Interesting piece from Prof Yash Pal of UGC

END OUTCOME OF EDUCATION

I am personally not so disappointed by the quality of the genetic pool of students in our schools and colleges. I find urge, passion and curiosity – particularly curiosity that unfortunately withers away with age. There is a will to learn - and also to go off in tangential directions which, they often cannot - because our learning is imprisoned in disciplines and circumscribed by our examination system. We are forced to compete in mindless race to get high marks and the coaching classes are  very effective in killing curiosity and creativity.

FREEDOM MOVEMENT OF EDUCATION

Meandering through subject areas should be encouraged. We should remove all obstructions against such meandering and discipline crossing. We must become effervescent places, exploring and often going in different directions. Demand for absolute uniformity turns students and teachers into stones that need to be polished and cut the same way. We should realize that, while information can be delivered, each child creates its knowledge almost autonomously.  

NEED FOR DIVERSITY

Diversity should not frighten us. Institutes should not become a cubical for a single discipline. Many started as single disciplinary institutes but their greatness started when they burst out to cover a large universe of knowledge. We have professional colleges without anything to do with philosophy, linguistics, psychology, poetry or worrying about the bulk of the people living in a world of poverty, discrimination and oppression.  Our IIT’s and Institutes of Management can graduate into the class of great universities if they venture out to include subjects in humanities and sciences.

BREAK THE WALLS

I want to replace the impenetrable walls and boundaries in following areas:

1.      Between Universities and Research Laboratories

2.      Between Industry and academic Institutions.

3.      Subterranean Learning/Innovation and Formal Education and Research.

4.      Disciplines and the resulting Infertility of Information.

5.      Instructing and Learning from Children:

6.      Intellectual Understanding and Societal Brain Washing.

FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES

We cannot import whole, fully dressed, foreign universities, sometimes with Ivy on their walls! This has never been done anywhere. When a hundred years ago Americans found that their universities needed vigor and excitement they did not set out to import some of the great universities of Europe. Instead they persuaded a large number of truly excellent and creative individuals to come to American institutions to change their climate and make their own careers. That is how the great Graduate Schools of America were developed.