Key Points
(My key takeaway was first learning that frogs have a cloacal aperture, and then encountering one attached to a frog in a lab.) Or that if we missed out anything in our last year of school, we'd never get to know about it - ever...
So when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), in its wisdom (sic), decided to 'rationalise' Class 12 textbooks by dropping bits and bobs to lighten 'students' load' as recommended by the National Education Policy, my first reaction 33 years after passing out of school was: 'Where were you guys when I was drowning in my Nelkon & Parker Advanced Level Physics textbook?.
Nor is it like generations, starting this semester, will be denied the knowledge that hydrogen sulfide smells of rotten eggs, a far more useful thing to learn than remembering the mnemonic BHAJI SABJI FOR MAAM-SAAB and then having to remember what the mnemonic stands for - Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb... after which no one barring Irfan Habib remembers the names except for that last B for Bahadur Shah Zafar...
But since no one ever has a slanging match in one's RWA WhatsApp group on the efficacy of Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, or whether cadmium oxide should be the Lewis-acid catalyst of choice in hydrolysis, it's history that serves as everyone's football to kick around and sound smart with..
The Battle of Palashi may no longer be viewed as a battle at all, with history describing Robert Clive and his men spending that hot, humid summer of June 23, 1757, picking mangoes and starting the very first round of negotiations for the soon-to-be signed FTA between UK and whoever was the mango grove's owner...
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