‘Deletion’ of Darwin theory from textbooks: Union education minister says nothing of this sort has happened

‘Deletion’ of Darwin theory from textbooks: Union education minister says nothing of this sort has happened

Subject :Science and Technology

Section: Basic science

Context:

• A controversy is going on these days that Darwin’s theory of evolution has been removed from science books by the NCERT and the periodic table has been left out.

Details:

• Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Education Minister, spoke to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which is an autonomous body, and sought details.
• According to them, experts had advised that during COVID-19, some repetitive parts could be reduced and later brought back. So the content in Classes 8 and 9 is unchanged. In the book of Class 10, some portion related to the theory of evolution was omitted last year, and it is unchanged in Classes 11 and 12.
• There is a view that students who would not study science after Class 10 would miss out on some specific subjects related to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

About the Theory of Evolution:

• The Theory of Evolution by natural selection was first formulated in Charles Darwin’s book “Origin of Species” published in 1859.
• In his book, Darwin describes how organisms evolve over generations through the inheritance of physical or behavioural traits.
• The theory starts with the premise that within a population, there is variation in traits, such as beak shape in one of the Galapagos finches Darwin studied.
• According to the theory, individuals with traits that enable them to adapt to their environments will help them survive and have more offspring, which will inherit those traits.
• Individuals with less adaptive traits will less frequently survive to pass them on.
• Over time, the traits that enable species to survive and reproduce will become more frequent in the population and the population will change, or evolve.
• Through natural selection, Darwin suggested, genetically diverse species could arise from a common ancestor.
  • A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.
  • Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.
  • Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:
  • More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources.
  • Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.
  • Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable — passed on to offspring.
  • Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.
  • Better-adapted individuals (the “fit enough”) are more likely to survive (Survival of the fittest) and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.
  • Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct.