THE BOTTLING PLANT SYNDROME: Looking for the Lost Space for Freedom and Creative Imagination in Educational Institutions by Dr. Jernail S. Anand

Is everything well with our education? There was a time when India was justly proud of its education. It produced minds who filled Silicon Valley, yet remained grounded in a sense of right and wrong. What has changed? Is this decline India-specific, or part of a worldwide phenomenon of erosion of value systems?

Successive changes in education policy were meant to meet the necessities and complexities of modern times. We have retained the high, moralistic vocabulary, but the spirit has devolved. Five decades ago, education had a moral quotient at its core. Even after professional degrees, men and women found their hands tremble  before committing a wrong deed. The other crucial feature of that era was time - abundant, unstructured time - for teachers and students to think, debate, reflect and wander. That vacant space was the breeding ground of  philosophy and creativity were born.

The Disappearance of Noble Intent

We have inherited the verbiage of our great tradition, but lost its essence while drawing the blueprints for the present system. The National Education Policy is an ambitious document, and its attempt to decolonize the Indian mind is welcome. Yet while correcting the colonial past, we risk losing some vital aspects of human development.

Around 2010, a decisive shift became visible in India, as it did globally. The good old values of honest labour gave way to a cut-throat world of competition in which survival itself became the only virtue. The only mantra was success. Those who believed otherwise were pushed to the margins. The belief systems of the old world of values were given an irreverent burial and replaced by a new worldview based on success and survival.

Education and the New Value-less System

When society consecrates success, educational institutions are pressed into service to deliver it. Today, no child studies a story whose moral is ‘Honesty is the best policy’. To say that honesty is outdated would hurt ancient wisdom, so a new, more acceptable word was coined to mask deceit, double-dealing and the ‘hell with it’ syndrome. The word is ‘smart’.

In the contemporary world, you are not required to be good, because goodness is seen as a passive virtue, unviable in a competitive world. Today everyone wants his offspring to be smart, which indirectly means they can be flexible with honesty. When a prospective bridegroom tells his prospective bride that he believes in honesty,  she often smells disaster and walks away. This small social anecdote reveals a profound ethical inversion.

The Modus Operandi: No Vacant Spaces

To make students success-oriented in order to produce traders, professionals and consultants with high packages, it became necessary to abridge those vacant moments that provided space for the romance of creativity and imagination. Those recesses helped in the evolution of the human mind, leading to intellectual athleticism, freedom to think and to expand. Can we imagine another APJ Abdul Kalam emerging from today’s system to become the first citizen of the country? He was the byproduct of a system based on self-discipline and vacant time at the disposal of teachers and students for free talk and unguided discussion.

In the new system, that vacant space has been deliberately removed and filled with enforced administrative decisions. The role of teachers in deciding what to teach, how to teach and how much to teach has been compromised. All these initiatives have been arrogated by authority. Teachers are kept perpetually busy and students are left with no time to be with themselves. Universities and colleges now mimic bottling plants where students are produced like marketable finished products, carrying price tags. The cost is mentioned and the package is mentioned. Universities have to teach a uniform syllabus, in a uniform way. Higher bodies give sermons - sorry, seminars - on how to teach and how to prepare students for a busy tomorrow.

Academics and Formalism

The latest systems, proudly called knowledge systems, have converted studies into an act of formalism. Teachers remain overworked completing formalities rather than teaching. They are overloaded with files, reports, NAAC data and compliances, while students are overloaded with syllabi always in excess of their capacities. In this messy situation, we have made a faulty bargain. Our products are good for the market, but they are on slippery ground when it comes to performing well as human beings. Education is not simply about jobs. It goes beyond jobs. It is about human conduct, which has been entirely ignored.

Creating a Literati Elite

This knowledge empire is aimed at creating a literati elite. As education is increasingly privatized and the state withdraws from funding public institutions, only the affluent can send their wards to private schools charging exorbitant fees or to highly priced professional courses. Society is thus being sharply divided into haves and have-nots.

It can be conjectured that with money power, the under-qualified offspring of the rich will soon become architects, engineers, teachers and doctors, and we will have a second-rate elite in ruling positions, while the poor who had the capability  to become true doctors and engineers will be pushed to ministerial positions like computer operators, or teachers on contract in private institutions. The second-rate will become Principals and Vice-Chancellors while those who truly deserved these positions will not even be on the faculty. Individuals may gain, but society as a whole is the ultimate loser.

Knowledge and Wisdom

Perhaps this is why ancient wisdom warned man about the fruit of knowledge without wisdom. Knowledge without an ethical anchor is a dangerous power. The vast empire of knowledge that has spread far and wide has little connection with the good, the honest and the righteous. It is often the world of the ‘smart’ people who can bend rules, break faith and twist the features of mankind.

The worst part of our current trajectory is that knowledge has remained confined to academic discussions and marks in examinations. We grant degrees, a formal exercise though necessary, but students lack the accompanying wisdom which must reflect in thought and action. We are creating a generation of efficient robots who listen to no music other than that of wealth, power and success.

In this industrial ecosystem which has grabbed the educational empire, the government seems to have staged a calculated withdrawal, appearing only to force standardization through regulatory bodies, cutting down on the freedom of teachers and students and forcing them into a dead routine antithetical to the very idea of freedom and creative imagination.

And the result? During the last twenty years, what kind of people have we produced? The grown-ups today are short on moral scruples. Ideals of the past have given way to deals. It is a fall, let us accept it, and try to wriggle out of this situation, if we do not want an indecent end of what is beautiful and enduring in homo sapiens.

Bio: Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 200 books to his credit [20 epics] is a Chandigarh-based  polymath, and a vital architect of the 21st century ethical literature whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era.  Founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czech Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia],  his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He is an Honorary Member of the Serbian Writers Association, Belgrade. Bibliography:

https://sites.google.com/view/bibliography-dr-jernal-singh/home