{"id":3752,"date":"2019-07-20T16:39:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T11:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=3752"},"modified":"2019-07-20T16:39:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T11:09:33","slug":"important-editorials-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/important-editorials-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Important Editorials:"},"content":{"rendered":"

The draft\u2019s endorsement of critical thinking would have gained credibility if it had promoted liberal values: <\/strong><\/p>\n

Relevance: Mains: G.S paper II: Education<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few months ago, a school principal told me about her conversation in the morning assembly with children of the middle (Grades VI-VIII) section. She had asked them for suggestions to turn the school into heaven. Some children suggested a garden, with trees, grass, and flowers blossoming all year round. Others pointed out that the school already had a nice garden. They suggested that heaven should have peace, so we should end all fights. The assembly ended with everyone taking a vow to stop all fighting in the school to make it like heaven. A short while later, two boys came scuffling into the principal\u2019s office, quarrelling and seeking her intervention. On inquiry, one of them said, \u201cMa\u2019am, didn\u2019t you say you want our school to be like heaven?\u201d Then he pointed at the other boy and asked, \u201cWhat is he doing here, Ma\u2019am? He fights with me all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story came back to me when I started reading the section on higher education in the 480-page draft of the National Education Policy (NEP). I had completed my reading of the section on school education, so I was ready to be told how a future generation that spends its school years under the guidance of the proposed new policy will spend its college years. For improvement in learning at school, the draft NEP wants critical thinking and creativity to be treated as the cornerstones of intellectual development from early childhood onwards. As a term, critical thinking or inquiry has gained enormous popularity of late. It does not mean \u2018critical\u2019 in the common sense. How the term has evolved in recent educational theory implies the ability to place ideas and problems in a larger context in order to locate creative links and clues by using information and concepts drawn from different subjects. Imagine our youngsters proceeding to higher education after this kind of intellectual training at school: you can picture a transformed college classroom.<\/p>\n

Pivotal to reform<\/p>\n

In the draft NEP, the section for higher education opens with \u2018liberal arts\u2019 as the key to reform. This is another term that has been gaining currency in India over recent years, but its history is rather different from that of critical thinking. In India, owing to our colonial history, we are more used to the term \u2018liberal\u2019. In modern education, \u2018liberal arts\u2019 refers to undergraduate courses in America\u2019s elite private universities. For years, I have been looking for a suitable term in my mother tongue, i.e. Hindi, to convey the many layers of meaning underlying the word \u2018liberal\u2019. The common translation is \u2018udaar\u2019 or large-hearted. (I am sure this is the term they will use when the draft NEP is made available in Hindi.) The idea of liberalism as large-heartedness or intellectual generosity ran into trouble when \u2018neo-liberalism\u2019 gained centre-stage in economic policy. The only way one might notice some generosity in it was by recognising the state\u2019s willingness to loosen its grip. Neo-liberalism has now settled in, transcending ideological boundaries, but its impact on liberal arts education in America is far from clear. Many scholars have suggested that the turn towards neo-liberal policies has weakened critical thinking in liberal arts courses. This matter has suddenly become relevant for us in the wake of the draft NEP proposing both critical thinking and liberal arts, virtually in the same breath.<\/p>\n

Applying critical thinking<\/p>\n

Implementing the draft NEP in my own mind, I thought of using critical thinking to reflect on the prospects of liberal training. The late Professor Ravinder Kumar, an eminent historian of modern politics, was a self-avowed liberal. I once heard him explain why liberalism is the hardest social doctrine to practice. He said the capacity to tolerate your adversaries, with curiosity to understand them, calls for a mutual agreement. If there is no such consensus, i.e. liberal outlook is practised by one side only, it can be frustrating, and might even lead to a tragic failure of liberalism itself. When I hear about liberal arts courses being offered in private universities, I often wonder what future awaits them. How will they face a world in which the \u2018narrow domestic walls\u2019 are rising higher and higher? This metaphor was used by Tagore, a bold liberal, who wanted India to become a \u2018heaven of freedom\u2019. \u2018Where knowledge is free\u2019, the same poem said. The liberal arts undergraduate courses I am referring are to cost \u20b98 lakh per year.<\/p>\n

The draft NEP\u2019s support for liberal arts comes with a plea for increased public funding. It also cites employability as a justification. Even more interestingly, the argument excavates historical grounding. It says: \u201cIndian universities such as Takshshila and Nalanda… definitively emphasised the liberal arts and liberal education tradition…. The critical Indian concept of liberal arts has indeed become extremely important in the modern day employment landscape of the 21st century, and liberal arts education of this kind is already being extensively implemented today (e.g. in the United States in Ivy League schools) with great success. It is time India also brought back this great tradition back to its place of origin.\u201d (pp. 223-224).<\/p>\n

The resounding, elaborate commendation of liberal arts in the draft NEP brought me back to the principal\u2019s story about turning her school into heaven. The boy who asked her about his classmate \u2014 \u201cWhat is he doing here, Ma\u2019am?\u201d \u2014 was asking a fundamental question pertinent to the future of liberal values. The youngster\u2019s query demonstrates that he has internalised the spirit of the age. Many children do that. Their questions carry valuable material to understand our times better and more objectively than we might be able to do as adults, submerged as we are in our ethos, feeling forced to cope with it. The boy\u2019s query contained the hope that principal Ma\u2019am, being the custodian of heaven, will exercise her authority to adjudicate in his fight. What were her choices? There were mainly two: to expel the alleged fighter or to ask the complainer to talk to his adversary. Only the latter would qualify as a liberal administrative measure.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is what the draft NEP also wants in its push for the liberal arts, as a futuristic substitute for the monochromatic \u2018BA\u2019 our system is used to and stuck in. Since the draft NEP is committed to critical thinking, surely its writers had cast a glance at the larger ethos and noticed the demise of several bastions of liberal education. Had they evinced even moderate concern, their endorsement of the liberal arts would have gained credibility. Unless liberal arts graduates are to be produced exclusively for export, their training would have to include the smartness to not let anyone know what exactly you believe in. One suspects that their American counterparts already receive such training.<\/p>\n

Let me get back to the heaven alluded to in the principal\u2019s story. Trees and peace apart, a school turned into heaven will surely have to resolve the problem of fear, so endemic to our education system. The boy who wanted the principal to adjudicate was not afraid of indicating to her his own preferred solution. It was implied in the question: \u2018What is he doing here?\u2019 This stance also carries the hope of impunity from being charged of intolerance. As a grown-up he might say: \u2018If we want to preserve our neatly fenced heaven, why can\u2019t we expel from it the people we don\u2019t appreciate?\u2019 We might add: isn\u2019t this already being argued in many liberal countries, so why should we hesitate? My principal friend, however, followed her instinctive good sense and sent the two boys away, asking them to talk it over and play without a quarrel together.<\/p>\n

(Source: The Hindu)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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