Written by Jug Suraiya Has India’s education system become a contradiction in terms, in that it does not educate and is no longer a system, an orderly arrangement of ideas and functions formulated to achieve a desired objective? A spate of scams, of mass-copying, leaked question papers, and faked certificates, poses a threat to the groves of academe which are being turned into a blackboard jungle, producing hordes of purportedly educated unemployed young people, making a cruel mockery of our vaunted ‘demographic dividend’. But more than the economic and social repercussions of mass unemployment, our derelict educational edifice is haunted by the spectre of a deeper existential crisis. In an interview on social media, a student has identified a fundamental flaw in what and how we teach by dividing courses into the science stream and the arts stream.
Students who opt for ‘hard’ science subjects like physics and chemistry, can’t also choose ‘soft’ subjects like history and literature, and vice versa. This creates an asymmetry not only in terms of job skills and employment opportunities but, at a deeper level, it can lead to an ethical, moral, and spiritual vacuum, a void in the heart of our body politic. Science teaches the ‘how’ of life: how to do brain surgery, how to cure disease, how to build rocket ships.
The arts guide us to the ‘why’ of life: why peace is better than war, why love should overcome hate, why there’s a difference between good and ev.