The concepts of periodic table and evolution have not been removed from the school education curriculum but in fact are available in appropriate detail for students who opt for science in classes 11 and 12, the National Council of Educational Research and Training, or NCERT has said after its move to remove the chapters from Class 10 textbooks led to severe backlash from scientists and experts.
The content placed in the periodic table have been made "more age appropriate" based on the feedback received from various stakeholders, including practising teachers, it said justifying the reason behind the move.
"Students pursuing science in classes 11 and 12 will study the details of Periodic Classification of elements (Periodic table). The content placed in the periodic table again have been made more age appropriate, more so considering the Covid pandemic situation," it said.
In India, Class 10 is the last year in which science is taught as a compulsory subject. Only students who elect to study chemistry in the final two years of education (before university) will learn about the periodic table.
Regarding rationalization of the periodic table, NCERT said that the discussion about basic concepts such as elements, symbols, formation of compounds, atoms and molecules have been dealt with in class 9. In class 10, chemical reaction; acids, bases and salts; metals and non-metals; carbon and its compounds have been covered.
NCERT said that it attempted to rationalise the contents of the textbooks in 2021 as teaching-learning was done using alternative modes. It rationalised the contents on certain criteria, which included overlapping with similar content, similar content included in the lower or higher class in the same subject, high difficulty level, content, which is easily accessible to children and does not require much intervention from the teachers and can be learnt through self-learning or peer-learning, content, which is not relevant in the present context or is outdated, learning outcomes already developed across the classes are taken care of in this rationalization exercise.
Among the topics dropped from the science textbook are also chapters on environmental sustainability and sources of energy. Full chapters on democracy, challenges to democracy and political parties have also been dropped for Class 10 students after the latest revision.
The move has led to severe backlash from scientists and experts. More than 1,800 scientists and educators had written an open letter expressing concern over the rationalisation exercise.
Jonathan Osborne, a science-education researcher at Stanford University in California, told the scientific journal Nature that the periodic table is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of chemists as it explains how life's building blocks combine to generate substances with vastly different properties.
The government, though, has rejected all criticism as propaganda.
"Due to Covid-19, rationalisation of courses was going on, to reduce the burden of studies on the child. If a child wants to study, Darwin's Theory is available on all websites. In Class 12, there is already Darwin's Theory in the syllabus so there should not be such false propaganda," Minister of State (MoS) for Education Subhas Sarkar said.
