WHAT AILS HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA?
Posted by bmhegde on 1
Higher education in India, nay in many parts of the globe, suffers from many ailments, but the most important are the following.
* Student curiosity is discouraged and the student is not allowed to study what he/she wants to.
* Students are not given the necessary infrastructure and support to do just that.
* Students are not being protected from many of their teachers who have fossilized notions about their chosen specialties!
* The goal of higher education should be the acquisition of wisdom to transform the young mind to act justly, skillfully, and magnanimously under all circumstances of peace and war. As a byproduct, education could also make him/her earn a decent, ethical living. However, the latter should not be education’s sole goal, at the exclusion of the laudable aim pointed out earlier.
* Today higher education breeds arrogance of knowledge, in place of the humility of wisdom. Even the arrogance of knowledge is replaced by pride of information. Tolerance has been replaced by hatred as was seen from the terror let loose on America on the 11th September 2001.
* Time is ripe to replace paternalism in education with partnership for mutual benefit and for the good of society at large.
This system needs to be changed-the earlier it is done the better for our future generations. There are institutions of higher learning in many countries; there were many in India in the distant past that encouraged true learning and genuine education. Time was when the white man was still roaming the forests, we had such great centres of learning in Taxila, Nalanda etc. Why not regain that lost glory by building excellent centres again?
Science Education:
This seems to be at the crossroads today. Reductionist science, that ruled the world ever since the beginning of University systems in Europe around the twelfth century AD, has been found to be wanting in many areas. Unfortunately, our science education does not seem to have realized this truth even today. We still hang on to the time-honoured concept that “science is measurement and measurement is science”. Science need not be only hypothesis refutation. There is much more to science than that. One must bear in mind that scientific methods are only one of the many routes to human wisdom. Science is not the only route.
Much water has flown under the Yamuna Bridge over the centuries and sea changes have overtaken conventional science teaching. Science is change; anything that does not change can not be science. The etymological root of science has to be changed from the Greek, sciere=knowledge to the present root skei=to cut into. Curiosity with logical skepticism is the root all discovery. If one properly organizes one’s curiosity, the resulting organized curiosity with logical skepticism becomes the other name for scientific research.
One sees the unorganized curiosity in every innocent child with normal development. A child inspects, feels, licks, smells and destroys toys with innocent curiosity. This unorganized scientific curiosity of a child has to be nurtured and organized by our educational system. On the contrary, our present system kills this curiosity on the first day at school, by feeding information from outside about the outer world and continues to do up until the end of higher education. It is only an exceptional student that tries to unlearn what he had learnt at school and college and relearns the real stuff. Today education, science education at that, is only replication. Knowledge does not progress by repeating known facts; it could do so only be refuting false dogmas. There are innumerable myths in science that needs to be demolished forthwith!
One quick example would exemplify the above statements. Friday, the 13th is an inauspicious day for most Christians. Scientists, naturally, think it is only a superstition. A couple of years ago, a retrospective study of all the Fridays that fell on the 13th of a month were examined with computerized data for two measures in England. The deaths due to accidents on the motor way M25, and the sudden unusual deaths in the North Thames Group of Hospitals in London for five years. There were 20 such Fridays in five years. The results were a revelation to the scientists.
* Only 50% of people used the M 25 on those days, showing that 50% of the population believed in the so-called superstition and stayed indoors, even today in Briton.
* Despite that the accidental deaths doubled on the road on those days. Statistically death rate would have quadrupled had all of them used the road that day.
* Death rate due to unusual sudden deaths went up three times on those days.
* The scientific conclusion of the study was that Friday, the 13th is inauspicious to 50% of Britons!
Another study that would baffle the rationalist is published in the most prestigious Archives of Internal Medicine from the USA. This study prospectively studied two comparable groups of patients admitted with a heart attack to a University hospital of nearly 5000 patients. Without the patient’s knowledge and the treating cardiologists' knowledge, one half of them was prayed for at a distance (intercessory prayer). All other treatment and interventions remained the same for both the groups as the doctors were blinded as also the patients (double blind study). The prayed for group at the end of five years had all coronary care unit scores significantly reduced compared to the not prayed for group. That included death and disability as also going back to the original employment after recovery. On an average the prayed for group stayed for a shorter time in the hospital. The conclusion of the study was that intercessory prayer did help patients after a heart attack! I am sure our reductionist scientists would become sad after reading this! This is precisely why I wrote that human wisdom does not get confined to the five senses only, as is presumed by reductionist scientists.
The good news is that the new science of “holism”, called the science of CHAOS, would chalk out new paradigms in science for the future and it would use non-linear mathematics for calculating the power of future predictions. Quantum physics has been changing for the better for a long time now. The trend took a turn after the “Uncertainty Principle” of Werner Heisenberg and new concepts of Ervin Schrodinger and others in that field.
“In the twentieth century, however, physics has gone through several conceptual revolutions that clearly reveal the limitations of the mechanistic world view and lead to an organic, ecological view of the world, which shows great similarities to the views of mystics of all ages and traditions. The Universe is no longer seen as a machine, made up of multitude of separate objects, but appears as a harmonious indivisible whole; a network of dynamic relations that include the human observer and his or her consciousness in an essential way.” Wrote Fritjoff Capra in his celebrated book “The Turning Point.”
He further went on to say that “ the Cartesian view of nature was further extended to living organisms, which were regarded as machines constructed from separate parts….. The contributions of such founding fathers of science as Francis Bacon, William Harvey, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Isaac Newton must be re-evaluated…The idea of life as an ongoing struggle for existence, which both Karl Marx and Darwin owed to the economist Thomas Malthus, was vigorously promoted in the nineteenth century by the social Darwinists…..overlooking the fact that all struggle in nature takes place within the wider context of co-operation.” How true!
Medicine and other sciences should have taken this lead and changed their attitude taking into consideration the all important human consciousness (the mind). If one does that one quickly realizes that science comes closer to eastern mysticism than any other view of man’s existence on this planet. Recently many important studies did reveal the fact that it is the human mind that is at the root of all human illnesses and keeping the mind tranquil is the best preventive strategy. In short, it is not what you eat that kills you; it is what eats you that kills you.
This is where the science of astrology comes to fore. People get mad when astrology is referred to as a science. Many of these people feel that science is their personal property and any intrusion from sources inimical to them should not come into the fold of science. This is the greatest blow to science. As mentioned above, science is just curiosity and organized skepticism. Let us measure astrology by these yardsticks. The objections to astrology are mainly the following.
* Future predictions do not come right!
* Sun and Moon are not planets.
* Raahu and Ketu do not exist like other planets.
* People born at the same time do not have similar time evolution.
* Celestial bodies can not have any effect on human life.
* Charlatans use astrology to fool the gullible public.
Let us analyze all these scientifically.
Future predictions: can not come right in any field, be it physics, astrology or medicine. To be able to predict the future we should have all the details of the initial state of the organism. If a doctor has to predict the future of his patient he should know the patients physical state, his mental state and also his genome and his response to the different celestial bodies. All these are unattainable with our present state of knowledge. We have, of course, been predicting the unpredictable. With all the supercomputers, weather predictions of short duration rarely come right. Edward Laurenz himself propounded the “butterfly effect” to get round this problem. We are where we were. Before rationalism and reductionist science coming on the scene we were all Pascalanians, believing in the Law of Probabilities. In reality, it is only probabilities that matter in future predictions. Let us not, therefore, blame astrology alone!
Sun and Moon are not planets: So what? We are not dealing with planetology. We are dealing with astrology. The latter deals with astrol (a heavenly body regarded as exerting influence on mankind and events-Webster’s Dictionary) where sun and moon also are included. In fact, sun was a planet in the olden days.(Gr. Planetes=wanderer.Webster) By another meaning the moon also becomes a planet. (Any one of the heavenly bodies revolving about the sun and shining by its light-Webster). Astrology does not deal with planets but with gruhas (astrol).
Raahu and Ketu do not exist: Similarly, the North Pole and South Pole do not exist on the planet but they are mathematical reference points. Similarly Raahu and Ketu are reference points where, when a particular Gruha (astrol) reaches the effects on mankind and events are specific and defined. They are reference points for calculations only and are not planets in the true sense of the word.
People Born at the same time do not have similar time evolution: Time evolution in any dynamic system, as stated above, depends on the total initial knowledge of the organism and as such even if one is born at the same time and has similar astrological charts their future might not be identical as their consciousness (mind) and their physical body features (phenotype) could (should be) different. It is in agreement with the laws of nature. Imponderables being what they are future prediction (Achilles heal of astrology) need not come true!
Celestial bodies do not have any effect on the human system: is a statement made by the so-called scientists who do not seem to know their science well. Many studies have shown the significant effect of the moon on the human system to give only one example. Lunatic as a word denotes the knowledge of even our forefathers about the role played by moon’s phases on the mental attitude of psychiatric patients. While the moon’s gravitational pull could displace billions of tons of water in the oceans producing high and low tides to say that the same moon does not have any effect on the human body, made up of water to the extent of nearly 80%, looks ridiculous. Scientific studies have shown how elective surgery done during the full moon day vis-à-vis new moon day has significant difference in blood loss. So many such studies could be cited.
Charlatans misuse astrology and dupe the gullible public: Are there no charlatans in main line science? Fraud in scientific research is rampant. A recent estimate in medical literature threw up the possibility that majority of published data could be fake! Only those who are inside science circles know how faking is done and how fakes get even awards and prizes-or is it that they get it many more times compared to the genuine ones! The 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine went to Wagner Juregg, who later was found to be a cheat! Why make an exception of astrology. As long as there are dishonest people in society there will be their share in every walk of life-astrology included.
If one were to analyze the recent horrible human tragedies in the USA one would come up with the following conclusions. Our rational and scientific education has brought out bright engineers and scientists that have been able to build airplanes and sky scrapers using linear mathematics and the Laws of Deterministic Predictability, but did not impart the proper education of co-operation in human existence not to collide the two to kill their own brothers and sisters. The terrorists must have studied the Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest” and also about the “socialistic” norm of struggle for existence. These are the things we teach in main stream education and oppose spirituality in education as something poisonous. Spirituality is sharing and caring and that has nothing to do with religion. If only we had inculcated the values of sharing and caring the human tragedies that overtook innocent humans in NewYork and Washington would have been avoided.
Education must inculcate human qualities of head and heart in every student and make him human and humane, taking him away from his animal instincts. The present Macaulay style education only teaches competition and not co-operation. Both Darwin and the socialists took their lessons from Thomas Malthus, the economist, who taught struggle as the basis to come up in life. Little did the Malthusians realize that all struggle originates in co-operation! Our social Darwinists should realize this fact and the earlier they did it the better. Now that the big brother, America, is flexing its muscles, the results could be further sorrow to the innocent people of the world. Only love will win a war and not hate. This is true education.
At least now our die hard social Darwinists would agree that education should include spirituality in it. One of our good education ministers in the past, Moulana Abdul kalam Azad, in his letters to then powers-that-be did urge the need for spirituality in education. He warned that “if we do not do that, fanatics in each religion will teach and interpret their religion in a dangerous way, making life miserable for people. It is only when one understands his/her religion well does he/she love all other religions. The need, therefore, is to teach spirituality and not religion in schools and colleges in addition to the three Rs.” ( India’s Moulana –ICCR publication ed. Veena Sikri)
Darwin’s Theories have been found wanting now. There are certain species that alter the features of their offspring in the womb to withstand dangers in future life. A variety of lizard, when pregnant, on smelling an enemy snake, changes the smell organ of its foetus in such a way that the new born would be able to smell a snake at ten times the distance the mother could do. So many such instances could be given. This goes against the very foundation of the survival of the fittest theory. In man, the mother, who is ill fed during the first trimester of pregnancy, brings out an infant that has poorly built heart, blood vessels and pancreas. Such a child gets heart attacks, high blood pressure and diabetes at an early age, precociously. This also goes against Darwinism. Many more examples could be given. But the establishment wants to sell Darwinism at any cost. There is a department of “Science Communication” in Oxford that does just that. One has only to read the book The Blind Watch Maker, by Richard Dawkins, the head of that department, to know how they bend over backwards to sell science in its present avatar. It is sad that our gurus do not want to know the truth!
Scientists and pseudo-scientists please take note that science has not found its Holy Grail and is not drinking from it. Far from it. The growing weight of specialization and sub-specialization is slowly disintegrating the present science of reductionism. We need to have a holistic view of the Universe for the future good of mankind that takes into account all aspects of life, including economics, sociology, the environment and spirituality. It is the coming together of all these that would make this world tranquil-the dire need of the hour in place of another world war.