In a statement, the council rationalized the reduction by stating they wanted to reduce the content load on students in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. On June 1, India cut a slew of foundational topics from tenth grade textbooks, including the periodic table of elements, Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Pythagorean theorem, sources of energy, sustainable management of natural resources and contribution of agriculture to the national economy, among others. These changes effectively block a major swath of Indian students from exposure to evolution through textbooks, because tenth grade is the last year mandatory science classes are offered in Indian schools.
Right?
Let’s see, Pythagorean theorem, is what, a couple thousand years old, and a single statement, right? And it’s the foundation of geometry and trig. Hell, I regularly say it in my head (a2+b2=c2) when trying to figure out spatial relationships, for dumb stuff no less (will this table fit on my patio with room to walk around it?).
It’s how you ensure anything you’re trying to make square is square. In framing (shed, house, deck, whatever) it’s used to ensure you setup your string in the proper orientation and don’t end up with a parallelogram.
And the Periodic table… The bloody basis of understanding chemical reactions and physics.
I guess if you’re not teaching the Periodic Table, there’d be no hope if understanding evolutionary theory, since it’s predicated on chemical behaviour.
Just for clarification, so less people use it wrong:
a² + b² = c² (a*a + b*b = c*c) is the Pythagorean Theorem.
a2 + b2 = c2 would be a+a + b+b = c+c.
when i’m away from my computer’s compose key, i put the exponent after a term to do it in plain text, and would write the latter as 2a+2b=2c.