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.
Okay the evolution part, though stupid, is religious fundie par for the course. But middle school geometry? Are they fucking retarded?
Short answer, yes.
That statement alone speaks to his fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is. Stupid people not knowing a subject, understanding their entirely flawed guess is wrong (I agree with them there) yet not realizing WHY they’re wrong, then barring it because how ridiculous what they think it is sounds. Dunning something something Kruger something. I’m 100% for teaching kids that gorillas just dont turn into humans and actually teach them what evolution means.
Everyone knows different dog breeds were invented by god in the 18th century
Geophrey Oliver Dinglehopper?
Clearly that man needed to be taught more about evolution when he was in school.
The thing is, evolution makes sense, so long as you aren’t going to outright reject the idea that humans aren’t a different category of thing from the rest of Animalia. It gets weird when you get deep enough to see that we share an ancestor with plants and bacteria and even archaea, but we have enough evidence that by the time you’re being asked to understand that fact you can see that line and understand how photosynthetic microbes slowly built new systems while other microbes ate the remains of them before slowly bit by bit developing new traits to differentiate and fill niches.
They don’t want to think of themselves as such, because it’s a form of humility to understand that you evolved from a worm that just happened to have a particularly effective means of transmitting signals along the course of its body. They want to think their gods made them to rule nature.
Maybe phylogenetics then? Tells pretty much the same story and is based on measurable data.
“I ain’t never seen no animorphs”
Yes.
Imagine not knowing the fucking Pythagorean Theorem. Imagine not being able to do basic trigonometry, a cornerstone of physics.
A cornerstone of construction
Hell, I used it to figure out the optimal viewing angle when mounting my TV on the wall.
I use it so often I write a function for it into my calculator in college. Because everything is a sinusoid or triangle it just keeps showing up
I used a website to calculate that for me because I’m an idiot and it all seems like magic to me.
Any sufficiently advanced technology does. It’s nice to have tools, whether they’re ready baked ones or there’s some assembly required. The latter tends to be more adaptable, but using what’s in reach is smart.
Nah they just understand the superiority of beans to triangles
Yes indeed they are