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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

#161

Post by oarla »

SAS_SBS wrote: post #126
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Completely agree with this statement. I work in HFT and have Indians asking me all the time: "what should I do to get a quant job or a low latency C++ job?". 99.9% of these folks have zero interest in Math (good luck being a quant) or have zero interest/passion in low level systems programming (good luck developing low latency systems). All they care about is the prestige and high pay in the HFT industry, and that if…

Then why don't the firms have a psychological evaluation to ensure that only people who are passionate about math or low level programming are hired in such firms? Seems like a win win situation since such folks can nurture their interest, mingle with other like minded folks and company also benefits by their efforts.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#162

Post by captn3m0 »

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…

> By the 2021-2022 academic year, Darwin’s theory was quietly removed from the examination syllabus for the students of Class 9 and Class 10. By 2022-2023, the topic of evolution was completely purged from school textbooks, teachers and education experts told Al Jazeera.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/14/mughals-rss-evoluti...

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#163

Post by prakashk »

postalrat wrote: post #88
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.

What countries don't look back at their past glories?

I hope you aren't using the "everybody does it" argument to normalize, or worse, justify this stupidity.

That every country has its share of people who engage in such backward-looking, glorifying-the-past behavior does not make it right.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#164

Post by mensetmanusman »

hayst4ck wrote: post #56
WhatsName wrote: post #4

Cutting and defunding education seems such a prevalent global trend, I find it hard to believe there is no hidden agenda. At least here it seems to happen with the clear political agenda. Who needs evolution and democracy anyways other than those inconvenient to the indian government.

It's a question of where your core axioms come from. The core axiom from which a person builds a belief system can be that contradictions are wrong or that authority (the bible/priest/parent) is right. This is why conservatives frequently fail to respond to pointing out their contradictions. Their core axiom is one of authority, contradictions have little bearing on their analysis of what is true or not. New informat…

This isn't a useful analysis because you are describing general human challenges beyond political bents.

Also India has a completely different alignment compared to US-Left/Right and they still struggle from similar issues.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#166

Post by Bekknqv »

duskwuff wrote: post #150
Bekknqv wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but the goal here is to reduce the burden by removing things that are already present elsewhere.

You could probably make the same argument for a bunch of other 9th grade topics.

Regardless, teachers won't just pretend like the periodic table doesn't exist though, they'll talk about it in 10th grade too, because it ties into a few other chapters, but the key difference is that the students won't be graded on it in their final exams.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#167

Post by alephnerd »

1024core wrote: post #157
alephnerd wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minister of State is a generic executive position that is created to reward medium level politicians. Satyapal Singh specifically helped the BJP win over the Jat community in Western Uttar Pradesh which before 2014 voted for the RLD (a Jat primary party in western UP, Rajasthan, and Haryana). By rewarding him, with a low level backbench minister position, he can provide patronage to the rest of his patronage network.…

I, on the other hand, can't stand when people cherry-pick facts to try and make a point. The INC is doing the same caste/tribe based division of power that you accuse the BJP of. Have you seen the list of ministers in the latest Karnataka cabinet: https://thefederal.com/states/south/karnataka/karnataka-cabi... ?

From my post

> Due to this, caste, family, and regional patronage networks form, and this is common across all parties (INC, BJP, etc)

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#168

Post by pfannkuchen »

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?

I don’t recall any accounts of the British finding nuclear power when they arrived though…

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#169

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]
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