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.
Seriously… the Pythagorean Theorem is the single most important piece of practical math that can be easily taught to everyone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 🫡
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.
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.
Again, quoting the article, it says that many students (although maybe not most) will graduate without an understanding of these three subjects.
How can that be considered a positive, and what’s even more; acceptable?!
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?
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.
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?
as said below, that’s the last mandatory grade
This is Pythagorean theorem for the similarity of triangles
could you source that?
See for yourself in old textbook (page 144)
https://archive.org/details/mathematics-textbook-class-10-2006-ncert/page/144/mode/2up
Thanks for that. I hate people who leave out important information and context. They are evil.
Except this comment seems to leave out that mandatory science education stops in India at 10th grade, so the periodic table and evolution will not be taught to Indian students unless they pursue higher grades of education.
Edit: It appears all of this is also moot, since a comment below pointed out that these things have been added back into the curriculum:
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.
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.
Okay the evolution part, though stupid, is religious fundie par for the course. But middle school geometry? Are they fucking retarded?
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.
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.
Everyone knows different dog breeds were invented by god in the 18th century
Clearly that man needed to be taught more about evolution when he was in school.
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.
Yes.
Imagine not knowing the fucking Pythagorean Theorem. Imagine not being able to do basic trigonometry, a cornerstone of physics.
Hell, I used it to figure out the optimal viewing angle when mounting my TV on the wall.
