Over 4,500 scientists and teachers protest sudden removal of evolution theory and periodic table from Indian textbooks
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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,' has been accepted as an established theory with many studies and evidence, and is now included in textbooks. There are also regions that do not accept the theory of evolution. In India, it is reported that the theory of evolution will be removed from the junior high school and high school curriculum, and that topics such as the periodic table of elements, pollution and climate change will not be handled.
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 table periodic 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 items related to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution will be deleted from the textbooks used by Indian ninth graders (Japanese junior high school third graders) and tenth graders (Japanese high school first graders). It is said that there is.
In addition, topics related to the periodic table of elements, the management of energy sources and natural resources, the achievements of Michael Faraday, the father of electromagnetism, the industrial revolution, and democracy and diversity have been removed from textbooks. I was. Regarding these changes, NCERT said it 'considered whether they overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, how difficult the content was, and whether the content was irrelevant.'
This curriculum change will affect about 134 million people aged 11 to 18 who attend Indian schools. The National Education Research and Training Council (NCERT), an autonomous government organization that sets the curriculum for students and publishes textbooks in India, said, ``The removal of the topic of evolution is part of the content rationalization process.'' He said that he decided to delete it in the pandemic of coronavirus infection, saying, 'I should avoid irrelevant content in the current context.'
Anindita Bhadra, of the Indian Institute of Science Education in Kolkata, said, ``The removal of the topic was intended to encourage students to ask questions, but the removal of basic concepts inhibits, rather than stimulates, curiosity. Deleting a topic is like 'less content, less teaching,' and that's not the way to pique curiosity.'
by DFID - UK Department for International Development
Of particular concern among Indian educators and scientists is that the theory of evolution has been deleted. Evolution is a topic that is deeply related to biodiversity, and even more so to heredity, which we learn in higher grades. ``Indian religious groups are beginning to take an anti-evolutionist stance, and the impact is being felt in the curriculum,'' says Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Science Research. .
According to Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the curriculum changes are being pushed by a far-right Hindu group with close ties to India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. It is said that there is. RSS seems to think that Hinduism is threatened by other religions and cultures in India, and Mr. Mukherjee speculates that there was pressure to delete the theory of evolution that is incompatible with Hindu teachings. doing.
by Stanley Zimny (Thank You for 66 Million views)
'Someone who tries to teach biology without addressing evolution is not teaching biology as we know it,' said Jonathan Osborne, a science education researcher at Stanford University. Evolution is the basic of biology, and the periodic table explains how the building blocks of life combine to have vastly different properties, and is the great intellectual power of the chemist. It's one of our achievements,' he said.
More than 4,500 Indian scientists and teachers have signed an appeal to restore the curriculum, but NCERT has not responded at all and has not responded to requests for comment from scientific journals and Nature.
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