Books

Triumph of the West

img:148:- Fifty Great Modern Thinkers on Education edited by Joy A. Palmer; Routeledge; Price: Rs.295; 290 pp

One of the main causes of the relative backwardness of Indian education is the grave paucity of informed writing on the subject. Post-independence India’s education policies seem to have been shaped by the obiter dicta of great ones such as Gandhiji, Rajaji, Nehru and Dr. Radhakrishnan, all now within the ranks of the dearly departed. Focussed research reduced to intelligible prose questioning extant systems, the purpose and future direction of the education system which determines the lives and livelihoods of perpetually short-changed citizens is as hard to find as drinking water in great swathes of shining India. One wonders what the nation’s 5,000,000 teachers and academics do in their vacant and pensive moments and why they play such a minuscule role in shaping the education and human development policies of the world’s most populous democracy.

Quite obviously post-independence India’s educationists and academics who have permitted their once-reputed institutions to be dumbed down to facilitate the passage of the lowest common denominator of students, have failed the nation. And a bird’s eye-view of just how much brainstorming and research they should have — and needed to — invest in education and scholastic systems and processes is provided by Fifty Great Modern Thinkers on Education (FGMTE), a uniquely informative volume of biographies, published for the first time in India early this year. One has to read any chapter at random to quickly grasp the sheer depth of cerebration and research which western academics have invested in shaping their education philosophies. Above all else it is the investment in developing human resources via their education systems which explains the triumph and dominance of western civilisation in the 20th century.

The most important message this seminal and thought-provoking book has for Indian educationists is that developing and refining learning processes is more important than rewarding ‘correct’ answers. The great Austrian philosopher Ludweig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) whose brief five-page biography is included in this volume, was given to using the metaphor of education as a journey among the trodden and untrodden ways from different directions with the teacher as guide, and not necessarily a good one. It’s for the student to learn en route and draw up the most personally suitable road map to reach his preferred destination.

Or as the great Swiss epistemologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) whose fascinating biography is also included in the volume under review puts it, "It is not by knowing the Pythagorean theorem that the free exercise of a person’s reason will be assured. Rather it is assured by having rediscovered that there is such a theorem and how to prove it. The aim of intellectual education is not how to repeat or to conserve ready-made truths (a truth that is parroted is only a half-truth). It is in learning to gain the truth by oneself at the risk of losing time and of going through all the roundabout ways that are inherent in real activity."

Any Indian educationist or indeed even a layman, will readily concede that the Indian education system which is wholly focussed upon the outcome — getting the "right answer" — is the diametric opposite of western pedagogy in which the methodology of arriving at the right or even the wrong, answer is given prime importance. Indeed in western institutions of learning students are encouraged to question the so-called right answers of great intellectuals and to disprove them. In sum, western pedagogies encourage questioning, rigorous reasoning, research, debate and the creation of new bodies of knowledge.

But this is not to say that radicalism and iconoclasm is the norm in western academia. On the contrary the traditional school system based on regimentation and obedience disguised as discipline, is still well entrenched for reasons of administrative convenience rather than pupil development. But the greatness of western educationists is that they have consistently questioned the British public school model. The very first biography in this volume (which was preceded by Fifty Great Thinkers on Education which profiles ancients such as Plato, Socrates and Confucius) is of the radical educationist A.S. Neil (1883-1973), founder of the famous Summerhill School which attained notoriety rather than fame for propagating avant-garde ideas of pupil freedom and lack of teacher authority.

At the other end of the spectrum are educationists who question the romantic idea of total pupil freedom such as Martin Heideggar (1889-1976) who believed that ideal teachers are individuals who are both receptive and demanding and develop "empathetically challenging" relationships with their students. Far from being irrelevant or peripheral, the best teachers are those who preserve the dignity and integrity of learner, teacher and content. "No doubt it is for this reason that he (Heidegger) describes the role of the teacher as ‘exalted’," writes Michael Bonnet, senior lecturer of education at Cambridge University in his outstanding essay on this German philosopher and educationist.

Paucity of editorial space restricts this reviewer to mention merely a few of the revolutionary thinkers profiled in this valuable book which is mandatory reading for every educationist and teacher of serious intent. Suffice it to say that the selection of educationists included in FGMTE is excellent as are the authors chosen to write them. This book which contains a list of the major works of each great intellectual with detailed notes and references, is itself an indicator of the sheer depth of cerebration and research invested in education processes in western societies. And in the final analysis it is this cerebral, moral and material investment in education systems which explains the cultural, civilisational and technological superiority of the West in the contemporary world.Dilip Thakore

Case for global gender justice

img:149:r:- Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach by Martha C. Nussbaum; Kali For Women; Price: Rs. 250; 312 pp

India is not just a theatre of heat and dust for Martha C. Nussbaum, distinguished professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, USA. Indeed, the innocuously simple title of this book belies the density and range of philosophical reasoning on which this prolific philosopher and feminist builds a detailed study of the ethical, political, and socio-economic factors which mar the well-being and modest expectations of happiness of hundreds of millions of women in contemporary India.

The main strength and attraction of Nussbaum’s study is its sustained engagement with several critical concepts of western philosophy, law, and economics to build a powerful case for feminism and gender justice in India. Eight years at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki as a research advisor (1986-1994); several years of associations with notable Indian academics, activists, feminists and field work and research with socio-economic organisations in India, have resulted in this important analytical study of persistent gender inequality in India.

"In developing countries, gender inequality is strongly correlated with poverty," writes the author. "When poverty combines with gender inequality, the result is acute failure of central human capabilities. In the developing countries as a whole, there are 60 percent more women than men among illiterate adults; female school enrollment even at the primary level is 13 percent lower than male; and female wages 75 percent of male wages. We do not yet have reliable statistics for rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. Rape within marriage is not counted as a crime, and even stranger-rape is so rarely punished that many women are deterred from reporting the crime," writes Nussbaum.

The carefully assembled case studies of Vasanti — a victim of domestic violence who has been helped by SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association) in Gujarat and Jayamma, who has spent 45 years of her life transporting bricks on her head on the outskirts of Trivandrum, Kerala (reputedly India’s most literate state) offer concrete points of reference for her in-depth discussions of the insidiousness of the discrimination and deprivation that these women, like many others, have been subjected to at the hands of family, employers, and society in general. At the same time, they also enable the author to present incisive reflections on the uniquely differential character of Indian cultural contexts and their relevance to feminism and philosophical inquiry in an international setting.

There are other specific case studies highlighting commonplace situations that Nussbaum discusses and addresses in the book: child marriage in Rajasthan; child labour in Bihar; the 1993 rape of Bhanwari Devi; severely malnourished women living outside Mahabubnagar, Andhra Pradesh; the case of Mary Roy, who challenged the Travancore Christian Act in 1983; the Hindu Code Bill; the Shah Bano case; and the story of Hamida Khala’s battle with the purdah system. At the same time, Nussbaum skillfully digresses from specific examples to reflect upon prevailing economic, philosophical, and legal paradigms which have shaped basic political principles determining the degrees of freedom and the recourse to justice available in civil society.

Her critique of the ideas of political philosopher John Rawls in chapters I and IV makes a powerful case for why philosophy — as well as law, economics, and the social sciences —must grapple more tenaciously with cultural differences and gender injustices in developing nations if the claims of both reason and justice are to remain directed towards tangible ethical goals. In a brilliant third chapter, ‘The Role of Religion’, she focuses on the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in preserving the principle of religious liberty in nations where the dominant religions have near complete control over law. In these nations religion, often tragically, becomes a powerful tool for discrimination and oppression. The example of India, with its history of religious fundamentalism and inequalities between and within its several religions presents in sharp relief the many ways in which the law can fail those who need its protection most. It’s undeniable that the power of religion in the Indian subcontinent continues to place formidable barriers to the attainment of gender equality and gender justice.

Indeed there are several good reasons to be cynical about the ultimate destiny of development studies in this country. Interfering politicians and rancorous national politics, emphasis on facts, figures, GNP predictions and statistics mask rather than uncover underlying human realities.

Moreover the overwhelming size of the population, immense regional variations, sharp differences of opinion as to the appropriate criteria for evaluating growth and development, a discernible deterioration in living standards even while there are improvements in other areas, and, of course, the problem of political corruption, invariably stand in the way of progress. But while acknowledging many of these difficulties, Nussbaum makes the compelling argument that by turning a blind eye to the lives of downtrodden women in poor and developing countries, we are in danger of severely compromising the basic principles that determine and shape our lives as democratic citizens, and as human beings engaged in a meaningful inquiry into the quality of justice.