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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

#271

Post by carlmr »

cafard wrote: post #263
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is not alone. We have a well-known rapper in France who recently explained how the Egyptian pyramides were something something electricity generators and that Egyptians had electricity thousand of years ago. This was relayed on TikTok and other platforms to the point where some gov't official had to say that this is bullshit.

What arm of the French government did this rapper represent?

He said represent in public a few times and people thought he's a public representative!

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#272

Post by carlmr »

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?

Yes, but there's usually a lot of magic thinking involved about technology that supposedly got lost, but in actuality nobody had at that time.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#273

Post by rovolo »

duskwuff wrote: post #200
godelski wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how is knowledge "stolen"? I understand in the context of piracy, but like piracy you can't really remove it from the originator. Sure, you can take and destroy all books you can find, but it is also pretty easy to make new books (and hide them) or pass knowledge through word of mouth (or hidden in stories). Wouldn't a highly intelligent society be able to accomplish such a simple feat that's been demonstrated by…

I didn't say the narrative made sense! But I think the implication was that there was some sort of systematic campaign to erase Indian records of that knowledge after "stealing" it, i.e. by destroying artifacts and written records, preventing word-of-mouth transmission of history, etc. Of course this is all nonsense, but it's nonsense which plays well to an audience which is open to nationalist, anti-imperialist mess…

I agree that all of the example in the blog post and bbc article are nonsense. However, I think that you're slightly wrong in this statement:

> I think the implication was that there was some sort of systematic campaign to erase Indian records of that knowledge

The blog post is more specific than "Indian records". The blog post is talking about the Vedas in particular. I don't know much about the Vedas, but this looks a lot more like biblical literalism to me. The references to the Raj and to stolen knowledge are used to bolster the Vedas as a primary source of truth.

> Even by today’s standards, if properly applied, these Vedic Sutras can create most advanced technological instruments and mammoth machines ever known to mankind.

> Science expanded its views in the area of observation as well. Thomas Edison developed the light bulb and the motion picture based on Vedic principles. Sun rays emitting illusory rainbows, speed of light and its composition are all explained in Vedas. The idea that light defines or makes our universe visible can be found as explained by Shrila Prabhupada in his purport to SB 2.9.4 “In the darkness one cannot see the sun, nor himself, nor the world. But in the sunlight one can see the sun, himself and the world around him.”

FWIW, I think that it's pretty straightforward to suppress knowledge though. You can record knowledge into books, but it's not really known if no-one is reading the books or using that knowledge. You can suppress metal-working know-how by eliminating metal-working jobs. The Raj had a profound control over India which affected the available areas of work, which would affect what people wanted to learn. You don't have to explicitly ban a topic to make people not want to study that topic.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#274

Post by joshuaissac »

qwytw wrote: post #201
desas wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where extremely prestigious schools like Eton are called "public schools" for historical reasons. In the UK public and private referred to who could access the schools (assuming they had the money), whereas in the US they refer to how the schools are funded. Now the UK has a kludge. The former private schools don't really exist, they've mainly changed into independent fee-paying public schools not controlled or fun…

What would be an example of a non public private school (even in the past?). I assumed the terms are basically synonymous in the UK?

> I assumed the terms are basically synonymous in the UK?

No, 'public school' would be understood to refer only to the most elite of private schools in the UK, such as Eton, Harrow, Winchester, etc. A run-of-the-mill private school would not be considered to be a public school.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#275

Post by spaceman_2020 »

omginternets wrote: post #96
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of developing countries are in a phase of working out their future paths. Most of them inherited colonial institutions and power structures and are finally hitting a point where all the old guard has died or become irrelevant. There’s a period of negotiation - figuring out what parts of your colonial history you want to keep, what to change. So many things we assume as “normal” invariably have roots in colonial…

Why do you suppose that educational institutions are on the chopping block? That would seem like precisely the part of one’s colonial history to keep. I understand that it has become common to attribute a number of injustices to heritage from the colonial period, but why education in particular? Why that more than fashion, say, or the institutions of law?

For one, educational systems is pretty much where you're truly indoctrinated into the system (any system) and its values. The current Indian education system was inherited from the British and still retains most of its elements. A post-colonial state seeking to right all the injustices of the past - some real, some imagined - would likely want to change the first step its citizens take into the new system they want to create.

In India's case, the dilemna is that the jobs the citizenry aspires to are only accessible through the current British-origin education system. This current government has made a huge push for Hindi language education, for instance, so much so that it even mandated courses in science and medicine be taught in Hindi, even when there are few good translations or instructors.

The citizenry, of course, finds its own way. Despite all the Hindi push, every city is lined with tuition centers that promise to teach you English, because that's the ticket to a better job.

The negotiation, once again.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#277

Post by User23 »

User23 wrote: post #233
29athrowaway wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you create a simulated environment that results in selection, mutation and crossover, and a measure of fitness, even if not implicit, and then add a few cells, let it run for millions of iterations and then end up with space marines, that would be more akin to what you claim "has no bearing on reality".

I can simulate a creationist environment in which anything in your simulated evolutionary environment also exists. Is that evidence for creationism? No of course not. Computer simulations aren’t evidence for anything. So no.

Come to think of it, according to the simulationists, the existence of computer simulations in our reality is evidence that we live inside such a simulation. So if anything your simulation of evolution is evidence for the simulationist form of intelligent design creationism.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#278

Post by occamschainsaw »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #90
fractalb wrote: post #46

They actually cut the syllabus for students below class X. It's not a ban or anything. And it's only NCERT's (central board of education) syllabus. Each state has its own education board and syllabus. The headline is not honest.

if each state can just ignore the NCERT curriculum, and if the NCERT curriculum itself is educationally insufficient (not teaching evolution or the periodic table in a school curriculum makes that curriculum a failure), then what is the point of the NCERT curriculum?

It is the common central/federal baseline. It is accepted as a high school credential everywhere in India (other boards are accepted in general too, but NCERT has to be accepted).

This insufficiency with weird omission for evolution and periodic table seems to be due to covid after effects or general incompetence rather than malice.

I studied in 3 different boards at different points of schooling and the rule of thumb was state board, NCERT/CBSE and ICSE in increasing order of “rigor”. The last two years of high school are spent in preparing for competitive entrance exams anyways, whose syllabus usually is a superset of the school syllabus in your chosen field (engineering, medicine, sciences etc.)

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#279

Post by omginternets »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #275
omginternets wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you suppose that educational institutions are on the chopping block? That would seem like precisely the part of one’s colonial history to keep. I understand that it has become common to attribute a number of injustices to heritage from the colonial period, but why education in particular? Why that more than fashion, say, or the institutions of law?

For one, educational systems is pretty much where you're truly indoctrinated into the system (any system) and its values. The current Indian education system was inherited from the British and still retains most of its elements. A post-colonial state seeking to right all the injustices of the past - some real, some imagined - would likely want to change the first step its citizens take into the new system they want t…

Am I understanding correctly that courses are (mostly?) still taught in English? If so, that suddenly makes the situation a bit more legible to me from the outside!

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#280

Post by rustedspoon »

rajup wrote: post #139
xeromal wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the "Leaving apart the sewing of an elephant's head" is the whole point the poster was making. lol

Not how I read it. OP seems to completely dismiss the possibility that some surgical techniques may have been known in Ancient India because of what I’m sure is prejudice against one or more of religion/Hinduism/speaker(Modi in this case). Like I said the story about the elephant’s head is likely mythological/religious but that doesn’t take away from the other basic facts.

OP quotes saying that Indian politicians from the current party are being anti-science, but the first link where modi talks about religious texts is trying to link it to science.

If you read further in the link he talks about Aryabhata and space science and how we need to regain those.

This is anything but anti-science Seems pretty funny to me, the reference added to say that this Indian politician is anti science is actually trying to encourage ppl to become good at science. May be he using religious based texts, but that speech in the article isn’t really anti science though.

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