New Class VI Maths Textbook Counts Indian ‘Firsts’ with NCERT Spotlight on Ancient Scriptures
Basant Kumar Mohanty | 26 August 2024 | The Telegraph
Millions of Class VI pupils will this year be taught about ancient Indian mathematicians’ contribution to knowledge, with senior mathematicians welcoming the development but cautioning that unproven information should not be imparted to children to foster nationalistic pride.
The new Class VI maths textbook, Ganita Prakash, released last week by the NCERT, has additional chapters describing how Indian mathematicians developed the knowledge of fractions, operations with zero, positive and negative numbers, and a debit and credit accounting system.
Perhaps in the spirit of Indianisation, the book has dropped the international system of numeration, which puts a comma after every three digits. This means that unlike before, Class VI pupils will continue counting in lakhs and crores instead of millions and billions.
The previous Class VI maths textbook, introduced in 2006 and revised this year, used not just the international system of numeration but taught operations with eight-digit numbers. The new book restricts itself to five-digit numbers….