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India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

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Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#71

Post by Bhilai »

screye wrote: post #23

This makes no sense to me. This highly unlikely to be a political move. Science education is not political in India. Evolution, abortion, chemistry are not debated at all. This is more likely for the reasons to be innocuous. > In explaining its changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the conte…

> I have literally never heard of national politicians in India being anti-science.

Not anti-science per se but Indian politicians are quite famous for pseudo-scientific nonsensical statements like Mr Modi claiming that advanced surgery existed thousands of years ago when doctors sewed an Elephant's head to a God's body[1] and then claiming presence of test tube babies in ancient times[3]

On the other hand, Union Health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan claimed that Vedas had knowledge beyond Theory of Relativity[3]

BJP, the ruling party has tried to indoctrinate a bunch of nonsense like Wright brothers did not invent the airplane, it was infact ancient Indians[4].

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-m... [2]: https://theprint.in/science/vedic-plastic-surgery-to-test-tu... [3]: https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/science-minister-harsh-v... [4]: https://theprint.in/india/governance/in-engineering-courses-...

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#73

Post by alephnerd »

Dig1t wrote: post #11
benced wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is far more common in India to go to a private school. As a rule of thumb, if you know an educated Indian, they went to private school. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/10/in... This makes this decision both more and less outrageous. On one level, it had less effect than a similar decision than the US. On the other, it helps cripple the poor in India (who are actually poor, not American poor)…

That goes against what I heard from my Indian friends. I was told that public schools are actually more prestigious than private schools, they are more rigorous apparently?

It depends. Some private schools like Delhi Public School Barakhamba are extremely prestigious, but making a private school is very easy so quality control is trash.

Sometimes private schools can be shittier than the government run schools (eg. in the town my family is from in Himachal) but in other places the private schools will at least not have absentee teachers (a common issue in much poorer regions of India).

P.S. the public school moniker for some Indian private schools is a holdover from the British era. Most modern private schools don't call themselves "public" anymore - they prefer being called "International Schools".

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#74

Post by [deleted] »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #52
screye wrote: post #23

This makes no sense to me. This highly unlikely to be a political move. Science education is not political in India. Evolution, abortion, chemistry are not debated at all. This is more likely for the reasons to be innocuous. > In explaining its changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the conte…

Ah, you are not reading the situation right. The fascist elements have hijacked the term "science". Nowadays, it is science if you say that cowling protects against atomic radiation ([1]) or you say that ancient India had interplanetary travel ([2]) .. note that the latter was at an official track at the Indian Science Congress on science in ancient India. If the vedas said something, that is science. If the white ma…

[deleted]

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#77

Post by spaceman_2020 »

India has been getting high on its own supply for a few years now. The narrative is that all knowledge originated in ancient Indian texts and was stolen by the west. Even the ISRO chief made a comment in this vein a few days back.

Cultures that keep looking at imagined past glories, imo, are destined to become static and falter.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#78

Post by alephnerd »

joshuaissac wrote: post #35
schoubey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both public and private schools in India use NCERT books and have the same examinations. Private schools only ensure things are taught better, what is taught is still the same.

In my experience, government schools are far more likely to be state government schools than central government schools, and so they are more likely use the local state board's curriculum instead those of the CBSE or ICSE.

Depends on the State. For example in Delhi, a number of Govt of Delhi operated schools will use CBSE curriculum as well.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#79

Post by SpaceManNabs »

Kinda wild to see comments on here saying that India's slide into religious fascism isn't a big deal.

"We/Indians don't politicize science"

"There are many education authorities"

I think this is only affecting a particular grade, but we already have seen the slow rollout of other efforts.

You can't normalize politicians saying stuff like "our ancient civilization had nuclear energy".

edit: surprised that I wasn't immediately downvoted. A year ago, talking about this was instant downvotes, on any platform. I guess enough people have noticed this behavior.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#80

Post by spaceman_2020 »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #45

I'm calling shenanigans. There are many education systems in India. There's a central one, but each state has its own. Indians at every economic level (except maybe the very top) value STEM education above everything else. I wish we'd learn to dial back the hysteria. I wish people weren't so damn trigger happy.

They don’t value STEM education. They value they jobs and prestige STEM education can get them.

Remove the ability to get well paying engineering/medicine jobs from the equation and they’ll treat STEM education with the same disdain they have for commerce, or worse, humanities.

There is very little real appreciation of education. Only its byproducts, namely, jobs.

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