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.
99% of authors or commentators or journos writing about climate change need a 1-tonne solid carbon periodic table smashed over their head.
Everyone in UK would be taught pythagoras, periodic table, evolution at secondary school. Some learning disabled or who DGAF might skip over it or won’t actually learn it; but it’d be at taught in basic terms on the general syllabus for most people before age 16. Certainly anyone specialising in science / maths at 16-18 would be expected to know this stuff at a reasonable level from secondary school.
Having had to choose only 3 subjects at age 16, it’s very limiting for young people who don’t really know what they are doing. You drop one thing and it rules out a whole swathe of things you might never have known would be useful. I sort of wish i’d been forced to do chemistry longer, I dropped it because it was boring and I was allowed to choose stupid shit that proved FAR more useless (Economics).
I’d have probably ended up doing something more interesting and maybe even useful with my life - though maybe the grass is always greener.