Ram:
At 8:13 PM -0600 6/22/07, Ram Sarangapani wrote:
C'da,
Thanks for forwarding this rather well-written article. I must say,
it makes wonderful reading and does make one have second
thoughts about the quality of education that most of us have
received from India. :)
**** Before you get into raptures on that, allow me to caution you on
a very important point: NOT ALL who might have come out of that
dysfunctional Indian education system are burdened by its
uselessness. Some had the good fortune of learning better, in spite
of it. Dunu Roy is a good example.
> have no argument with the first point - I do think it is highly
possible to teach people to perform and >operate complex procedures,
if they are willing to learn and taught well.
*** I am glad.
The IF in "If if they are willing to learn and taught well " has a
lot to do with RELEVANCE ,PREPARATION and the qualifications to
TEACH. You couldn't teach the fundamentals of land measurement or
establish gradient to determine drainage patterns if you did not
learn how to do basic arithmetic or the fundamentals of geometry. And
none of that could be taught by Srimati Priyanka Saikia , graduate of
the dysfunctional university of where -have-you, who got the job by
bribing the Babus that lead the non-education system.
Let me give you an even more stark example:
You, I am sure, heard of that so-called major drainage improvement
project that was undertaken by Guwahati or Assam ( doesn't matter
exactly who) which had to be ABANDONED a few years back after crores
of rupees having been spent on it. I remember writing a letter to one
of those fearless watchdogs of democracy at Guwahati asking WHY they
don't say or attempt to find out and inform the public WHY it had
to be ABANDONED? Needless to say, it was not published. Much later
I heard that the system had to be abandoned because the ENGINEERS
were not aware that the system did not have the gradient to drain.
Obviously these highly trained engineers, who would have done just as
well as you or I, had they been
here in the USA for example, did not know how to survey the terrain.
I will give you another example, of a different kind:
Several years back I gave a short talk at my alma mater, Namti Higher
Secondary School, about how to enrich USEFUL science studies at
schools with EXPERIMENTAL, hands-on techniques, by teaching how to
hypothesize, how to experiment with changing the variables, by
observing the results, by recording them , by graphing them and
learning from them. For giving a relevant example, I spoke about Wl
Kobi ( Kohlrabi) outputs in a small kitchen garden that everybody is
familiar with and involve in rural Assam.
The constant would be how it is usually done.
The variables would be like:
Use of mulch ( old newspapers) to control, weeds, a major
cause of nutrient depletion
and productivity loss.
Frequency of watering, a major concern in the dry season when
they are grown.
Type of fertilizers, like raw dung versus composted cow
manure with organic waste.
Density of planting ( they grow them very inefficiently with
one plant per two or three
square feet of space).
So on and so forth.
The teachers were very excited. They connected with the concept
instantly and wanted to do it. I wished I could stay to set an
experiment up. But I go to Namti for one or two days at a time. Never
could help out other than send them a bunch of literature. Don't know
if it went anywhere.
How did *I* learn of it? By being involved with our children's
science projects at school.
The notion that education in India is totally impractical I find it
had to believe. You, me, and most NRIs >have had this didactic
education (including Roy). I really wonder, how, Roy & his group of
intellectuals >managed to get out of that mold?
*** You should ask ME that question. I will tell you someday :-).
Most Indians too have this background too. Then, how is it that they
manage to do very well in this >country?
*** That is a FALSE yardstick to measure it with. See if you can
figure that out yourself Ram. I like to think you are eminently able
to. But if you fail, honestly, let me know. I promise to help :-).
On the third point, it is quite easy to take pot shots at the Govt.
machinery. and its incompetence. While >I commend Roy and his group
(are they some anti-dam people:) in taking the trouble to do a
better job >teaching than the education system, I wonder, if Roy can
recommend that method for the whole >country, and if that will be
workable.
*** It is NOT a mystery. Many know how to change it. But India's
dysfunctional state is unable to change.
That is where the problem is.
I wonder where your naive beliefs about Indian governance spring
from: Knowledge or ignorance :-).
c-da
Even with that didactic//memorizing by rote background, I came away
with a few of things here: :)
The first, of course, is that people can be taught (often complex
things) even if they have had no formal education.
The second, of course, is that, I find it a tad preposterous, that
Dunu Roy thinks that education in India as "Instead, we have
didactic instruction, memorising by rote, and vomiting out useless
information for futile examinations... "
The third, of course, is that according to Dunu Roy, the Govt. is
pretty useless, ie. whatever they touched (his illustrations here)
have been baseless, miscalculated, and ultimately, Roy and his
group, had to go teach the "practical/down-to-earth" stuff to the
affected people, and make the corrections.
I have no argument with the first point - I do think it is highly
possible to teach people to perform and operate complex procedures,
if they are willing to learn and taught well.
The notion that education in India is totally impractical I find it
had to believe. You, me, and most NRIs have had this didactic
education (including Roy). I really wonder, how, Roy & his group of
intellectuals managed to get out of that mold?
Most Indians too have this background too. Then, how is it that they
manage to do very well in this country? How is it that they have not
only done well in school in this country, but have proved to be one
of the smartest in opening up successful start-ups (not just IT),
and doing great.
I don't know. Probably Roy will tell us.
On the third point, it is quite easy to take pot shots at the Govt.
machinery. and its incompetence. While I commend Roy and his group
(are they some anti-dam people:) in taking the trouble to do a
better job teaching than the education system, I wonder, if Roy can
recommend that method for the whole country, and if that will be
workable.
--Ram
On 6/22/07, <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Knowledge As Weapon
Ordinary working people have the capacity to learn, to collect
information, to look at it analytically, and eventually use it for
bettering their own lives. This is, or should be, the central
objective of "education". Instead, we have didactic instruction,
memorising by rote, and vomiting out useless information for futile
examinations...
Dunu Roy
It was some 30 years ago, in the mid-70s, that we got a glimpse of
what the future might hold. We had just purchased 2 acres of land to
build a workshop on, in the district of Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh.
There had been some argument with the neighbouring owner about where
exactly the boundary lay. So one day we dragged out the iron chain
that surveyors use, and began measuring the land ourselves. A
curious shepherd boy must have witnessed the proceedings, because
next day a delegation of solemn farmers from the nearby village paid
us a visit. They had heard that we were engineers, they explained,
so could we teach them how to measure land? Why, we asked, whatever
will you do with it? Well, they explained, the patwari (the
government revenue functionary at the village) had been demarcating
their lands and they were never sure whether he was doing it right.
So we spent the next four hours demonstrating how the chain worked
and how to calculate the area. In the process, of course, we began
to learn that the chain was called a jareeb, the area was rakba, the
khasra number referred to the record in the revenue department,
their title was the patta, and the patwari presided over a khatauni
in which all secrets were well documented.
A week later, the same delegation was back, but looking less solemn
and more brashly conspiratorial. Could they borrow our jareeb? We
handed over the chain and then, not a little puzzled ourselves, we
followed them at a discreet distance. In due course, we arrived at
the village and a curious spectacle greeted us. On the farms of the
village, the patwari was laying out his chain, and wherever he went,
the farmers followed with their borrowed jareeb and laid it out in
exactly the same manner. At every halt they would watch the patwari
and when he began to enter figures in his notebook, they too would
whip out a pencil and scribble on a piece of paper. Rarely had we
seen a more harassed looking patwari! At the end of the day, the
delegation was back again, beaming from ear to ear. Thank you for
the hathiyaar (weapon), they told us, and handed back the jareeb.
Can we, we asked them, see what you wrote? They took out their
smudged piece of paper and showed it to us. It was covered with a
series of numbers in meaningless disorder. But, they grinned, they
had taken care not to show it to the patwari!
This theme of knowledge as weapon has come back to us many times in
the last three decades. In the mid-80s, a small party from the
Palamau district of Bihar knocked on our door. Could we come to
their village and see what the proposed dam on the Auranga river was
going to do to their area? We said yes, but provided they were able
to wrangle a copy of the DPR (Detailed Project Report) of the dam.
Oh, no problem, they remarked, the irrigation department chaprasi
(peon) was from their village. So, three weeks later, we were
rambling across the farmlands of Palamau inspecting the river and
its catchment and comparing it to what was written in the DPR. We
were faced with a battery of questions. Look at that river,
exclaimed the villagers, do you think it can carry as much water as
to irrigate all the lands the department is claiming it will? And
can you see the silt in it; how long will it take for the dam to
fill up? The department says that this village will come under
submergence, and that one will not, when we can clearly see that
this village is higher than that one! How can we challenge their
views?
We took four days to instruct a batch of 20 young boys from the
surrounding villages how to measure the flow in the river, the silt
load that it carried, and the slope of the land.With that, they
said, they would be able to take on the project's claims of
projected irrigation, the life of the dam, and the extent of
submergence. On the last evening, as we were packing to leave the
next morning, they eyed us suspiciously. Where, they asked, pointing
to the "dumpy" (a kind of telescopic instrument that is used to
measure levels), are you taking that? Well, we said, this is our
instrument and we are taking it back; if you want one you will have
to get it for yourselves. How much does it cost, they queried, and
where is it available? The nearest place, we explained, would be
Ranchi and it would cost about Rs 3000. And then we retired for the
night. Only to be woken up by an exuberant hammering on the door
very early the next morning. Here, they said, is Rs 3000 collected
from donations by all the villagers, and you can go and buy the
dumpy yourself; otherwise how will we fight a yuddh (war) without an
astra (weapon)?
That the yuddh was joined became clear to us when, four months
later, a parcel arrived with the postman. It contained a sheaf of
papers containing the records of three months of daily measurement.
We went to work on the data and came up with some very interesting
findings indeed. The river, for instance, carried only half as much
water in the monsoon months as the DPR claimed it did. This water
also bore a silt load one-and-a-half times that of the figure
reported in the project proposal. 25 villages were actually coming
into the submergence zone, demarcated by following the full
reservoir contour, as compared to the 19 acknowledged by the project
authorities. When all these were factored into the calculations the
benefits actually came to less than the costs! This was going to be
one very unviable dam indeed, we informed the people of Auranga.
They, in turn, took the report and propagated it all over the area
through posters and leaflets, while the English version was duly
sent off to the governments, the media, the courts, and even the
World Bank. Today, fifteen years later, the Auranga river remains
unbound.
In the mid-90s, we had another set of visitors, but this time from
the high ranges of Kullu district in Himachal Pradesh. Their
villages and hamlets were being threatened by the declaration of the
Great Himalayan National Park. What exactly was this Park, they
asked, and how could they protect their families? So, two months
later, armed with the relevant documents and reports, we pitched
camp in their village. A young bunch of grazers and farmers listened
attentively as we explained how the government had commissioned a
study in the 80s and how this study, conducted by a pair of
specialists from the Pheasant Society in the UK and Canada, had come
to the conclusion that only by declaring the Park as a protected
area could the rare Western Himalayan Tragopan (a ground-dwelling
bird) be saved. And then, as we presented the details of the study,
the listeners grew restive. No, they protested, it is not possible
for the Tragopan to be disturbed by our herds because it nests in
late winter and our grazers go up only in late spring. Even that
figure of 25,000 animals is wrong, they objected, our numbers rarely
cross 12,000. And it is not us who destroy the herbs, but the Nepali
labourers from the Terai, who are unfamiliar with alpine ecology and
are hired by the traders in the plains.
We suggested to them then that they should do their own study and
compare their findings with what had been reported by the foreign
experts. Very well, they responded immediately, tell us how to do
the study. So, for the next two days, we demonstrated to them how to
draw transects and conduct animal counts, how to document the
diversity of grasses and shrubs, and how to systematically record
their observations.As soon as the snows melted, six of them headed
towards the alpine meadows, following the same route that the
scientists had taken ten years earlier. Two porters who had been
taken along to ferry the supplies to base camp (at heights of over
3000 metres, one does not run into the occasional tea shop or
restaurant!), became so familiar with the routines of measurement
that they eventually became part of the study team. Six weeks later
they returned, armed with a range of documented observations. A
detailed examination of their records showed that they had
successfully challenged every one of the findings of the
government-sponsored study. In addition, their measurements
indicated what was the carrying capacity of the meadows, how
ruminants were in fact controlling weed infestation, and how the
herbs could be harvested within the boundaries of conservation.
This much, then, is certain: people fight their struggles for
survival based on what knowledge they can create. Each one of the
reports and studies cited above (and numerous others that have not
been documented in both rural and urban areas) indicates that
ordinary working people have the capacity to learn, to collect
information, to look at it analytically, and eventually use it for
bettering their own lives. This is, or should be, the central
objective of "education". And yet, these are simple (and yet very
complex) tasks that are not undertaken by our educational
institutions. Didactic instruction, memorising by rote, and vomiting
out useless information for futile examinations constitute the
fundamentals of what passes for education in our schools and
colleges. Perhaps there is a purpose to it all. Perhaps another
Macaulay is required to explain it to us in yet another Minute. And
perhaps, in some not too distant future, a group of young labourers
will learn to document their own lives to tear this farce to pieces.
A graduate (and post-graduate) from IIT Bombay, Dunu Roy heads
Hazard Centre in New Delhi.
# You may be missing other accompanying blurbs, related stories, graphics etc.
Link to this story as it appears on the site :-
<http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070621&fname=dunuroy&sid=1>Knowledge
As Weapon
<http://www.outlookindia.com/> www.outlookindia.com
<http://203.200.89.96/sfa/newsuboutlook.asp>MailScanner has detected
a possible fraud attempt from "203.200.89.96" claiming to be
Subscribe Online: Outlook Magazine
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]
<http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org>http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
