![]() ![]() But it is not removing important scientific content to accommodate the new material, and for good reason. New Zealand is trialling the teaching of Māori ‘ways of knowing’ - mātauranga Māori - in a selection of schools across the country. India is not the only postcolonial country grappling with the question of how to honour and recognize older or Indigenous forms of knowledge in its school curricula. Some people interpret this as a motivation to remove the likes of Charles Darwin and Michael Faraday, and instead use the time to learn more about India’s precolonial history of science. NCERT also wants “a rootedness and pride in India, and its rich, diverse, ancient and modern culture and knowledge systems and traditions”. Indian scientists shocked as government scraps nearly 300 awards Moreover, India’s 2020 National Education Policy says that students need to become problem-solvers and critical thinkers, and it therefore advocates less memorization of content and more active learning. NCERT says that ‘rationalization’ is needed when content overlaps with material covered elsewhere in the curriculum, or when it considers content to be irrelevant. Those who study science education have told Nature that they’re baffled, not least by the lack of any engagement. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the government-funded but operationally autonomous body tasked with producing India’s textbooks, has not discussed the changes - which will affect more than 38 million children - with parents, teachers or researchers. But they have now been removed from textbooks, too. These and other topics were removed from the curriculum last year to help lighten students’ workloads during the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of changes to school science teaching have resulted in the deletion of the periodic table, explanations of evolution and electromagnetism, and discussions about the sustainable use of natural resources from the textbooks used by children aged 14–16. India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks - experts are baffledīut those attributes now seem to be less valued, at least by those involved in setting the country’s education policies. The constitution’s writers rightly saw the pursuit of evidence, reasoning and humanity as the responsibility of every citizen as India emerged from arguably the most tumultuous period in its history since gaining independence from Britain nearly three decades earlier. These words were crafted in 1976 in an amendment to India’s constitution. “To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.” Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos Pictures India’s schools curriculum body has not consulted with parents, teachers and researchers on curriculum changes. ![]()
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