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When the University Grants Commission (UGC) unveiled its draught program for undergraduate mathematics this August, it was presented arsenic an ambitious alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The connection sought to weave unneurotic classical mathematical traditions, modern pedagogy, and interdisciplinary courses, adjacent drafting connected sources similar the 'Narada Purana' and 'Bharatiya Bijaganit'.
But what was envisioned arsenic a bold betterment has alternatively triggered an bonzer backlash from the country’s mathematics community.Over 900 mathematicians, educators, and researchers, among them 20 Padma awardees and respective recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, person signed a petition urging the withdrawal of the draught successful its existent form.
Flagging “grave defects,” they person warned that the projected program risks weakening not lone the survey of mathematics, but besides each tract that relies connected it, from subject and engineering to economics.
A program steeped successful heritage
At the bosom of the draught are inclusions intended to foreground India’s affluent mathematical tradition. Students would beryllium taught the past and improvement of Indian algebra, the exertion of classical formulas specified arsenic Paravartya Yojayet Sutra for polynomial division, and adjacent ritual timekeeping systems similar muhurtas compared with the Greenwich Mean Time.
References to the Narada Purana’s geometry, Vedic mathematics, and ideas from past Indian astronomy are interwoven into the syllabus.The vision, UGC noted, was to make a program that is some modern and rooted successful heritage. Yet it is precisely this mixture, and the omissions that travel it — that critics reason renders the draught unfit for purpose.
The petitioners’ case
In a powerfully worded connection sent to UGC Chairperson Vineet Joshi connected Thursday, the petitioners urged that the draught beryllium scrapped and redrawn by a committee of qualified mathematicians and educators.
They contend that the existent papers marginalises foundational subjects portion privileging outdated oregon irrelevant inclusions.Among their main objections:
- Core subjects specified arsenic existent analysis, linear algebra, and modern algebra are either inadequately covered oregon crammed into azygous semesters, leaving nary scope for earthy progression.
- Applied mathematics has been sidelined, with programming and numerical methods excluded from the core. Statistics has been reduced to a azygous people with nary applicable training, undermining opportunities for exertion successful fields specified arsenic instrumentality learning oregon artificial intelligence.
- Elective courses are poorly structured. For instance, “Mathematics successful Music” claims to necessitate lone Class 10 cognition but includes topics similar Fourier investigation and Markov chains, portion “Mathematics successful Machine Learning” attempts to screen precocious concepts successful conscionable 15 hours.
- Several interdisciplinary courses stray acold beyond the expertise of astir mathematics teachers. Courses linking mathematics to meditation, drama, oregon arts, the signatories argue, are inappropriate for an undergraduate program.
The petition further points to the beingness of outdated courses specified arsenic Analytical Geometry and Mechanics, labelled remnants of colonial-era syllabi, and highlights the bizarre citation of notation materials that bash not exist. Books attributed to authors specified arsenic Rudin, Glenn Ledder, and Mirabai Starr successful people bibliographies, for example, cannot beryllium located.
What is astatine stake
According to the signatories, these defects volition not lone undermine the mathematical grooming of students but volition besides “cripple” generations to travel by diluting probe and manufacture standards. “Applied mathematics is short-changed; programming and numerical methods are extracurricular the core. Statistics is stuffed into 1 course. In courses connected statistics, instrumentality learning, artificial quality etc. it is earthy and customary to person a applicable and application-based component; this accidental has been squandered,” the petition notes.The academics caution that the ripple effects volition widen good beyond the schoolroom — affecting science, technology, and the nation’s broader capableness for innovation.
A telephone for redrafting
India, they stress, has nary shortage of globally recognised mathematicians and educators who could assistance make a balanced, applicable curriculum. Eminent scholars person emphasised that UGC indispensable pat into this expertise.“A federation with specified a affluent practice of performing good successful mathematics should person a program that equips its students to conscionable the demands of the modern world,” the petition declares.
The azygous recommendation, delivered with striking unanimity, is clear: retreat the existent draught and reconstitute a committee of experts successful mathematics and pedagogy to plan a program that is rigorous, practical, and future-ready.As 1 of the astir sweeping challenges ever mounted against a UGC program draft, the petition underlines what is genuinely astatine stake: the aboriginal of mathematics education, and with it, the foundations of technological endeavour successful India. But for now, this is lone a draft. How the UGC responds, whether done revision, withdrawal oregon quiescent persistence, volition determine if the disapproval sparks alteration oregon fades into yet different world debate.(with PTI inputs)
