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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

#171

Post by waterheater »

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 to Hinduism, atman evolves by inhabiting more complete forms of physical vessel, passing from fish to amphibian to cow to human to Buddha.

Additionally, Hindu belief systems admit the existence of reincarnative process, which Western belief systems, including our most fundamental prevailing scientific axiom, do not. Darwinian evolution and an overarching reincarnative process cannot coexist because the former requires that the physical world is the totality of reality while the latter requires that the physical world is a small but important portion of reality. Humans are either the descendants of monkeys via a completely-observable evolutionary process, or forces beyond those which are Seen shape our development.

Western arrogance dismisses these ideas as invalid at face value. A Westerner should honestly seek to understand the Hindu belief system and suss out where it is accurate and inaccurate without resorting to pathos argumentation.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#172

Post by Bekknqv »

dexzod wrote: post #158
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…

Oh wow, this is not the only thing axed from curriculum. This article goes in some more detail: https://thewire.in/education/h-for-hindu-rashtra-is-a-ration...

You can already check the omitted chapters and the textbooks themselves on the NCERT website.

That article barely explains anything and is literally tagged as 'humour'. Looks like they're more interested in playing politics than discussing the changes.

The primary reason cited for these changes is that they're aimed at reducing the burden on students. They've tried to reduce the syllabus by about 30%.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#173

Post by renewiltord »

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…

Haha, it's funny but that's the story they go with. There's also great anger in India for "paid conversions" where Christian missionaries give people money and resources if they'll become Christian. Ultimately, it seems reasonable that you go with the god who serves you best.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#174

Post by rodgerd »

SAS_SBS wrote: post #118
local_crmdgeon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cultures that keep looking at imagined past glories, imo, are destined to become static and falter. If education was just chanting this half the day the world would be better off. I had a Hindu nationalist recently berate me about how the "US had lost the Space Race, ISRO was the clear winner." I mentioned the US landed on the Moon first, and he said "would rather have not landed on the Moon than live in a country w…

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 scratch my head and wonder, if India is so good WTF are they still doing here

Some of Erdoğan's most reliable voters live in Germany. It's not uncommon.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#175

Post by andybak »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #149
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…

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 scientifi…

Holup. You're referring to something specific, methinks?

I don't recall much of this in cosmology, organic chemistry or behavioural ornithology.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#176

Post by jolux »

RajT88 wrote: post #134
sriram_malhar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is wild to me that one of the next great world powers is shooting itself in the foot like this with regards to science education. Surely that runs counter to their goals, right?

Generally the goal of an authoritarian government is keeping the leader in power long enough to rob the country blind and then die peacefully. Where they have goals outside of that they do not tend to prioritize education — educated people often have more of the resources they need to challenge power.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#177

Post by andybak »

duskwuff wrote: post #156
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…

The corollary story that usually shows up is that Westerners "stole" scientific discoveries from India and suppressed them while the country was under occupation. There's a fairly standard example of this at: https://pparihar.com/2017/05/22/modern-inventions-stolen-fro... And the BBC reported on some instances of this sort of thought at the Indian Science Congress in 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46…

That first link is a gateway to a whole level of insanity I had no idea about.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#178

Post by bee_rider »

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.

“Advanced” is sort of ambiguous, so it is hard to say what the original comment is really dismissing.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#179

Post by notRobot »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #100
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.

> They don’t value STEM education. They value they jobs and prestige STEM education can get them. Second sentence disagrees with the first sentence.

You don't have to like cows to like milk.

Re: India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

#180

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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