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India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

nature.com

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Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#211

Post by neilk »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #114
neilk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The story goes that Hindus had nuclear energy 10,000 years ago, but filthy foreigners corrupted Mother India. I’ve never understood this kind of messaging. You see it in all sorts of supremacists. But how is it a credit to you and your ancestors that they had the ability to create nuclear power or fly, etc and then they just lost it! That’s a sign of deep shame. The particular group of people you’re claiming are su…

Humiliation is essential to any fascist project. You can see this in any of the statements from fascist and authoritarian leaders. They’ll emphasize how tricky and duplicitous the enemies are, how the good and honest people were defrauded, but now they’re exacting revenge.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#212

Post by witchesindublin »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #80
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.

[flagged]

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#214

Post by witchesindublin »

vondur wrote: post #75

Why would you cut the periodic table from curriculum? I'm a chem major and have never heard of such a thing before.

It does not actually say that it is taken out of the curriculum. It says that it is taken out from textbooks in a certain year. That means nothing in the context of Indian education considering how accessible a periodic table is.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#215

Post by qwytw »

waterheater wrote: post #171

Indians predominantly subscribe to the Hindu belief system, which is quite foreign from the Western ideologies imposed on them by the British. Consider the concepts of atman (essentially, meaning Self) and avatars (essentially, deities coming down to earth to take on human form). Darwinian evolution acts as a simplified, analogous representation of the grander evolution of Self as told in Hindu mythology. According t…

> without resorting to pathos argumentation

Unless there is observable evidence for these claims it might be the complete inverse of that?

> from the Western ideologies imposed on them by the British.

So all the people who actually have embraced scientific thought (logical reasoning in general) only did so because the British forced? Seems like a great bunch.. these British, just don't tell this to the French or Germans.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#216

Post by witchesindublin »

renewiltord wrote: post #182
lannisterstark wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Can't be Tamil, that's a Dravidian language - not Indo-European. It's usually Sanskrit because that's the High Language.

Tamils also have a similar concept.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#217

Post by hef19898 »

neilk wrote: post #211
rhaway84773 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The story goes that Hindus had nuclear energy 10,000 years ago, but filthy foreigners corrupted Mother India. I’ve never understood this kind of messaging. You see it in all sorts of supremacists. But how is it a credit to you and your ancestors that they had the ability to create nuclear power or fly, etc and then they just lost it! That’s a sign of deep shame. The particular group of people you’re claiming are su…

Humiliation is essential to any fascist project. You can see this in any of the statements from fascist and authoritarian leaders. They’ll emphasize how tricky and duplicitous the enemies are, how the good and honest people were defrauded, but now they’re exacting revenge.

The Dolchstoß legend lives on in various forms.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#218

Post by witchesindublin »

onetimeusename wrote: post #160
SAS_SBS wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here. Your exchange doesn't surprise me one bit. The Hindu nationalists are some of the most delusional, ultra-nationalistic, racist morons out there. Many of them think India is going to be the next superpower and economic miracle out there. There's a large number of them working in big tech, and they'll say how fantastic India is, now that there are very high-paying tech jobs available there (almost all of t…

I've seen this too. My ex is kind of a Hindu nationalist and her friend group and family are full of them. Her brother even threatened her for dating me saying he would cut off all contact and never let her see his children unless she consented to do an arranged marriage with an Indian (which she secretly came here to escape). But then the same Hindu nationalists had this weird tendency to think they were entitled to…

A lot of the US tech industry was built on the backs of Indians. You'll find that the Indians were the second largest race involved in early computing after the Whites.

The second point is that a lot of the problems in India do stem from colonialism - in Asian culture the vast majority don't usually segregate Europe from the US, and view Americans as being just as responsible for colonialism and the benefits of colonialism as modern-day Europeans.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#219

Post by godelski »

anticodon wrote: post #119
neilk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but filthy foreigners corrupted Mother India. Isn't this part actually true, because Britain pillaged India for centuries?

This is complicated. I mean, first you gotta ask what India even is. From a purely border perspective (this is the important context) it is no different than any other country[0] (play videos for other regions). Current borders only exist since 1950. The longest stable period of Indian borders (and largest) were actually under English occupation. Prior to this the largest empire was the Maurya Empire, which covered Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh but did not reach the southern point of modern India. They didn't even hold this for 100 years. Mughal Empire might be the next best example, but was far later and similarly didn't hold for long.

But this is the history of every region/country. There aren't realistically countries that are thousands of years old, only centuries (and not as how we think of them). But this isn't politically popular. Similarly is that a small force can't occupy a region without significant levels of collusion with local players[1]. English occupation influenced Indian unification as it also unified adversaries and caused competing groups to align to a more important goal. We like to paint stories of ancient cultural heritage, but this is all very fuzzy and extremely messy. Many cultures can claim inventions as borders drastically shifted over the centuries. I think a lot of this just has to do with are limited context windows and that it is hard to codify these timeframes and the complexities of establishing borders (obviously along with political narratives and propaganda). But it also should say a lot about the modern world and why Long Peace is such a big thing (very recent thing btw).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN41DJLQmPk

[1] I need to be clear that this doesn't justify or excuse in any way occupation. It doesn't dismiss the brutalities and injustices. It is more about how while the dominant blame belongs to the ruling/occupying class, that we must be careful to not let this blame let local players be swept under the rug, as they play a critical role and local populations have more influence on these actors. It is about nuance and a warning, not an excuse.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#220

Post by getcrunk »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #193

Prepping the serfs for war with China

Ding ding ding. India has always been very education and tech forward. Hopefully this is a not the beginning of a trend, but the increased nationalism and authoritarianism (crypto, vpn ban) would fit very well with a dumbed down populace.
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