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.
I thought this conversation was about whether students who don’t major in biology or chemistry will learn about evolution or the periodic table if the simplification was to proceed. Apparently, it wasn’t, being a duplicate of this instead.
As seen in this parent thread above and in the edit I made to the post about 4 hours ago, this simplification was axed a week after this article was published. (However, that didn’t stop Google from prioritizing outdated information.)