What we've lost in education

Words are dynamic; as dynamic as society. The meaning undergoes a metamorphosis with time. Their usage and interpretations are coloured by one's perspective.

The word under scrutiny is ‘education' — often in the news for wrong reasons. Education is a source of business for some, a $7-billion untapped market. Business houses look at education as a vital input to enhance business and a student wants to maximise his return on investment. To a parent, it is a question of pride.

For many, education is synonymous with research, and for some others it is a source of innovation, even. To be fair, it is a bit of this, and a bit of that.

Education is at the very root of civilisation. It has a much larger purpose; the government's perspective on education cannot be clouded by short-term goals.

Society, made up largely of the aam admi , has always viewed education as the producer of a learned man — one who can distinguish between good and bad, stable and unstable, ethical and unethical, with a clinical mind, and guide the rest in the journey called evolution.

Today, such a learned man might well say: “For heaven's sake, move this debate on education away from the IITs!”

SCIENTIST AND GENTLEMAN

As is always the case, the aam admi is forgotten in the scramble, and the focus clouded by certain shrill voices. Let us accept that education should bring prosperity to the nation. Let us also accept that prosperity alone is not development. It is time to get away from quarter-to-quarter rankings and redefine the role of education, especially higher education. Parsons made a perceptible remark in the International Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences , “The typical professor now resembles the scientist more than the gentleman-scholar of earlier times. As a result of the process of professionalisation, achievement criteria are now given the highest priority, reputations are established in national and international forums rather than locally defined, and the centre of gravity has shifted to the graduate faculties and their newly-professionalised large-scale research function.”

The key figure in his remark is the teacher, a gentleman-scholar. There is a great need to bring back the teacher. He is the conscience-keeper of the nation. He is the catalyst for progress and change. His “product” is the learned man. The teacher is an endangered species and we rarely find him/her in any institute in this country. IITs and top Indian universities have professional scientists. As for the rest, the less said the better. He disappeared because the word ‘education' has undergone a metamorphosis. If we are to bring him back, we need to look at education with a new lens — a wholesome enlightened education.

Education is not just knowledge-transfer or training of skills. The boundaries are much larger. Boyer, in the 1980s, used a string of words to define higher education. He classified scholarship required in a university as: scholarship of integration, service, including application of knowledge and scholarship of teaching.

INTEGRATED SCHOLARSHIP

A university thesis is important to society, not only for its contribution, but also for the skilled developer. Unfortunately, research has become an important criteria for ranking and never-ending debates.

No doubt, it is important for a gentleman-scholar, driven by an inquisitive and enquiring mind. It is a maze, where one result feeds into another, sets up a chain reaction, and moves from fundamental to applied, and may result in a fascinating product, say, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging technique. This passion cannot be induced by rewards and recognition, as echoed by many great scientists.

Unfortunately, the university researcher not only stands on the shoulders of giants such as Newton, Maxwell and Darwin, but also on props called ministries, and grants. Research may be one of the indicators of the quality of the university, but doesn't reflect the educational system as a whole.

“Scholarship of integration” can be interpreted as an integration of domain knowledge or technical knowledge with society around. This integration should result in maximising the benefit of the knowledge to the society. This means sensitivity to pollution, sustainable development, energy and global warming, economics, and various factors that cannot be treated as independent disciplines. They are a part of the learning process and research. Should we not pay attention to this integration, and should it not be a metric to sieve out a good institute from a great one?

Scholarship of service, including application of knowledge, is crucial to prepare a scholar to the life outside. What is learnt in the class is directly applied in real life. Importantly, the complex many-to-many mapping has to be understood by the teacher. He must have seen the world, be it that of engineering or social sciences.The business of education would have earned its “profit” if its product is the learned man. For that, we need the gentleman-scholar of the yesteryear back with us.

(The author is a professor, Department of Engineering Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The views expressed are personal and do not represent the views of IIT, Madras.)

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