India kicks Darwin out of schools. Because it’s a problem that affects us all

In 2023, demographic forecasts say, India will be the most populous country in the world, overtaking China, which sees its population decrease. What happens in a parliamentary democracy made up of more than 1.4 billion people affects, for obvious reasons, the entire planet. That’s why yet another step by India in the direction of scientific obscurantism arouses great concern, and should be considered a critical element not only by the international scientific community, but by anyone with a modicum of critical sense. Now, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), ie the Indian government body that deals with the definition of school curricula and textbook contents, has decided to permanently eliminate the teaching of Darwinism from all schools up to the tenth grade, which means that until at least 15 years of age no student in any school in the country will cross the facts and basic ideas of evolutionism.

This process was started last year, masking government choices with student aid, to ′′ ease ′′ the load of studies during the pandemic by eliminating notions deemed less necessary. Thus, as part of its “rationalization” effort, in 2022 the “heredity and evolution” chapter in Indian schoolbooks was replaced with one entitled “heredity”; In addition, the chapters entitled “Charles Robert Darwin”, “Origin of Life on Earth”, “Molecular Phylogeny”, “Evolution”, “Identification of Evolutionary Relationships” and “Human Evolution”, among others, have been eliminated altogether. Now, as they denounced over 1,800 Indian scientists who have signed a petition against this reckless government act and not justified, the change has become finaland the feared damage is permanent.

In fact, we read from the signed petition: “the scientific community believes that students will be seriously impaired in their cognitive faculties if deprived of exposure to this fundamental discovery of science. The fact that the biological world is constantly changing, that evolution is a law-governed process that does not require divine intervention, and that humans evolved from some species of ape have been the cornerstones of rational thought ever since when Darwin proposed his theory of nature selection.”

In front of this robust position taken by the Indian scientific communitywhich is not limited to petition signatories, education minister Subhas Sarkar has seen fit to give an incredible answer, entrusting it to a social forum: “claims that Darwin’s theory has been eliminated from the NCERT curriculum are misleading. After streamlining courses due to COVID to reduce the burden on students , there was no Darwin theory until grade 10. If a child wants to study, Darwin theory is available on all websites. In grade 12, there is already Darwin theory in the curriculum, so no we should spread this false propaganda,” he said.

But, as the researchers wrote in their petition, the minister makes misleading statements; indeed, we read, “in the current educational structure, only a small fraction of students choose the 11th or 12th grade science course, and an even smaller fraction of those choose biology as one of the subjects of study. Therefore, the exclusion of key concepts from the curriculum up to the tenth grade is tantamount to causing the vast majority of students to miss out on a key part of essential learning.”

Now, to understand the weight of this discussion and its significance for all of us, consider this: in 2022, there were over 262 million students in India. Of these, barring surprising government course changes, only a small fraction will be able to learn the best explanation we have for how the living world was formedwhich has clear implications for both our species’ place in the universe and a myriad of phenomena, from how a population of viruses mutates and adapts to cause a pandemic, to why cancer is so hard to defeat, how we are responsible for an ongoing mass extinction, just to name the first examples that come to mind.

Like them, hundreds of millions of future students will also be deprived of this vital information; and, in a nation that already has even a ministry dedicated to medical pseudoscience, the removal of a powerful defense against irrationalism, which is evolutionary thinking, can only lead to worsening consequences. Globally, our planet, due to the choice of a few dozen top brass of a retrograde government, could see further degradation of average proficiency rate and cognitive ability, which instead would be indispensable to face the choices; and it is for this reason that the desperate plea of ​​Indian scientists concerns us all, and it concerns us now.