In India, children under the age of 16 who return to school at the beginning of the new school year this month will not be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements or energy sources.
News that the theory of evolution would be removed from the curriculum for 15- and 16-year-olds was widely reported last month, prompting thousands to sign a petition to protest. However, official guidance has revealed that the periodic table chapter will also be reduced, along with other foundational themes such as energy sources and environmental sustainability. Younger learners will no longer be taught certain pollution- and climate-related topics, while older students will have fewer subjects in biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics.
Overall, the changes will affect approximately 134 million children aged 11-18 who attend school in India. What has changed became more apparent last month when the National Council for Education, Research and Training (NCERT), the public body that develops India’s school curricula and textbooks, unveiled textbooks for the new school year beginning in May. .
Researchers, including those studying science education, are shocked. “Anyone who tries to teach biology without dealing with evolution is not teaching biology as we know it today,” says Jonathan Osborne, a science education researcher at Stanford University in California. . “It’s fundamental to biology.” The periodic table explains how the building blocks of life combine to produce substances with vastly different properties. He is one,” he added.
“Everything related to water, air pollution and resource management has been removed. I don’t know if it will be done. [pollution], it doesn’t matter to us. Even more so now,” she added. The chapter on various energy sources, from fossil fuels to renewable energy, has also been removed. “It’s a little weird, to be honest, given its relevance to today’s world,” Osborne said.
More than 4,500 scientists, teachers and science communicators have signed a petition to revive obsolete evolutionary content hosted by the Breakthrough Science Society, an advocacy group based in Kolkata, India.
NCERT has not responded to the appeal. And while relying on a panel of experts to oversee the changes, they have not yet worked with parents and teachers to explain the rationale for making the changes. NCERT also did not respond NatureThis is a comment request from Mr.
Chapter finished
The chapter on the Periodic Table of Elements has been removed from the syllabus for students in class 10, typically aged 15-16. The entire chapter on sustainable management of energy sources and natural resources has also been deleted.
A small section on Michael Faraday’s contribution to the 19th century understanding of electricity and magnetism has also been removed from the class 10 syllabus. In non-scientific content, a chapter on democracy and diversity. political parties; and challenges to democracy abolished. Also, the chapter on the Industrial Revolution has been removed for higher grades.
NCERT said on its website that when explaining the changes, it considered whether there was overlap with similar content on other sites, the difficulty of the content, and the irrelevance of the content. It also aims to provide opportunities for experiential learning and creativity.
NCERT announced the cuts last year as it eased the pressure on students to study online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Science and Research in Bangalore, India, said science teachers and researchers expected the content to be restored when students returned to the classroom. . Instead, NCERT shocked everyone by printing a statement in the new year’s textbooks that the changes would continue for the next two academic years, in line with India’s revised education policy approved by the government in July 2020. .
“idea [behind the new policy] It’s about getting students to ask questions,” says Anindita Bhadra, an evolutionary biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata. But removing basic concepts is likely to stifle curiosity rather than foster it, she says. “It’s a ‘remove content, teach less’ approach. That’s not how you do it,” she says.
stop evolution
Science educators are particularly concerned about the removal of evolutionary theory. A chapter on biodiversity and a chapter on ‘Why do we get sick’ have been removed from the curriculum, usually for students aged 14-15 in Class 9. Darwin’s Contributions to Evolution, How Fossils Formed, and Human Evolution have all been removed from the Genetics and Evolution chapter for students in class 10. That chapter is now simply called “Inheritance”. Evolution is essential to understanding human diversity and “our place in the world,” Joshi says.
In India, grade 10 is the last year to teach science to all students. Only students who choose to study biology during her last two years of education (before college) will learn about this subject.
Joshi says the curriculum revision process lacks transparency. But in the case of evolution, “more and more religious groups in India are taking an anti-evolutionist stance,” he says. Some members of the public believe that the theory of evolution is irrelevant outside academic institutions.
Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said the curriculum change was a result of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS), a mass-member volunteer organization with close ties to India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party. said to be driven by RSS feels that Hinduism is under threat from other religions and cultures in India.
In India, “there is a movement away from rational thinking and against Enlightenment and Western thinking,” said Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University who collaborated with Mukherjee on a study of RSS’s impact on school textbooks. Researcher Sucheta Mahajan added. Evolution contradicts the story of creation, Mukherjee added. History is the main target, but “science is one of the victims,” she added.
This article is reprinted with permission and was first published May 31, 2023.
