"The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively"
"At least, this is the function which it should perform for society. A university which fails in this respect has no reason for existence"
So almost all Indian schools and universities given their test-taking exam oriented pedagogy which hardly imparts anything imaginitatively
Given it follows same transcription-as pedagogy as almost every other college
i.e coming to class & dictating decades old notes & students transcribing them for entirety of their education with test-taking
It pains me to know as I am typing there's some poor kid having their curiosity & joy of learning sucked out of them right this second under a sadistic soporific prof, where they are either dealing with chronic anxiety, fear, shame or excruciating boredom
Our edu institutes & are merely bureaucratic factories set up to mimic some processes, protocols, syllabi of the west to "appear" like a university to the outside world but they are run unreflectively & uncritically without any actual engagement of both educators and students
They give of a veneer of education & learning via their big buildings, enclosed spaces, credentials, exams, tests without any education actually happening inside those spaces
The entire point of education in India is around test-taking. Here the way people study (or rather made to study) doesn't encourage them or provide any assistance in forming independent thoughts. Its all very mechanistic.
Also Teachers here don't have a disposition of being facilitators or co-creators, rather they very much inhabit and enjoy being sadistic authoritarians.
Our pedagogies are not complex. Teachers come and give monologues, students transcribe, rote-learn for the exam and get a stamp of paper after 4 years. Not once having had the opportunity to cultivate their imagination to imagine, discover, invent.
I think there our higher education can simply be summed up along the lines of — test-taking olympics, where grades, marks, percentages are the sole goal of education as a means for people to claim superiority.
"This atmosphere of excitement, arising from imaginative consideration, transforms knowledge. A fact is no longer a bare fact: it is invested with all its possibilities"
"It is no longer a burden on the memory: it is energising as the poet of our dreams, and as the architect of our purposes. Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts: it is a way of illuminating the facts"
"It works by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities which are consistent with those principles"
"The tragedy of the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations"
"The task of a university is to weld together imagination and experience"
Whitehead just articulated what B-schools could or should have been but aren't.
"The way in which a university should function in the preparation for an intellectual career, such as modern business or one of the older professions, is by promoting the imaginative consideration of the various general principles underlying that career"
"Its students thus pass into their period of technical apprenticeship with their imaginations already practised in connecting details with general principles. The routine then receives its meaning, and also illuminates the principles which give it that meaning"
This exact step of giving the routine meaning via giving space for imaginative consideration of the act of connecting details with general principles is missing from Indian STEM edu
"Hence, instead of a drudgery issuing in a blind rule of thumb, the properly trained man has some hope of obtaining an imagination disciplined by detailed facts and by necessary habits. Thus the proper function of a university is the imaginative acquisition of
knowledge"
"The whole art in the organisation of a university is the provision of a faculty whose learning is lighted up with imagination"
"The combination of imagination and learning normally requires some leisure, freedom from restraint, freedom from harassing worry, some variety of experiences, and the stimulation of other minds diverse in opinion and diverse in equipment"
"Also there is required the excitement of curiosity, and the self-confidence derived from pride in the achievements of the surrounding society in procuring the advance of knowledge"
"Imagination cannot be acquired once and for all, and then kept indefinitely in an ice box to be produced
periodically in stated quantities"
Important point here, you need to give the space for it to be constantly renewed
"The learned and imaginative life is a way of living, and is not an article of commerce"
"It is in respect to the provision and utilisation of these conditions for an efficient faculty that the two functions of education and research meet together in a university.
Do you want your teachers to be imaginative? Then encourage them to research"
"Then bring them into intellectual sympathy with the young at the most eager, imaginative period of life, when intellects are just entering upon their mature discipline"
"Make your researchers explain themselves to active minds, plastic and with the world before them; make your young students crown their period of intellectual acquisition by some contact with minds gifted with experience of intellectual adventure"
"Education is discipline for the adventure of life; research is intellectual adventure; and the universities should be homes of adventure shared in common by young and old. For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with"
"For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with"
"Freshness in the knowledge" 🥹
I wonder how he would react stepping into some of our universities
"For successful education there must always be a certain freshness in the knowledge dealt with. It must either be new in itself or it must be invested with some novelty of application to the new world of new times"
"You may be dealing with knowledge of the old species, with some old truth; but somehow or other it must come to the students, as it were, just drawn out of the sea
and with the freshness of its immediate"
"It is the function of the scholar to evoke into life wisdom and beauty which, apart from his magic, would remain lost in the past"
"A progressive society depends upon the fact that its educated masses are composed of members each with a tinge of scholarship, tinge of discovery, and a tinge of invention"
Discovery & Invention? Tall order for a society whose educated masses treat education like a veblen good
Our educated masses are just test-taking/periodic exam taking specialists
There is no deliberate practices in our educational spaces that cultivate the imagination to discover and invent. Our assignments, curricula are cut and dry which leave no room for creative exploration.
In short Indian edu including IITs train you to recreate existing things, knowledge as opposed to creating something original of your own.
"The faculty should be a band of scholars, stimulating each other, and freely determining their various activities. The sole question is, What sort of conditions will produce the type of faculty which will run a successful university?"
The learning occurs in the production of the artifact whether that is writing essays that demonstrate well formed arguments, doing projects in teams, or case studies on real world businesses or situations, and reflecting on those and applying that knowledge to new situations or creating new products.
All the learning is pointless if it isn’t practised and subsequently assessed. Without assessment few students would apply themselves.
Students need to see where they’re going or there’s no motivation to learn.
"If the goal is optimal performance in high-stakes situations, it may be worthwhile to allow and even encourage students to commit and correct errors while they are in low-stakes learning situations rather than to assiduously avoid errors at all costs"
@impactology So what happened? India produced a large part of the world's mathematics as we know it today, some of the greatest educational cultures in history. Why are these systems the way they are now?
I guess I'm saying, to go along with your observation about test culture:
When following the money, who profits from a culture obssessed with testing?
Anyone in modern India who has ever achieved anything was able to do it because they got exposure to pedagogies abroad (and now via internet by connecting with people abroad)
Every institution, be it family, school/college, workplace is designed around suppression of individuality and creativity and rewards obedience and compliance...the result of which is not only the inability to think independently but the most dangerous consequence : no desire to think independently.
Its a culture that supports, promotes and reward compliance, obsequiousness & servility to in order to acculturate
@weilawei >When following the money, who profits from a culture obsessed with testing?
Following the money trail works for most cases but the root cause of the test taking obsession is not primarily monetary here, its a culture of maintaining exclusivity and supremacy that causes this.
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