The Hindu Business Line : Losing quality brains to globalisation

Seemingly, as globalisation touches all (as it seems inevitable), India (and others like Pakistan and Bangladesh) could be bereft of quality brains as America gives them the acres and the funds.

Mathematics. The term has always spelt fear.

At school, mathematics brought in its trail, physics, chemistry and biology, while in college economics was a step behind mathematics.

At the college, Prof. A. Sen, taught statistics. Chalk in hand, he filled up the blackboard with the basics of the Theory of Probability in about five minutes, rubbed the board with a duster for the second instalment ….. and on and on for 45 minutes of the class every day of the week.

Sometimes, he walked the class to find one musing over the impossibility of the subject.

On one of these walks, he asked (for the entire class to hear), “Do you know anything about anything?” One stood up and said, “Nothing.”

From that day, one gave the miss to Sen to improve skills at table tennis. With the coming of Internet, computers and mobiles, one has again got stuck on the back-bench.

The other day, my eight-year old neighbour helped me sort out a problem in my computer and added in her quiet manner, “Uncle, computers are so easy.”

One has not been able to come up with any satisfactory excuses to explain the inability to appreciate the scientific notes of a modern society. Maybe, it is a fear to own up change and hang on to something gone away forever.

In that respect, one has some appreciation for the The Age of Turbulence, the book by Alan Greenspan, which is worth a read.

The man, at more than 80, is prepared to take the risk of strolling into the future without any street lights, in the belief that reasonably open markets will match benefits and costs. Maybe, it is the American way unlike the Indian style of shutting down markets.

Possibly, the essay on Education and Income Inequality, speaks Greenspan’s mind best.

In trying to link scholastic skills with wage differentials, Greenspan writes: “One of the skills too many high school graduates lack is proficiency in math.

“It is that skill more than any other that is required to achieve skilled-job status. …Yet people whose scholarship I respect, and who are in a position to know, complain that the math teachers of my childhood have been replaced with teachers with degrees in education but much too often with no math or science degree or competence in the subject matter. ……

“A recognition of how poor our mathematics education had become and perhaps some reason for hope was the report in September 2006 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, reversing its ill-chosen advisory of 1989.

“The earlier report recommended a curriculum that dropped emphasis on basic math skills (multiplication, division, square roots and so on) and pressed students to seek more free-flowing solutions and to study a range of special math topics.

“I always wondered how you can learn math unless you have a thorough grounding in the basics and concentrate on a very few subjects at a time.

“Asking children to use their imagination before they know what they are imagining about seemed vacuous to me. It was.”

The American system is trying to correct the skill mismatch with the needs of the economy by snapping out of the system of uniform wages for teachers, irrespective of skills; the certification of teachers has little to do with whether a teacher is effective. Greenspan admits to growing inequality in America which can probably be quelled by quality learning.

Till that happens, the Fed chief argues for more of free trade allowing for migration of skills.

Speaking to the Congress in March 2007, Bill Gates said: “America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete” and added, “we are driving away the world’s best and brightest precisely when we need them most.”

Nobody said anything sweeter to our young and they are responding by taking the first flight out after finishing at the near top in maths; those left out still have a chance to land up outsourced jobs, which do not demand much intellect.

Indian business managers are upset over matching the wage structure (it is difficult to believe them) offered by IT outfits, Indian or foreign.

In the last 10 years, IT jobs have filled the pockets of youngsters with funds and fun and put to dislike government jobs.

“If you land at San Francisco or California, you hear more Tamilians speaking Tamil than in Chennai. But then they have brains and are allowed to use them,” remarked a friend of mine, who spends most of the time flying in and out of Silicon Valley.

While our aged politicians and business managers crib and crawl, Greenspan bravely shakes hands with reality saying:

“But as competition spurred creative destruction, the pace of job turnover quickened and the visions of a lifetime with a single employer faded.

“It became clear as the 20th century came to a close that high school or college graduates were likely to hold many different jobs through their working lives and even engage in more than one profession.

“In response, formal education gradually became a lifetime endeavour, and markets responded.”

Seemingly, as globalisation touches all (as it seems inevitable), India (and others like Pakistan and Bangladesh) could be bereft of quality brains as America gives them the acres and the funds.

Indeed, US could be welcoming them at a time when India heads towards a reserved society, shorting signals from the market place.

Maybe, India could look at tax incentives to get IT companies own a few government schools and teach (free) kids maths and science on computers; schools (or is it coaching classes?), exams and education boards are failed ways of making literate a poor population.

Can we get the government out of education? With merit set aside, India could just remain the twelfth man — a forlorn, left out.

P. Devarajan

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