India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks

Strange how a former police officer gets a gov job with influence over higher education. He called himself a “man of science” but his entire career was police work with a bit of politics at the tail end.

He was “minister of state” [1] for the Ministry of Human Resource Development which apparently was renamed the Ministry of Education after he left.

[1] Google tells me that’s an assistant/junior role to the actual Minister.

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-46778879

As to why it works, I completely understand. We just want reasons to feel superior. It is why in high school jocks define metrics as strength and why nerds define metrics as intelligence. It's why we have "well I have street smarts" and other things like that.

The effect of British rule on India is sometimes called “de-industrialization”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-industrialisation_of_India?...

The British had a deliberate policy of extracting raw materials and flooding the market with machine-manufactured goods. The British markets were not open to Indian manufacturers. So not only was India de-industrialized, but many rare skills and techniques were lost during this period. I can’t find a reference, but I remember reading an early British East India Conpany account of encountering silk of such fine quality that yards of it could be folded into a tiny box. Those workers would have been put out of business by the British, and their skills lost for generations. Might be a legend but I’m sure many things like that happened.

It’s just not things like rockets or nuclear weapons.

But this is the history of every region/country. There aren't realistically countries that are thousands of years old, only centuries (and not as how we think of them). But this isn't politically popular. Similarly is that a small force can't occupy a region without significant levels of collusion with local players[1]. English occupation influenced Indian unification as it also unified adversaries and caused competing groups to align to a more important goal. We like to paint stories of ancient cultural heritage, but this is all very fuzzy and extremely messy. Many cultures can claim inventions as borders drastically shifted over the centuries. I think a lot of this just has to do with are limited context windows and that it is hard to codify these timeframes and the complexities of establishing borders (obviously along with political narratives and propaganda). But it also should say a lot about the modern world and why Long Peace is such a big thing (very recent thing btw).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN41DJLQmPk

[1] I need to be clear that this doesn't justify or excuse in any way occupation. It doesn't dismiss the brutalities and injustices. It is more about how while the dominant blame belongs to the ruling/occupying class, that we must be careful to not let this blame let local players be swept under the rug, as they play a critical role and local populations have more influence on these actors. It is about nuance and a warning, not an excuse.

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

> Let us remember where a lot of "scientific" funding comes from, the politicians and Uncle Sam; which inherently tends to corrupt the "science" to become political.

Which this is a flag about your political beliefs and lack of experience. It just doesn't follow the practicality of the situation. Neither democrats nor republicans control government science. If you look at DOE secretaries you'll see their party affiliation matches the sitting president. In the labs, there are a lot of political diversity (including a need to ban news being played in the cafeterias because it led to fighting). It is far from monolithic and it's absurd to paint it with a wide brush. You also need to decouple the science (what's being published) from what becomes political narratives (news/directions from secretaries). Gov scientists frequently publish works contrary to the normal political narratives (even of the agency) and if they are prevented from publishing leaks happen pretty quickly.

Some science itself is innately connected to politics (others "aren't"[0]: e.g. cosmology or particle physics). The question is how science should be participating (leading, participating, or auxiliary). You invent new technologies that affect societies and governments... govern societies. You find information that affect citizens and of course this is going to affect policy (e.g. climate change). Of course there are going to be biases, but there is less than what you'd find in an industry. Government science is different, especially since the focus is far less profit motivated (the scientists also aren't making much and can make far more in industry if they are profit motivated). While not ideal, gov science should be a third party verification of information. As an example, looking at climate again, you look at the results of 3 (not independent) different groups: gov, industry, academia (influenced by both gov and industry). If gov + academia comes to a consensus, industry agrees with data but not conclusions, then there's reason to distrust the industry conclusions as there's profit incentives. Your comment is destructive because it has been the narrative that has led to industry capture and manipulation. We've seen it in leaded gasoline, cigarettes, climate change, and many others. No, gov and academia aren't perfect, but this shouldn't result in defaulting to industry opinion or allowing them to dominate narratives. This has to stop.

[0] quotes because money and funding is political, but this is different than conclusions like climate change. Most gov science is in the low politics camp btw.

More seriously, a French wrapper is just that and not the government in any capacity.

Ok, how about this?

Ayush is a govt portal for govt funded products based on ancient Indian pharmacology. Here is the 'research' on panchagavya (click to find out what it is, and weep) https://ayushportal.nic.in/panchagavya.html

Or, how about this: cow urine is sold on amazon

https://www.amazon.in/s?k=cow+urine&crid=277U5YZ3T98T8&spref...

This is not an isolated person who's lost his marbles. It is a massive country, where a small but highly vocal and powerful minority has completely lost it, and they are the ones who vote.

--------

As for the second, it was not a lecture at a science institute. It was the 102nd Indian Science Congress, an event that is supposed to be prestigious. Indian Nobel winners, Field medalists, prominent space scientists were there amongst the august crowd. And there was an entire track imposed on that event by the govt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Indian_Science_Congress_a...

I am not going to give a link to that paper; you need to do some homework. That is of course, if you care about what is happening. Hope you will not be like the others who say, 'but Modi is building roads and airports, so everything is getting better'. I weep for my country.

Goals are what voters are apathetic to let happen.

Power is always in comparison to something. You are powerful compared to somebody. So as long as they have enough to exercise control over minorities of India and feel nice about it they are powerful enough.

The whole idea of western style power over the whole world is not something they imagine as power. Or at least proactively work towards.

Humanity goes extinct due to an inability to switch off the tribalism us-vs-them mechanism.

Petty nationalism steals humanity’s future for 10 points, Alex

It almost seems like he must be trolling.

Is this in India or abroad?

Oh, and the same maid works in 4 different houses, getting a reasonable monthly income.

But then the same Hindu nationalists had this weird tendency to think they were entitled to US based tech jobs. They would claim Indians were responsible for all the tech companies in the US being successful and not Americans and that America is this awful, sad, corrupt society that they really wanted to get into despite India being better in every way apparently. It was irritating at times and sad because this isn't uncommon imo.

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

Everyone looks at the glory of yesterday, but some are much more obsessed with it. It becomes issue when it leads to contradicting the facts, using it to harm others, and preventing yourself from building a better future.

And even besides it, the US is highly backwards-looking. At its best, it's political culture is ossified and enslaved to the predominant opinions of a small group of people who are two centuries dead. (While being oblivious to the fact that within that group, there was a huge spectrum of disagreement on these fundamental questions!)

Pile on a bunch of American Exceptionalism, and you get a perfect thought-terminating cocktail of 'It is this way because it's always been this way and because we are the greatest country in the world.'

These are the cultures that do this most. Pointing to a mythologized and stolen past greatness is a coping mechanism for the insecurities of a flagging present.

This last guy claimed that those languages also derived from it.

And he didn't like "those people" either.

There might have been aliens into the mix as well.

Huh? Is this a homeschool trend? Final exams are the cornerstone of US secondary and tertiary education.

[0] https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/ap-exams-overview

> returning to a previous state of affairs that is perceived as favorable compared to the present

and

> maintaining the status quo

are primarily directed at hierarchy. The exact ideas of any conservative might differ between them (e.g. they might prefer different time periods to "return to", or focus on different areas of society and politics as important right now), but at their core they are directed at building and maintaining strict social/political/economical hierarchies. Often times it's about perceived "natural hierarchies" (e.g. meritocracy in the labor market, or competition in the free market), often times about traditional ones, and sometimes about preventing "unnatural ones", but I honestly can't think of any current or recent conservative legislation (internationally) that doesn't follow this pattern.

In India's case, the dilemna is that the jobs the citizenry aspires to are only accessible through the current British-origin education system. This current government has made a huge push for Hindi language education, for instance, so much so that it even mandated courses in science and medicine be taught in Hindi, even when there are few good translations or instructors.

The citizenry, of course, finds its own way. Despite all the Hindi push, every city is lined with tuition centers that promise to teach you English, because that's the ticket to a better job.

The negotiation, once again.

why have an educationally insufficient NCERT curriculum?

> I read an internet comment that said "They don’t value STEM education. They value they jobs and prestige STEM education can get them." The second sentence seems to contradict the first. Can you explain if it does?

And it gave quite a good explanation. If you'd like I can share the chat, but perhaps you'd like to give it a shot yourself?

They are, but they are still private schools, not government schools. They are based in British public schools, where the word 'public' refers to the fact that students of any religion could historically be admitted to them, not that they are state-owned or state-controlled.

Probably a carryover in terminology from Britain, where extremely prestigious schools like Eton are called "public schools" for historical reasons.

Sometimes private schools can be shittier than the government run schools (eg. in the town my family is from in Himachal) but in other places the private schools will at least not have absentee teachers (a common issue in much poorer regions of India).

P.S. the public school moniker for some Indian private schools is a holdover from the British era. Most modern private schools don't call themselves "public" anymore - they prefer being called "International Schools".

Public schools are a joke and you would usually find kids mocking anyone slightly unsophisticated as “from a government (public) school”

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.

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%.

I'm no biologist or teacher, but I don't feel like you need to jump into evolution to understand how everyday things like digestion or photosynthesis occur.

There are plenty of introductory articles on the internet that could fit in a page or two. Interested students could go home and look it up. I meant it as a means to provoke curiosity and to be made aware of.

Certain pages on the textbooks here have these boxes with some trivia about scientists/inventions. I remember reading those boxes in school and then coming home and looking things up to learn a bit more. You aren't graded on them, but they're interesting to read.

> Are these subject not taught at all in Indian school? Before 11/12 grade (assuming the students picks them)?

You don't get to pick anything other than your language until grade 10. Biology, physics and chemistry are compulsory until grade 10.

If a student picks biology after grade 10, they will be taught evolution in more detail.

> What do they focus on instead?

It starts around 6th grade. Begins with humans and plants, their anatomy, nutrition, reproduction, everyday activities etc. Then you learn about cells and tissues, hormones and sex-ed, evolution and heredity, AFAIK.

You can check the textbooks/syllabus here- https://ncert.nic.in/textbook.php