FEATURE
Education must make healthy minds; not just wealthy careers.
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
Prof. B. M. Hegde,
hegdebm@gmail.com
"A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. "
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, higher or lower, should have the prime goal of making healthy minds in society in addition, of course, to making comfortable careers. Unfortunately, today the sole aim of our present education seems to be to make careers, the higher the pay the better. Smart people might not be educated in that sense but they are smarter all the same. The Tagores, Bill Gateses, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffets, Dhirubhais were too smart but were not the products of this kind of miseducation! Parents, teachers, "educationists, (so called because they own educational institutions) educational administrators, as also the governments of the day, along with the brainwashed children to day want education only to make better careers. In the knowledge society of today NO BODY thinks. Thinking seems to be a distinct disadvantage in the present set up! This looks good on the face of it but, in the long run, this could prove to be a dangerous game. "The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe," wrote Voltaire years ago. Sir George Pickering, FRS wrote that the main function of education was "to kindle the flame, not fill the pot".
There is a new malady, born in the west, against which Europeans have already woken up to fight. That disease is called "Wall Street Greed." That name does not tell the whole story. The "Wall Street Greed" might have effectively destroyed the American economy lately, thanks to Lehman brothers and their ilk. What has gone unnoticed, though, is the larger universal effect of corporate greed in general which has spread its tentacles to all areas of human existence. It has invaded the sacred temples of education, science, research, governance, judiciary, the medical care establishment, the media and all other spheres of the day to day existence. Poverty being the mother of all illnesses, poor in the world today pay for their poverty with their lives, thanks to this corporate greed. The latter was born out of the philosophy of Bernard Mandeville, who was Adam Smith’s teacher in some sense. Mandeville proclaimed that "in corporate philosophy what matters is ONLY profit, irrespective of consequences." (Italics mine).
Mandeville goes on to show in his Fable of the bees that a society possessed of all the virtues (blest with content and honesty) falling into apathy and utter paralyses. "The absence of self-love is the death of progress. The so-called higher virtues are mere hypocrisy, and arise from the selfish desire to be superior to the brutes. The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." Similarly he arrives at the great paradox that "private vices are public benefits". Among other things, Mandeville argues that the basest and vilest behaviours produce positive economic effects. "A libertine, for example, is a vicious character, and yet his spending will employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks, prostitutes. These persons, in turn, will employ bakers, carpenters, and the like. Therefore, the rapaciousness and violence of the base passions of the libertine benefit society in general." Although Mandeville was unpopular in his time for his views, today’s corporate world seems to be venerating him with one difference though. Today’s private vice does not translate into public good, which was the essence of Mandeville’s teaching.
The noble professions of medicine, law and scientific enquiry have ceased to be what they aught to be. The medical profession of the early 20th Century in London was assessed to be a bunch of "incompetent, corrupt and nepotistic" humans who resembled a stinking pus filled abscess on society, wrote a young MP and a physician, Thomas Wakeley in 1823. To set it right and let out that bad pus, he started a medical science journal with the name of the surgical instrument to drain pus-The Lancet. The journal had a chequered career of nearly 190 years to date. Around the same time another great brain, a dramatist, Sir George Bernard Shaw, wrote a satirical drama, The Doctors’ Dilemma, which forced the star performers of the day, like Sir Arbuthnot Lane, out of business! Surprisingly, if one were to replace those star performers of London of 1823 by today’s star performers anywhere in the world including India, the drama would get greater kudos.
A recent audit by a medical journalist/historian has thrown up more surprising data. Hillary Butler, writing in the famous, British Medical Journal, feels that the "nepotistic, incompetent, corrupt" bunch of 1823 has been replaced by a "Corporate Monstrosity," today which would cut any Wakeley at his knees! Many, if not all, ills of society today could be traced to the faulty educational philosophy followed by the globalization concept of the post Second World War world. Terrorism, wars around the globe, white collar crime, irrational consumerism, disease mongering, drug peddling of both legal and illegal drugs, rampant fraud in research, intellectual terrorism, corruption in all the watch dog bodies ranging from the World Bank, IMF, WHO to national watch dog bodies, dangerous dictatorships, state sponsored terrorism and corrupt politicians could all be traced to oppression, suppression and denial originating from the educational system failing to make healthy minds (health defined as "enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate) as their main motto!
With the advent of the Cold War era, western education, even in the UK was slowly tilting towards the US model. Been to America (BTA) was considered an additional qualification for all top posts in the UK. Colonial countries in Asia and Africa, naturally, followed suit. Even India, despite our hoary excellent educational base which had attracted the best European brains in the past, was bending over backwards to fall in line with the American thinking in this area. The eastern block led by USSR followed a different path but, many great brains there were behind bars anyway in the pre-Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika!
With the fall of the Berlin wall and the advent of the new economic liberalisation era in India after 1991, there has been a renewed emphasis in following the US model here. With European and American Universities starving for rich paying students, especially after the 9/11 tragedy which brought in a drastic fall in rich west Asian students gravitating to US and Europe for higher education, all those countries focused their attention on India to supply their needs what with the demographic predictions throwing up the possibilities of more the 700-800 million young men and women looking for higher education in India in the next four to five decades. With a concurrent fall in the numbers of the younger generation in the west, the rush has become acute. Australia, USA, UK and European countries are selling their education like they sell their silicon chips! With the advent of the new era of young peoples’ exchange, thanks to the multitude of newer Sweat shops and body shopping establishments in India, there is renewed awakening in the minds of young Indians about the hassle free life in the west!
While there are both good and bad things in any system, especially educational system, time has come for us take stock of those fall outs, as our government is too keen to keep our doors wide open for foreign universities to step in and reap the harvest. The simplistic argument is that India will not be in a position to offer (free) higher education to all the needy in the future. Even private-public partnerships, much touted, seem to have run into road blocks already. Some heads in the government are biased against home baked education and feel that foreign brand is better. In this cacophony the worst sufferer is Indian primary education. Unless and until we set that right our higher education, built on that faulty foundation could collapse any day. The "PROBE" report on primary education in India, commissioned by the GOI in 1997, shows that our primary education is in real mess. I strongly feel that primary education of quality is the one that lays the foundation for making healthy minds, which is the essence of all education. Tax payers’ money should be fruitfully utilized to make primary (elementary, middle and high school) education not just compulsory and free but also effective and fruitful. Higher education should be paid for by the recipient-rich pay for it, meritorious get scholarships, and the poor get interest free loans from a newly created Educational Development Bank. License and permit raj must end giving place to "quality" controlling the standards of institutions. It should be a buyers’ market and not sellers market as of now where quality is given a go by.
to be contnd. in next issue...
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Education, higher or lower, should have the prime goal of making healthy minds in society in addition, of course, to making comfortable careers. Unfortunately, today the sole aim of our present education seems to be to make careers, the higher the pay the better. Smart people might not be educated in that sense but they are smarter all the same. The Tagores, Bill Gateses, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffets, Dhirubhais were too smart but were not the products of this kind of miseducation! Parents, teachers, "educationists, (so called because they own educational institutions) educational administrators, as also the governments of the day, along with the brainwashed children to day want education only to make better careers. In the knowledge society of today NO BODY thinks. Thinking seems to be a distinct disadvantage in the present set up! This looks good on the face of it but, in the long run, this could prove to be a dangerous game. "The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe," wrote Voltaire years ago. Sir George Pickering, FRS wrote that the main function of education was "to kindle the flame, not fill the pot".
There is a new malady, born in the west, against which Europeans have already woken up to fight. That disease is called "Wall Street Greed." That name does not tell the whole story. The "Wall Street Greed" might have effectively destroyed the American economy lately, thanks to Lehman brothers and their ilk. What has gone unnoticed, though, is the larger universal effect of corporate greed in general which has spread its tentacles to all areas of human existence. It has invaded the sacred temples of education, science, research, governance, judiciary, the medical care establishment, the media and all other spheres of the day to day existence. Poverty being the mother of all illnesses, poor in the world today pay for their poverty with their lives, thanks to this corporate greed. The latter was born out of the philosophy of Bernard Mandeville, who was Adam Smith’s teacher in some sense. Mandeville proclaimed that "in corporate philosophy what matters is ONLY profit, irrespective of consequences." (Italics mine).
Mandeville goes on to show in his Fable of the bees that a society possessed of all the virtues (blest with content and honesty) falling into apathy and utter paralyses. "The absence of self-love is the death of progress. The so-called higher virtues are mere hypocrisy, and arise from the selfish desire to be superior to the brutes. The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." Similarly he arrives at the great paradox that "private vices are public benefits". Among other things, Mandeville argues that the basest and vilest behaviours produce positive economic effects. "A libertine, for example, is a vicious character, and yet his spending will employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks, prostitutes. These persons, in turn, will employ bakers, carpenters, and the like. Therefore, the rapaciousness and violence of the base passions of the libertine benefit society in general." Although Mandeville was unpopular in his time for his views, today’s corporate world seems to be venerating him with one difference though. Today’s private vice does not translate into public good, which was the essence of Mandeville’s teaching.
The noble professions of medicine, law and scientific enquiry have ceased to be what they aught to be. The medical profession of the early 20th Century in London was assessed to be a bunch of "incompetent, corrupt and nepotistic" humans who resembled a stinking pus filled abscess on society, wrote a young MP and a physician, Thomas Wakeley in 1823. To set it right and let out that bad pus, he started a medical science journal with the name of the surgical instrument to drain pus-The Lancet. The journal had a chequered career of nearly 190 years to date. Around the same time another great brain, a dramatist, Sir George Bernard Shaw, wrote a satirical drama, The Doctors’ Dilemma, which forced the star performers of the day, like Sir Arbuthnot Lane, out of business! Surprisingly, if one were to replace those star performers of London of 1823 by today’s star performers anywhere in the world including India, the drama would get greater kudos.
A recent audit by a medical journalist/historian has thrown up more surprising data. Hillary Butler, writing in the famous, British Medical Journal, feels that the "nepotistic, incompetent, corrupt" bunch of 1823 has been replaced by a "Corporate Monstrosity," today which would cut any Wakeley at his knees! Many, if not all, ills of society today could be traced to the faulty educational philosophy followed by the globalization concept of the post Second World War world. Terrorism, wars around the globe, white collar crime, irrational consumerism, disease mongering, drug peddling of both legal and illegal drugs, rampant fraud in research, intellectual terrorism, corruption in all the watch dog bodies ranging from the World Bank, IMF, WHO to national watch dog bodies, dangerous dictatorships, state sponsored terrorism and corrupt politicians could all be traced to oppression, suppression and denial originating from the educational system failing to make healthy minds (health defined as "enthusiasm to work and enthusiasm to be compassionate) as their main motto!
With the advent of the Cold War era, western education, even in the UK was slowly tilting towards the US model. Been to America (BTA) was considered an additional qualification for all top posts in the UK. Colonial countries in Asia and Africa, naturally, followed suit. Even India, despite our hoary excellent educational base which had attracted the best European brains in the past, was bending over backwards to fall in line with the American thinking in this area. The eastern block led by USSR followed a different path but, many great brains there were behind bars anyway in the pre-Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika!
With the fall of the Berlin wall and the advent of the new economic liberalisation era in India after 1991, there has been a renewed emphasis in following the US model here. With European and American Universities starving for rich paying students, especially after the 9/11 tragedy which brought in a drastic fall in rich west Asian students gravitating to US and Europe for higher education, all those countries focused their attention on India to supply their needs what with the demographic predictions throwing up the possibilities of more the 700-800 million young men and women looking for higher education in India in the next four to five decades. With a concurrent fall in the numbers of the younger generation in the west, the rush has become acute. Australia, USA, UK and European countries are selling their education like they sell their silicon chips! With the advent of the new era of young peoples’ exchange, thanks to the multitude of newer Sweat shops and body shopping establishments in India, there is renewed awakening in the minds of young Indians about the hassle free life in the west!
While there are both good and bad things in any system, especially educational system, time has come for us take stock of those fall outs, as our government is too keen to keep our doors wide open for foreign universities to step in and reap the harvest. The simplistic argument is that India will not be in a position to offer (free) higher education to all the needy in the future. Even private-public partnerships, much touted, seem to have run into road blocks already. Some heads in the government are biased against home baked education and feel that foreign brand is better. In this cacophony the worst sufferer is Indian primary education. Unless and until we set that right our higher education, built on that faulty foundation could collapse any day. The "PROBE" report on primary education in India, commissioned by the GOI in 1997, shows that our primary education is in real mess. I strongly feel that primary education of quality is the one that lays the foundation for making healthy minds, which is the essence of all education. Tax payers’ money should be fruitfully utilized to make primary (elementary, middle and high school) education not just compulsory and free but also effective and fruitful. Higher education should be paid for by the recipient-rich pay for it, meritorious get scholarships, and the poor get interest free loans from a newly created Educational Development Bank. License and permit raj must end giving place to "quality" controlling the standards of institutions. It should be a buyers’ market and not sellers market as of now where quality is given a go by.
to be contnd. in next issue...
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