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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

#141

Post by jeswin »

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…

As with a lot of India news appearing here of late, take this with a pound of salt. Like you were saying, this makes no sense as a political move. Hinduism (and by extension Hindutva, the problematic political form) has no bone to pick with Darwin and evolution. Actually the opposite is true - it's likely to be promoted because evolution is a point of contention in Abrahamic religions. The Indian far-right promotes a lot of fabrications; this isn't one of them though.

The two academics quoted in the article come from JNU, which is known for its left/far-left leaning. Looking through their social media, I see retweets of: US stealing Syria's oil, opposition to bombing Syria and aiding Ukraine, etc. What does it say about the author of the story, if she can't see through biases? It's kinda disappointing that balanced opinions are becoming rare in news media.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#142

Post by lannisterstark »

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…

"Science education is not political in India"

You've not seen the back cover of textbooks that says X or Y is only possible because of the generosity of the "Insert current Chief Minister of State?"

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#143

Post by lannisterstark »

77pt77 wrote: post #132
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #77

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.

All languages derive from Sanskrit is another trope. An indo-european language no less. It's beyond pathetic.

You misspelled Tamil! /s

or was it Telugu. I forget lol.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#144

Post by Bekknqv »

Arnavion wrote: post #25
alephnerd wrote: post #7

It's only affecting 10th grade CBSE (NCERT), not ICSE or state board* exams, let alone competitive board exams like the JEE (Engineering) or NEET (Medicine). It's still being taught in the NCERT books as well, but now in 12th grade instead of 10th grade. The scarier thing should be the rewriting of the history section of CBSE. * board is Indian English for curriculum Also, on the hierarchy of Indian board exams: Top…

>It's still being taught in the NCERT books as well, but now in 12th grade instead of 10th grade. You're not required to take Chemistry and Biology after the 10th grade, so technically you could miss out on the periodic table and evolution still. That said, I'm pretty sure I only learned the periodic table in 11th grade Chemistry class myself (15 years ago), so I guess it must've moved down to 10th grade at some poin…

The periodic table is actually already present in 9th grade textbooks.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#145

Post by mavelikara »

SAS_SBS wrote: post #123
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #79

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 imm…

Most Indians are in fact happy about that slide, given that 80%+ of the country are Hindus. What a shame!

It is presumptuous to suggest that every Hindu is happy with the slide to Hindutva.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#146

Post by [deleted] »

jeswin wrote: post #141
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…

As with a lot of India news appearing here of late, take this with a pound of salt. Like you were saying, this makes no sense as a political move. Hinduism (and by extension Hindutva, the problematic political form) has no bone to pick with Darwin and evolution. Actually the opposite is true - it's likely to be promoted because evolution is a point of contention in Abrahamic religions. The Indian far-right promotes a…

[deleted]

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#147

Post by 77pt77 »

lannisterstark wrote: post #143
77pt77 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All languages derive from Sanskrit is another trope. An indo-european language no less. It's beyond pathetic.

You misspelled Tamil! /s or was it Telugu. I forget lol.

Nope. It has always been Sanskrit.

This last guy claimed that those languages also derived from it.

And he didn't like "those people" either.

There might have been aliens into the mix as well.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#148

Post by distant_hat »

Bhilai wrote: post #71
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 Hea…

India actually has a well-funded ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy) and its influence has massively grown over the past decade. It is as anti-science as you get.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#149

Post by brobdingnagians »

neilk wrote: post #47
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 no idea exactly how much this particular curriculum change is influenced by religion. But your assertion that science is depoliticized in India is very wrong. In 2018, the education minister declared Darwin was wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/23/indian-educati... This is just one of many such troubling incidents, including apparent indifference to the murder of pro-rationalism academics. Anec…

In the West, any attempt to debate science is declared to be anti-science, which eventually suffocates science. Conformity to the party line is the ticket to funding (from the political establishment) and acclaim. Are there anti-science people? Sure, but far fewer than the knee jerk reactionists say there are. And someone who goes around calling everyone anti-science without logical basis is antithetical to scientific debate and advancement.

Let us remember where a lot of "scientific" funding comes from, the politicians and Uncle Sam; which inherently tends to corrupt the "science" to become political.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#150

Post by duskwuff »

Bekknqv wrote: post #127
dexzod wrote: post #111

I scanned the whole article but could not find any mention of the reason behind this move. I mean evolution may be violating some Hindu teaching but what is the problem with periodic table of elements?

They're trying to reduce the burden on students. Don't exactly know if evolution violates some Hindu teachings, but a statement was released last month stating that evolution was removed from the grade 10 book because it's present in the grade 12 book- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/darwins... Similarly, I'm guessing the periodic table was removed from the grade 10 book because it's already pres…

> Similarly, I'm guessing the periodic table was removed from the grade 10 book because it's already present in the grade 9 book.

That still doesn't make sense. The periodic table doesn't stop being relevant in 10th grade just because it was introduced in 9th grade.

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