In India, children under 16 who go back to school this month at the start of the school year will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of the elements or energy sources.
The news that evolution would be dropped from the curriculum for students aged 15–16 was widely reported last month, when thousands of people signed a petition in protest. But official guidelines have been revealed that a chapter on the periodic table will also be deleted, along with other fundamental topics such as energy resources and environmental sustainability. Younger students are no longer taught certain subjects related to pollution and climate, and there are cuts in biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics for older students.
In total, the changes affect some 134 million 11-18 year olds in Indian schools. The magnitude of what has changed became more apparent last month when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) – the government agency that develops India’s school curriculum and textbooks – released textbooks for the new academic year that began in May.
Researchers, including those who study science education, are shocked. “Anyone who tries to teach biology without dealing with evolution is not teaching biology as we currently understand it,” said Jonathan Osborne, a science education researcher at Stanford University in California. “It’s so fundamental to biology.” The periodic table explains how the building blocks of life combine to generate substances with vastly different properties, he adds, and “is one of the great intellectual achievements of chemists.”
Mythili Ramchand, a science teacher at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, says that “everything related to water, air pollution and resource management has been removed. “I don’t see how to conserve water and air [pollution], is not relevant to us. That is all the more the case today,’ she adds. A chapter on different energy sources — from fossil fuels to renewables — has also been removed. “That’s a little odd, frankly, given how relevant it is in today’s world,” says Osborne.
More than 4,500 scientists, teachers and science communicators have done so signed an appeal organized by Breakthrough Science Society, a campaign group based in Kolkata, India, to restore the ancient content on evolution.
NCERT has not responded to the appeal. And while it relied on expert committees to oversee the changes, it has yet to engage with parents and teachers to explain the rationale for making them. NCERT did not reply either Nature‘s request for comment.
Chapters closed
A chapter on the periodic table of elements has been removed from the syllabus for class 10 students, who are typically between the ages of 15 and 16. Entire chapters on energy sources and sustainable management of natural resources have also been deleted.
A small section on Michael Faraday’s contributions to the understanding of electricity and magnetism in the nineteenth century has also been removed from the class 10 syllabus. In non-scientific content, chapters on democracy and diversity; political parties; and challenges to democracy have been removed. And for older students, a chapter on the industrial revolution has been removed.
In explaining the changes, NCERT states on its website that it considered whether content overlapped with similar content covered elsewhere, the difficulty of the content, and whether the content was irrelevant. It also aims to provide opportunities for experiential learning and creativity.
NCERT announced the cuts last year, saying they would ease the pressure on students studying online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Amitabh Joshi, an evolutionary biologist at the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru, India, says science teachers and researchers expected the content to be reinstated once students returned to class. Instead, the NCERT shocked everyone by printing textbooks for the new academic year with a statement that the changes will continue for the next two academic years, in line with India’s revised education policy approved by the government in July 2020.
“The idea [behind the new policy] is that you get students to ask questions,” said Anindita Bhadra, an evolutionary biologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata. But she says removing fundamental concepts is more likely to suppress curiosity than encourage it. “The way this is done, by saying ‘drop content and teach less’,” she says, “that’s not how you do it”.
Evolution cancelled
Science teachers are particularly concerned about removing evolution. There has been a chapter on diversity in living organisms and a chapter entitled ‘Why do we get sick’ removed from the syllabus for grade 9 students, who are usually between 14 and 15 years old. Darwin’s contributions to evolution, how fossils form and human evolution have all been removed from the chapter on heredity and evolution for grade 10 students. That chapter is now simply called ‘Heredity’. Evolution, says Joshi, is essential to understanding human diversity and “our place in the world.”
In India, grade 10 is the last year in which science is taught to every student. Only students who choose to study biology in the last two years of education (before college) learn about the subject.
Joshi says the curriculum review process lacked transparency. But in the case of evolution, “more religious groups in India are starting to take anti-evolution stances,” he says. Some members of the public also think that evolution is irrelevant outside of academic institutions.
Aditya Mukherjee, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, says curriculum changes are being driven by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a mass-member voluntary organization with close ties to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party. The RSS believes that Hinduism is threatened by other religions and cultures in India.
“There is a movement away from rational thinking, against the Enlightenment and Western ideas” in India, adds Sucheta Mahajan, a historian at Jawaharlal Nehru University who studies the influence of RSS on school texts with Mukherjee. Evolution conflicts with creation myths, Mukherjee adds. History is the main target, but “science is one of the casualties,” she adds.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first print on May 31, 2023.