Get Liberal!

There are many states in the country which shower marks on the students. When these students venture out into other states and mention their marks, they are considered whizkids. But the fact is that their boards are either too leniant or give no scope for subjectivity in answers to test the students and hence end up in a situation where you need to award full scores to students.

Earlier, I thought this stigma lay only with the states but now it has even spread to the centre with students scoring nothing less than 99% there too. No issues with scoring high, but what is it that we are losing enroute?

I personally know loads of people who have shunned away Indian language courses and opted French Basic so that they could score high and end up in the higher bracket. Not that I had picked up the Indian course for the love of it, but just to cite a case. There are many universities in the country where disciplines like History, Mythology are shunned by students of Commerce, Arts, Mathematics and Sciences. This is not because they hate it, but it is because they are not scoring subjects. Everything in an institute is tied to the final score. Right from extracurricular indulgence to the course structure, students today value everything based on the score they could end up at in the end. Priyanka Sarkar makes an apt point about these high scores and low learning.

This is probably because parents want their kids to get into the rat race and earn high scores. Parents always ask kids what have they earned (as a score), but never what have they learned. Indus Valley Civilisation is a whole discipline in itself and has many lessons embedded into it, and its shameful today that we haven't mastered it. All we know of Indus Valley is the one chapter we had in our History books in High School. Of course, I omit students pursuing History!

This sorry state is probably because we percieve every discipline as independent. We must realise that perhaps Science and art may be independent, but History, Philosophy, Literature, Mythology and Politics are all intertwined with every course and discipline. These are not subjects. They are hallmarks of the transitions of our society, and one look at the literature of a century tells us all the sciences, commerce, arts and mathematics of that century.

The branch that encompasses these all-transcending disciplines of History, Philosophy, Literature etc... constitute what we call Liberal Arts. Speaking from a Management perspective, I dont think we can develop globally competent Managers without the knowledge of Liberal Arts equipped in our wards.

I pity myself when I reminisce those golden days of high school where I would savor literature of Wordsworth, Eliott, John Keats and likes, though to a limited extent. Then, I never knew the beauty and necessity of literature. Today when I know I dont have any such chance to read them. Of course, as personal indulgence, I do follow them but what I speak of global application.

A true Manager should have a true sense and understanding of History, as a professor of mine puts it. I fervently believe Literature is something that teaches you a lot, Management and otherwise. Philosophy is something we could never debate upon. For a country like ours, every spirited citizen should believe that we need to know Political Sciences. If not to get into them, it would at least help us measure the country's governance with appropriate yardsticks. One reason why the governance of the country is below expectation in most of the regions is because though the inhabitants there are well educated, they are illiterates in Political Sciences. To them, Political Sciences mean Parties and the mud-slinging they indulge in. Before you go searching for an example, check out Bangalore, the best example!

All said and done, it is very clear that we need not toppers, but learners. Learned individuals who have deep sense of history, understand culture and art, absorb philosophies of the land and think not in terms of theorems and theories but society and progress. We produce people who can mint money who have no idea of anything except their own area of work. Suppose tomorrow, a holocaust puts an end to IT Services Industry, we are going to dogs as a nation.

It is high time we realised what we are lacking and mend our mistakes sooner than later. Very soon, there shall be day when our kids will no longer know about great saints of this country, for they dont teach Thiruvalluvar, Thikkana and likes in those scoring courses, and score is what we want!

Is this an answer?