Some scientists say it is unclear whether the decision to drop evolutionary theory, sustainable management, and the periodic table of elements was driven by any specific agenda.
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Education experts and researchers, in India and abroad, have expressed their grave concern at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) move to drop evolution from the Class X syllabus. They claim that the decision was in tune with other moves by the Narendra Modi government to curb unfettered research and imperil young people’s capacity to question, media reports said.
British biologist and author Richard Dawkins referred to the decision on evolution in a tweet and said: “Modi’s BJP is a tragic affront to India’s secular beginnings.”
Only students who opt for the sciences and Biology in Classes XI and XII will formally learn about the theory of evolution under the syllabus change made. Scientists say they are worried that this will — as one researcher put it — create “a generation of young people who do not ask questions”.
Depriving students at the Class X level of knowledge about evolution is akin to “forcing our children to become myopic”, said Partha Pratim Majumder, a population geneticist and a former president of the Indian Academy of Sciences. “Enabling our children to learn the concept of evolution goes beyond its power as a scientific explanation.”
UK-based forensic anthropology expert Dr. Namrata Datta commented on the same and said that India will be forced into the dark ages if it does not act now.
In a lengthy tweet, Datta said, “School children in India will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements, sustainability, pollution or energy sources such as fossil fuels and renewables.” She further said that experts are baffled by the decision, and “more than 4,500 have signed an appeal to reinstate the axed content on evolution.”
Some scientists say it is unclear whether the decision to drop evolutionary theory, sustainable management, and the periodic table of elements was driven by any specific agenda. “It could be incompetence, an inability to understand what they’ve done,” said a physicist in Bangalore.
But topics such as evolution and sustainability provoke thought and questions from students, said Anindita Bhadra, a biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Calcutta.
Knowledge about evolution, scientists assert, encourages critical thinking, while sustainability exposes students to issues of choices and ethics. “If you don’t want children to grow up into thinking and questioning adults, you can begin by removing such topics from the school curriculum,” Bhadra said.
Other government departments too have curbed unfettered research, researchers said. In February 2022, the social justice and empowerment ministry decided that students from socially deprived groups receiving a national scholarship for higher education in foreign universities should not pursue topics related to Indian culture, heritage, history or society, a report in The Telegraph said.
Mythili Ramchand, a science-teacher trainer at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, says that “everything related to water, air pollution, resource management has been removed. “I don’t see how conservation of water, and air (pollution), is not relevant for us. It’s all the more so currently,” she adds. A chapter on different sources of energy — from fossil fuels to renewables — has also been removed. “That’s a bit strange, quite honestly, given the relevance in today’s world,” says Osborne.
The NCERT claims that it was imperative to reduce the load on students in light of the coronavirus pandemic. “Difficulty level, overlapping content, and content irrelevant in the present context” are some of the reasons listed by NCERT for dropping these chapters from the curriculum.
Scores of netizens have also taken the micro-blogging site to express their objections towards the decision. Here’s what they have said:
