Evolution and the periodic table of elements suddenly removed from Indian textbooks, with over 4,500 scientists and teachers protesting
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The theory of evolution, which states that 'living things are not static but have evolved little by little over a long period of time,' is widely accepted as a theory based on numerous studies and evidence, and is now even included in textbooks. However, there are regions in India where evolution is not accepted due to religious or ideological reasons. It has been reported that the theory of evolution will be removed from the middle and high school curriculum, and topics such as the periodic table of elements, pollution, and climate change will also be removed.
Scientists in India protest move to drop Darwinian evolution from textbooks | Science | AAAS
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-india-protest-move-drop-darwinian-evolution-textbooks
India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks — experts are baffled
https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01770-y
According to the academic journal Science, it has been decided that the section on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution will be removed from textbooks used by ninth-graders (third-graders in junior high school in Japan) and tenth-graders (first-graders in high school in Japan) in India.
Additionally, topics related to the periodic table of elements, energy sources and natural resource management, the work of Michael Faraday, the father of electromagnetism, the Industrial Revolution, and democracy and diversity have also been removed from the textbooks. Regarding these changes, NCERT said it had 'considered whether there was duplication of similar content covered elsewhere, the level of difficulty of the content, and whether the content was irrelevant.'
The curriculum changes will affect approximately 134 million school-aged children between the ages of 11 and 18. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the government body that sets the curriculum and publishes textbooks in India, said the removal of the evolutionary topic was part of a content streamlining process, citing the need to avoid content that is irrelevant in the current context amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
'The reason for removing topics is to encourage students to ask questions, but removing basic concepts may actually stifle curiosity rather than stimulate it,' said Anindita Badola of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata. 'Removing topics is like 'less content, less teaching,' which is not how you stimulate curiosity.'
by DFID - UK Department for International Development
One area of particular concern among Indian educators and scientists is the removal of evolution, a topic deeply connected to biological diversity and even genetics, which is taught in higher grades. 'Indian religious groups have begun to take an anti-evolution stance, and that influence is evident in the curriculum,' said Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.
Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the curriculum change was being pushed by the RSS, a far-right Hindu organization with close ties to India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Mukherjee speculates that the RSS believes Hinduism is threatened by other religions and cultures in India, and that pressure may have been put on schools to remove evolutionary theory, which is incompatible with Hindu teachings.
by Stanley Zimny (Thank You for 66 Million views)
'Anyone who tries to teach biology without covering evolution is not teaching biology as we understand it,' said Jonathan Osborn, a science education researcher at Stanford University. 'Evolution is the most fundamental of biology. And the periodic table is one of the great intellectual achievements of chemists, explaining how the building blocks of life combine to produce vastly different properties.'
More than 4,500 Indian scientists and teachers have signed a petition calling for the curriculum to be rolled back, but NCERT has not responded to any requests for comment from the scientific journal Nature.
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