this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

India just removed pythagorean theorem from their educational curriculum for the very reason you mentioned.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've already seen this exact same claim these days, so now I decided to try and find out what's happening exactly.

https://www.dw.com/en/indiadropsevolution/a-65804720

Apparently, it happened last year, not just now, as you said, and I'm sure I've already seem someone else (maybe on Lemmy, maybe on reddit) also describe it as a very recent event.

However I can't find absolutely anything else regarding the topic. So I tried googling in Hindi instead, with the help of some machine translation.

https://www.aajtak.in/education/news/story/pythagoras-theorem-has-vedic-has-roots-karnataka-panel-proposes-to-sanskrit-as-a-third-language-1496805-2022-07-10

This is the only piece of news I've managed to find, again not very recent, and not nearly as dramatic as the DW article makes it out to be. Some official has described the Pythagorean theorem as 'fake news' because that same theorem had already been developed in India before Pythagoras, i.e. the point is that the name is a misnomer. They say nothing about removing the theorem.

The reduction of teaching of the periodic table and evolution that DW mentions is also explained in the PDF that the article links as mere reorganisation of the topics due to the circumstances (difficulties in teaching during corona). They don't suggest actual removal of the topics. (The PDF is an official explanation from the Indian "National Council of Educational Research and Training".)

I'm getting the impression DW is just fearmongering. Ideally there should be some article with exact and complete quotes in Hindi. I know that media freedom in India is not great (esp. considering the situation with Wikipedia), and it's probably not easy to get to the bottom of it, but this story looks very suspicious.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You know more than me then. I was just irresponsibly repeating a headline I saw on Lemmy yesterday

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I believed it completely at first too, perhaps we even saw the same headline...

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Probably! I knew there was another subject mentioned, but couldn't remember what it was, so I didn't mention it. Now that you said the periodic table, I'm certain that was the second subject mentioned.

[–] xtr0n@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Even carpenters and masons need geometry

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Do they though? You need like one guy on the job who understands that stuff, and then a bunch a grunts with speed squares.