less like a continuation and more like a remix of the first three parts. Entire passages are repeated verbatim. The same fable about the donkey and the wolf appears twice, 50 pages apart, with slightly different moral conclusions. Is this a test? A printing error? Or a postmodern commentary on how education itself is a loop? I laughed. Then I worried. On the other, it awkwardly nods to 21st-century
A curious reader with a pencil and a headache.