'Merchant of Venice' goes off UP Board syllabus

Lucknow, July 22 The Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Board (UPSEB) has knocked William Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" off from the Class 12 syllabus.

This is a part of an exercise to cut the annual syllabus by 30 per cent in view of the disruptions in the academic session due to the pandemic.

As per the curtailed syllabus for all subjects for Classes 9-12, the deleted chapters include 'Ninda Ras' by satirist Harishankar Parsai and Kaikeyi's repentance song by Maithili Sharan Gupt.

Challenges of the Congress system and political party dominance in independent India; Harappan civilisation; and Partition: History and nationality, sectarianism and division of 1940 in 'division based on physical sources' have also been dropped.

In the 'Contemporary World Politics' section, the deleted chapters include the US hegemony in world politics, security in contemporary world, and globalisation.

UPSEB Secretary Divya Kant Shukla said the syllabus has been shortened to make up for the academic loss caused due to COVID-19.

"We have only deleted the topics from the examinations and not from textbooks. So, if students want, they can still study the dropped topics," Shukla said and added that the Board has done its best to retain relevant and important topics.

"For instance, if there were four poems of Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala' in the Hindi textbook, we have kept two and dropped the other two from this year's syllabus," he said.

The 30 per cent of the topics removed from Class 10 civics syllabus includes content on democracy, caste, religion and sexual issues.

In mathematics, chapters like circle, probability, some trigonometry applications, parallel series and polynomials have been dropped.

In English syllabus for Class 10, Torch bearers and our Indian music; poem 'The Nation Builders' by R.W. Emerson have been removed. Supplementary reading, 'My Greatest Olympic Prize' by Jesse Owens, too, is omitted.

From Class 10 social science syllabus, information about major national parties and regional parties of India have been removed.

In science course for Class 10, topics such as properties of metals and non-metals; classification of elements into the periodic table, electromagnetic effects, electrical effects, natural resources and our environment have also been dropped.

( With inputs from IANS )