Shah Alam Khan | 14 June 2023 | The Indian Express

Textbooks published by the National Council of Education and Research (NCERT) for middle and high school classes in India have omitted some chapters that were, till recently, thought to be necessary for the development of scientific temper among children. Among the most noticeable of all deletions are the chapters on evolution and the chapter on the Periodic Table of Elements from the Class 9 and Class 10 science textbooks. NCERT has called these deletions a curriculum “rationalisation” exercise necessitated by the Covid pandemic.

Faith-based denunciations of Darwin’s theory of evolution have gone on ever since the publication of On the Origin of Species in November 1859. The creation of man by god has always been among the most well-guarded and preserved fables of several religions and religious societies. Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Oman do not teach evolution in schools or universities. In Egypt and Tunisia, evolution is taught but it is presented as an “unproven hypothesis”. Not very long ago, some states in the United States had either banned the teaching of evolution or decided to teach it alongside “creationism”. It required several landmark judgments of the country’s supreme court to block the restrictions on teaching evolution. Louisiana, Florida, Colorado and Tennessee wanted to pass a law/bill giving teachers the option to not teach evolution. Thus, the opponents of Darwin seem to share a common thread of obscurantism and conservatism. Not surprisingly, the opposition is geography agnostic.

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