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.
And just like that, 1 in every seven kids in the world got royally fucked.
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.
The first uses of the hypotenuse theorem came centuries before Pythagoras, unknown exactly when it came to be. Pythagoras just happens to be credited to be the first to document it.
http://5010.mathed.usu.edu/Fall2021/BDzierzon/history.html
Edit: Noting that the http site doesn’t seem to load in Android WebView mode, fuck Google Chrome, it loads in Firefox though.
Seriously… the Pythagorean Theorem is the single most important piece of practical math that can be easily taught to everyone.
And yet I’ve never needed it once in my life.
Wish instead of learning bullshit math, I was taught how to repair stuff around my house that I use everyday or a million other useful life knowledge.
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.
Just for clarification, so less people use it wrong:
a² + b² = c² (a*a + b*b = c*c) is the Pythagorean Theorem.
a2 + b2 = c2 would be a+a + b+b = c+c.
What the actual fuck? Those are all taught way before 10th grade here in the US, even in my ass-backwards state.
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.
Goddamn fascists man.
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?
I think there’s an argument to be made for letting students specialize a bit earlier than college freshman or sophomore 18-20 years old). I think a basic foundation of subjects is something everyone should have, but an entire year of something like chem or physics or bio? That’s about as useless for humanities people as an entire year of reading plays would be for science types.
Maybe a semester on each one is sufficient, and then after 10th grade (16-18 YO) you can choose to focus more on humanities vs STEM. You can still leave something similar to the current curriculum in place for the undecided students. And of course you can still have some crossover with electives.
All of these topics are : How the Universe Works 101
…and they apply to literally any and every field of study…
General knowledge like this is ducking priceless when it comes to understanding… so. ducking. much.
That aside, I also think your specialization comment is stupid. Did you happen to graduate from a school in India in the past 16 months?
I’m a humanities major. I’ve used pythagorean theorem in my life but never the periodic table. However, the table (and Pythagoras) would still be included under 1 semester of chem.
Plus the UK lets students specialize earlier than the US does, so fuck them I guess?
“101”? Sounds like an American educational system perspective.
Maybe if you spent more time learning some civics and less focusing on making IT working STEM lords you wouldn’t have voted in Trump.
This is not priceless general knowledge, it’s hyper niche knowledge that doesn’t apply to the majority of adults lives. Anyone in my country who wanted to pursue these topics would have picked “advanced” versions of the units during year 9/10.
I think you could make an argument of combining the essentials of physics and chemistry into a single year long course but that would include teaching the conservation of energy, periodic table and so on.
But I disagree that people don’t use apply these subjects in your life. I think it’s pretty necessary to be able to estimate distance or be able to engineer repairs at home without having to call a professional or order brand new goods, or for chemistry, be able to clean your home without accidentally making a bomb.
Things no one asked for and these are the stuff students in India study with the greatest interest. They could remove the mundane boring topics but no.
