Leave politics out of it says HRD minister on CBSE syllabus controversy

New Delhi, July 09: Education is a sacred duty towards our children and we should leave politics out of it, Union Minister for Human Resource Development has said.

His comments come after a controversy erupted over the decision by the CBSE to reduce the syllabi for the Class 10 and 12.

Let us leave politics out of education and make our politics more educated the minister said. There has been a lot of uninformed commentary on the exclusion of some topics from CBSE syllabus. The problem with these comments is that they resort to sensationalism by connecting topics selectively to portray a false narrative.

The only aim is to relax the stress on students by reducing the syllabus by 30 per cent.

This exercise has been carried out following the advice & recommendations of various experts and considering the suggestions received from educationists through our #SyllabusForStudents2020 campaign, the minister said in a series of tweets.

While it is easy to misconstrue exclusion of 3-4 topics like nationalism, local government, federalism, etc. and build a concocted narrative, a wider perusal of different subjects will show that this exclusion is happening across subjects.

To give a few examples, the topics excluded in #Economics are Measures of Dispersion, Balance of Payments Deficit, etc, topics excluded in #Physics are Heat Engine & Refrigerator, Heat Transfer, Convection & Radiation among others.

In #Biology, portions of Mineral Nutrition, Digestion & Absorption have been excluded. It can be no one's argument that these topics have also being excluded by malice or some grand design which only partisan minds can decipher, the minister also said.

Earlier, the board clarified that each of the subjects wrongly mentioned as deleted has already been covered under the alternative academic calendar issued by the NCERT.

CBSE Secretary Anurag Tripathi, said in a statement, "The Board has clarified that no question shall be asked from the reduced syllabus in the Board examination 20-21 only."

The statement came after the CBSE decided to drop lessons on democracy and diversity, demonetisation, nationalism, secularism, India's relations with neighbours and growth of local governments in India.

Tripathi further said that the rationalisation of the syllabus was only a one time measure was the country is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The rationalisation of syllabus up to 30 per cent has been undertaken by the Board for nearly 190 subjects of Class IX to XII for the academic session 2020,21 as a one time measure only. The schools have also been directed to follow the alternative academic calendar prepared by NCERT for transacting the curriculum. Therefore, each of the topics that have been wrongly portrayed as deleted have been covered under alternative academic calendar which is already in force for all the affiliated schools of the board," he also said.