There is absolutely nothing wrong with honouring traditions of culture and science from the past. They have much to teach us. In New Zealand, according to a recent article and editorial in Nature magazine, they are trialling the teaching of Māori ‘ways of knowing’, in some schools across the country. They have not, however, deleted vital scientific material to make room. For some very good reasons.
In India, however, something much more worrying has happened, with the issue of textbooks for the new school year. School science teaching for those aged 14-16 years, now excluded the periodic table, evolution, electromagnetism, and discussion of the sustainable use of natural resources!
Although schoolwork, possibly helpfully, was reduced in scope during the pandemic, it has now become obvious, although there has been no explanation to students, teachers, or parents, that the Indian curriculum authority (The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), intends this to go on.
This will affect more than 38 million children.
And that is not even thinking about how many there will be in the future.
As any reader who has even a nodding acquaintance with the modern world knows, to try understanding it without the fundamental Darwin or Faraday, or Mendelev and successors is to throw vital maps away.
Of course, there are alternative views, and all science is subject to change, but these basic tools are symbolic of where we have got to now. Removing them is surely depriving children of an important means of understanding the world? Even if they reject it eventually (perhaps in favour of a new scientific paradigm, perhaps not)?
NCERT has declared that it wants ‘a rootedness and pride in India, and its rich, diverse, ancient and modern culture and knowledge systems and traditions”, and that is great in itself. But surely, modern India has to work with, develop with, the rest of the world? What if all the other nations have progressing science and India has rich, diverse, traditional knowing? Would they learn from one another or would one become the vassal of the other. Is that way forward isolationism? Is ghettoization what humanity needs in these difficult times?
