The Kerala government has criticised the removal of chapters on the Periodic Table and challenges to democracy, among other topics from Class X textbooks by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and said that it amounts to challenging democratic and secular values. The new textbooks with the changes announced by the NCERT last year as part of a "rationalisation" exercise have now hit the market.
Apart from the Periodic Table and challenges to democracy, the contribution of agriculture to the national economy and sustainable management of natural resources were also dropped from Class X textbooks. Reacting to this, State Education Minister V Sivankutty issued a statement on Friday, June 2, as stated in a report by PTI.
What else did the statement say?
The statement read, "The unilateral action of the NCERT to remove the topics under the guise of rationalisation is a challenge to the democratic and secular values of our country." Further, it added, "Kerala has already declared that it cannot be accepted, as it challenges the entire existing democratic order in the country."
Additionally, he said, NCERT has taken the approach of removing topics on the Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, and other topics related to the country's common history, the theory of evolution, the periodic table, democratic values and the current challenges faced by the country. "In order to protect secularism and democracy and to teach the real historic facts and to develop scientific temper, Kerala will guard public education and strengthen it," Sivankutty said.
"Kerala has already announced that we will publish supplementary textbooks incorporating the omitted text sections, upholding the original history enshrining democratic and secular values," he added. The Left leader said the NCERT, which was set up on the basis of the 2005 National Curriculum Framework (NCF), has been demolishing the very goals of the NCF through the removal of such passages from textbooks, as stated in a report by PTI.
