In a statement, the council rationalized the reduction by stating they wanted to reduce the content load on students in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. On June 1, India cut a slew of foundational topics from tenth grade textbooks, including the periodic table of elements, Darwin's theory of evolution, the Pythagorean theorem, sources of energy, sustainable management of natural resources and contribution of agriculture to the national economy, among others. These changes effectively block a major swath of Indian students from exposure to evolution through textbooks, because tenth grade is the last year mandatory science classes are offered in Indian schools.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/evolution-periodic-table-to-stay-part-of-class-9-10-syllabus/articleshow/101058188.cms

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[–] 158 points 2 years ago (2 children)

And just like that, 1 in every seven kids in the world got royally fucked.

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  • [–] 65 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    Right?

    Let's see, Pythagorean theorem, is what, a couple thousand years old, and a single statement, right? And it's the foundation of geometry and trig. Hell, I regularly say it in my head (a2+b2=c2) when trying to figure out spatial relationships, for dumb stuff no less (will this table fit on my patio with room to walk around it?).

    It's how you ensure anything you're trying to make square is square. In framing (shed, house, deck, whatever) it's used to ensure you setup your string in the proper orientation and don't end up with a parallelogram.

    And the Periodic table.... The bloody basis of understanding chemical reactions and physics.

    I guess if you're not teaching the Periodic Table, there'd be no hope if understanding evolutionary theory, since it's predicated on chemical behaviour.

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago* (11 children)

    Seriously… the Pythagorean Theorem is the single most important piece of practical math that can be easily taught to everyone.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    I'm a software engineer and I think one of my personal favorite random applications of Pythagoras/ trig was in my data visualization class back in scool. The assignment was to take a dataset of Soviet space launches with dogs and display it in an interactive approachable manner (ie less rigorous data science and more local science center), so I thought it would be fun to show rockets for each lauch and animate them rotating around the earth. Queue the trig to place each icon an appropriate distance (scaled to the launch height in my data), angle, and spacing from the earth.

    I'll admit it doesn't come up all that often (in web development), but it's nice to have that foundational knowledge to dredge up when I need it.

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    [–] 112 points 2 years ago (15 children)

    PEOPLE FALLING FOR THIS SHIT AGAIN IS INSANE !

    They haven't removed the Pythagorean theorem, it seems to be taught in lower grades. This is Pythagorean theorem for the similarity of triangles, which was dropped to remove burden during pandemic.

    Periodic tables and evolution are moved to one or two grade higher. NOT DROPPED.

    There you go. Now you have the facts. Enjoy the rest of your day 🫡

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What the hell are you talking about!? It says in the article that these three subjects have been moved out of mandatory learning.

    Meaning that most Indian students won't understand the basic principles of evolution or the most simple understanding of the composition of elements.

    Not considering either of these three to be essential mandatory learning is insane.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    The syllabus includes of related topics way before in 6th or 7th grade. Some of them are often repeated (may be even intentionally). They learn about elements and their composition in 7th or 8th grade. After having all that, if student is inclined to it they learn more in 11th and 12th grades. Most of students follow up to 12th in India. If you are so concerned go check the textbooks yourself - https://ncert.nic.in/textbook.php

    Although I don’t suppose most people won’t do that because why put the effort to understand things when you can spew dumb opinions around ?

    The reason the topics were rationalised to improve remote learning and reduce burden on students during exams in a country where suicide rates among students due to exams and societal pressures is a real concern.

    The way people have been reacting to this is as if students coming out of school are dumb fucks with no scientific knowledge. I bet the ones commenting here doesn’t even know half of what those students know.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It says in the post that 10th grade is the last mandatory grade, so this means many students will miss out on learning about evolution, no?

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Correct. After 10th grade, you can choose a "stream" (course). You can choose between science, commerce, or humanities. What's worse is that each stream has multiple branches, and biology is not included in all the branches. So if you were to choose computer science branch in the science stream, you will not take any biology classes.

    So a vast majority of students would never learn about some very important scientific concepts if this was implemented, but I'm not sure if they reversed this decision or not.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    These changes effectively block a major swath of Indian students from exposure to evolution through textbooks, because tenth grade is the last year mandatory science classes are offered in Indian schools.

    I know nothing of India's education system. Does this mean it's in an optional class now or is this totally wrong?

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    as said below, that’s the last mandatory grade

    This is Pythagorean theorem for the similarity of triangles

    could you source that?

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    [–] 61 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    What the actual fuck? Those are all taught way before 10th grade here in the US, even in my ass-backwards state.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    I feel like they worded it poorly or misinterpret it from the source. Post-soviet edu has all three at 5th grade (age 10-12), the beginning of the middle school, because only then you can start and learn respective fields for remaining 5-7 years. If you place them in the last year of school it you don't have a room for that at all.

    I suppose it should've meant 'in their whole 10-year program', not the tenth grade.

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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Okay the evolution part, though stupid, is religious fundie par for the course. But middle school geometry? Are they fucking retarded?

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  • [–] 43 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Short answer, yes.

    In 2018, Indian minister for higher education Satyapal Singh baffled the scientific community by demanding that the theory of evolution be removed from school curriculum becaue "no one ever saw an ape turning into a human being." Other political leaders from the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party came to his defense on social media.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago*

    That statement alone speaks to his fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. Stupid people not knowing a subject, understanding their entirely flawed guess is wrong (I agree with them there) yet not realizing WHY they're wrong, then barring it because how ridiculous what they think it is sounds. Dunning something something Kruger something. I'm 100% for teaching kids that gorillas just dont turn into humans and actually teach them what evolution means.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Clearly that man needed to be taught more about evolution when he was in school.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    The thing is, evolution makes sense, so long as you aren’t going to outright reject the idea that humans aren’t a different category of thing from the rest of Animalia. It gets weird when you get deep enough to see that we share an ancestor with plants and bacteria and even archaea, but we have enough evidence that by the time you’re being asked to understand that fact you can see that line and understand how photosynthetic microbes slowly built new systems while other microbes ate the remains of them before slowly bit by bit developing new traits to differentiate and fill niches.

    They don’t want to think of themselves as such, because it’s a form of humility to understand that you evolved from a worm that just happened to have a particularly effective means of transmitting signals along the course of its body. They want to think their gods made them to rule nature.

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  • [+] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
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    [–] 34 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Ok don’t make it mandatory but then what would you be teaching instead? These are all like the basic building blocks of chemistry and geometry. You just aren’t gonna teach kids those subjects then?

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    [–] 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    Seems like you have not TIL’d fully.

    Setting aside that it was temporary (though I could agree there is some malice on the committee’s part in this respect), the topics in discussion were already introduced in lower grades and the complex aspects were moved to higher grades.

    But the most important part that never ever got discussed since the story broke, is that the change did got implemented because the committee listened to the feedback and dropped the plan merely a week later. [0]

    The government and education ministry have some glaring flaws, but this is not one of them. They continue to make questionable decisions that deserve attention and criticism; yet these issues rarely receive the focus that this story has generated.

    Please stop with the FUD, even if it is due to your lack of knowledge on the matter.

    [0] http://toi.in/WFlcAb44 (apologies for linking this abomination in the name of a news website, but they were the ones to break the news and get the interviews.)

    E: missed a word.

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    [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    Goddamn fascists man.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago

    What else to expect from a RW govt who thinks hindu religious scriptures have all the knowledge

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Are they still taught that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell?

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    [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    India is super conservative. A lot of Trump’s biggest supporters are Indian in the US.

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  • Those darn triangles!

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Modi's ahead of Trump on many many things. Mulsims are not yet lynched by mobs in the US

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