The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) uncovered on Thursday that they have removed chapters from class 10 textbooks on Periodic Classification of Elements, Democracy, Political Parties (full page), and Challenges to Democracy “to reduce the content load on students in light of the Covid pandemic.”
The three subjects removed from the science textbook are Periodic Classification of Elements, Energy Sources, and Sustainable Natural Resource Management. Three chapters from Democratic Politics-1 have been removed from the Social Studies textbook, including Popular Struggles and Movements, Political Parties, and Challenges to Democracy.
However, if the students still wish to learn about the deleted chapters they can do by choosing their appropriate subjects in classes 11 and 12.
In addition, the NCERT has decided to eliminate the Theory of Biological Evolution from the class 10 curriculum. Experts were outraged by the decision. According to the NCERT, the decision to eliminate chapters was made because it was “imperative to reduce the load on students in light of the coronavirus pandemic.”
NCERT mentioned in their statement that “difficulty level, overlapping content, and content irrelevant in the current context” as grounds for removing these chapters from the curriculum.
Other sections that have already been killed due to the necessity to reduce content load include chapters on Fibre and Fabrics in classes VI, VII, and VIII, as well as a chapter in the class VI history textbook that made a reference to Mahatma Gandhi and the charkha.
A chapter in the class IX science textbook titled ‘Why do we get sick?’ has also been removed. Students are introduced to viruses and airborne infections such as Covid-19 in this chapter.
