The Goal of Education

As the Russia Ukraine war continues to cause death and devastation of enormous proportions and the so-called global community appears helpless, a basic question crops up. Why are we still ruled by animal instincts with hostility, aggression and propensity to kill continuing with the spirit that was seen in the prehistoric ages. Have all those attempts to make human beings humans through education, religion and other agencies of socialisation failed to make an impact? One more question arises: Who are the soldiers fighting for? Are the Russians fighting for their country or for a person named Putin. All those ideological alibis make little sense. The fact remains that it is one man’s ego, and his paranoid assumptions that has brought this world to the brink. Advocacies of Social Darwinism could not have led to anything better. Survival of the fittest is a jargon that justifies violence and aggression to approve pouncing of the strong on the weak. The law of the jungle is prevailing in human societies, too. Man has proved to be worse than animals. Animals only kill when there is need. Human beings, on the other hand, kill even when they don’t have any pressing reason to do so. And this is not the first time.Animal instincts have had the better of human reason in the past also. And it has always been just one cause. One man’s ego and many peoples’ acquiescence. The way out is application of righteous reason by all those who don’t say no when they want to say no. It is against this backdrop that we need to discuss education. Education, that is supposed to refine human nature and transform the animal in us to human beings. According to a social media post, a letter addressed to teachers was found in a Nazi concentration camp at the end of 2nd World War. It says something very relevant. Even if the authenticity is doubtful the contents need a serious thought. It is quoted below. ‘I am survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no one should witness. Chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and burnt by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is to help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths and educated illiterates. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve towards making our children humane’. Interestingly, Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of BHU said something similar some four decades earlier. He said that a teaching university would half perform its function if it does not seek to develop the heart power of its scholars with the same solicitude with which it develops the brain power. He placed formation of character as one of the principal objects of creating the university. It should not turnout engineers, doctors, managers, etc., but also men of high character, probity and honour. It is time to try and re-invent education so that it creates decent human beings rather than cold blooded professionals. It is going to be a daunting task as designing a curriculum to make good human beings is a tall order. But attempts can be made so that the unreasonable and undeserving are not followed by the unwilling.Education must awaken the conscience.

Reinventing the state

In classical political theory the word state has many definitions. But the basic concept is that it is a community or society politically organised under one independent government within a given territory exercising its own control over that territory. A country also comes under the idea of a state and it’s supposed to be governed by a legitimate authority. Legitimacy, however, is acquired through some rational legal means. The state is governed buy a machinery created for orderly and proper management of its affairs. The basic requirements of orderly functioning are legal, social and moral codes as enshrined in the framework of governance called constitution. The state is thus the ruling entity run by an independent, objective and responsive machinery consisting of humans. The catch lies in in two words responsive and human. Being responsive and being human are two sides of the same coin. If state machinery is responsive it will naturally be human having a head, a heart and a soul. The head gives objectivity, the heart emotion and the soul morality. Combination of the three makes the machinery responsive. This machinery is run by a bureaucracy which is the main apparatus of the state. This apparatus is supposed to be independent and neutral, free of outside influences and biases. In Management theory, doubts have been raised about the independence and neutrality of the bureaucratic apparatus and a term bureaupathy has been given to describe a bureaucracy that is not neutral and independent. It was Max Weber who first visualised the idea of bureaucracy as the apparatus to run the government of a state. But he was unmindful of the fact that bureaucracy in due course can acquire beauropathic tendencies. It is against this backdrop that there is need to examine what is the state of this apparatus. Not just in India but elsewhere too. For many serious observers beauropathic tendencies are on the rise making the state unfair and partisan. Though e-governance was introduced to make the state fair and responsive, things do not have improved much. Rather, it has given a reason to be more callous. Responsiveness is an attribute of humanness and technology can only help if the human element is fair. But if technology drives humans, a Frankenstein like monster is in the making. Faceless doesn’t mean headless and heartless. That is what excessive technology intervention has become. Human intervention has to be given the primary role. But in a mad rush to digitise too much intervention of artificial intelligence has made the system alien and indifferent. It is time to take stock of the situation and let technology be what it is. An aid and not a substitute of humans. But what is happening is that technology is becoming replacement of human beings. The purpose of digitisation has to be responsiveness. Trust and empowerment are the two key concepts that can make digitisation achieve its objectives. For a country like India where both the physical and psychosocial ecosystem is still in a formative stage digitisation has to hasten slowly. And more importantly, digitisation is not about data, social media and Netflix. It is something entirely different. To create a responsive state that delivers, it is important to ensure that the digital interface allows for more listening rather than following the commands of the algorithm in the system blindly. Let humans be driving the machine and not otherwise.