2004 ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS - Indian Academy of Sciences

CHAPTER 9
many such schools and workshops
have been held, there is an urgent need to
do this in a more systematic and sustained
manner.
The committee is of the view that the
Astronomical Society of India should
take the lead in organizing such
meetings under its auspices. There is a
precedence for this. The “Enrico Fermi
Schools” organized by the Italian
Physical Society at Varenna and the
“Saas Fee Schools” organized by the
Swiss Astronomical Society have been
so successful that they attract students
and lecturers from all over the world.
Further, the ASI should take the
responsibility of bringing out the Lecture
Notes of these schools (the Lecture Notes of
the Saas Fee schools held over the last thirty
years forms an impressive series). This is
particularly important in the Indian context
because astronomy books are prohibitively
expensive, and very few researchers –
students or otherwise – can afford to buy them.
The ASI could perhaps collaborate with the
Indian Academy of Sciences in publishing
these books at a relatively low cost.
Fortuitously, the necessary infrastructure for
holding such schools already exists in ideal
settings such as the Observatory in
Kodaikanal and the Orange County Resort
in Coorg in the Western Ghats. Here, again,
the ASI could join hands with the Indian
Academy of Sciences which has a long
tradition of organizing such meetings.
16. Astronomy Education
High School and Pre-university Level
Despite periodic revision of the curriculum,
there is very little astronomy in the High
School and Pre-University syllabus. The
officially prescribed school textbooks usually
have a mandatory chapter dealing with
eclipses, solar system objects, with a couple of
pages on the ‘origin of the Universe’ thrown in.
At the XI and XII standard level (or the preuniversity)
the near omission of astronomy is
even more glaring since fairly advanced topics
are covered in physics. This situation needs to
be remedied urgently.
• The committee suggests that the
Astronomical Society of India should
identify a group of distinguished
astronomers and astrophysicists who
are interested in education to formally
interact with the various bodies such
as the NCERT, the University Grants
Commission etc. and engage them in a
discussion. Some years ago the NCERT
did involve several well known
physicists in writing several chapters
of the prescribed textbooks on science.
As the professional body representing
the astronomers, the ASI should
aggressively pursue the inclusion of
modern topics in astronomy at the preuniversity
level.
Undergraduate Level
While astronomy in the school curriculum will
help in making science more exciting to young
children, at the undergraduate level the
inclusion of modern topics in astronomy will
help the teaching of physics in an essential
way. Of all the areas in physics, astrophysics is
the most interdisciplinary one. Topics in
astronomy, if carefully chosen, are the best
way to illustrate many things such as black
body radiation, kinetic theory of gases, the
central force problem in mechanics, atomic and
molecular spectra, ionization equilibrium,
Fermi – Dirac statistics, degeneracy pressure,
virial theorem, nuclear physics, etc.
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