The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has deleted chapters on critical issues such as climate change and monsoon from the syllabus to reduce the load on students in view of Covid-19 disruptions in the last two years, claimed a group of college and university teachers fighting climate change. Around 30 per cent of the syllabi has been reduced for this academic session, they said.
The Teachers Against the Climate Crisis (TACC) claimed that NCERT removed an entire chapter on the greenhouse effect from the class 11 geography syllabus, a chapter on weather, climate, and water from the class 7 syllabus, and information about the monsoon from the class 9 syllabus.
According to TACC demand, the NCERT reinstates the chapters and that different facets of the climate crisis be taught to all senior school students, in multiple languages and varied disciplines.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a massive disruption to regular learning schedules all over the country. In the context of the ensuing ‘learning deficit’, it may seem understandable that the NCERT seeks to reduce students’ workload by culling material that overlaps with similar material or is ‘irrelevant in the present context’. However, none of these concerns applies to fundamental issues such as climate change science, the Indian monsoon, and the other chapters that have been deleted,” the TACC said.
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