knowledge versus knowledge

Today is a fairly easy day...i will tell you why...its a day when bosses are not around....so I thought I should do something that pleases my sensibility....a thought that has been on my mind in the past few years and has come to the forefront....it is the question of education in India....no not India but education, the context just happens to be Indian....so i was sitting in a seminar the other day...a room filled with economists, bankers, social workers...and the presenter asks what was a fairly simple question....how many of you have read Marx??....minority few raised their hands....my eyes only roved to the economists from my institution...not one of them had their hands raised....i was suspicious...is this a devious plan of a lazy student or a problem...so i ask my roomy...didn't you guys do Marx in your course...in the negative came the reply...this, let me say, is an institute that mints eminent economists in the country and the students have not read Marx...yes there are articles of Marx at under-grad level....now this is appalling!!! no its not about economics or Marx...its about how water tight compartments our education streams have become...the designing of courses....its about preferential discourse that regards certain kind of education as superior than others....so in school....science was the way to go....engineering the first preference...followed by a minor class of medicine aspirants...teachers and parents molded the children this way from childhood....so people who flunked or scored badly left the premises for economics or finance...no one ever heard of arts....no alternative choices were even displayed to students to broadly choose from...and surprisingly all those poor performing students who left premises and joined other schools and other streams of education topped their class....



I went through my course thinking...this is crap...i am left-leaning closet Marxist...who complain about the “market phenomenon” not really knowing what that meant....we did a bit of capitalistic theories but did not really pay attention....today i sit in a room with people who have passed out of ace institutions in subjects most evidently considered superior to my stream....and they don't know Marx!....how does an average student with all that course work, swamped in a million tests and personal dilemma ever look at the immense genres of “other” books in the library...at the same time, it is not like we are absolutist or paranoid.....we are a mixed economy with a vibrant left-wing (crappy as they maybe).... how is it that in a mixed economy like ours students are not taught theories of both sides so that they make a wise choice for themselves...its not about socialism or capitalism...Marx or Smith...its about choices within a choice you have made....how does a student make a wise choice to follow the market or work for the rights of the proletariat if everything is left upon the student to undertake....i thought about this...i guess educational system that is currently catering to or rather aimed at creating professionals cannot cater to broader educational topics....like tell a scientist what it means to be a sociologist...wary attempts are made in esteemed institutions....say IIT...but everyone knows its a joke....but in a rush to specialise...in a rush to professionalise we are missing on what a educationalist might call “holistic”.....even worse systems, be as it may....i know for a fact that in a campus like ours that had three streams of social science...one stream couldn't stand the sight of the other....except for a few odd balls...there is a tight compartmentalisation of the jhola carrying cigarette smoking, free-thinking (or so they think!), class bunking lot and the pouring-into-my-books, well dressed, hyper tensed, book fearing corporate aiming lot....they were mutual jokes but not once have there been real efforts at putting two and two together....why not create a porous circle devoid of exclusivity...why not share your strengths with ours....not even office going people often cater to a mixed disciplinary approach...well i don't blame them...people will rip each other and the building off....so at the end of the day why not try creating individuals who at least attempt at understanding the thoughts of the other....simple listening is so hard to muster.....


My school friends ask me...so what are you doing...psychology? Or sometimes it is “whatever that you are doing”......No bugger its philosophy and then sociology...all of them are different streams...but then i realise i make the same mistake...so what are you doing...engineering of course?! Mechanical....no bugger computer science...electronics and communication...its all the same...in the end you are all engineers...yes, but is that right? Do they all value the same, add the same value.....no....i am not paying attention!! Why are we all such well-trained excluders....forget gay rights or transvestite right if education itself is so uptight!!!....is it the system...is it dominant discourse of exclusivity...or is it simply lack of sensitivity....no breathing space for the other..why do we study....to be better people...to earn 5-6 digit salaries....we need to figure this out sooner or later...there is so much information....flakily translated as knowledge...still every time an economist needs an analysis on social impact, they need a new methodology....why not just ask the sociologist? Naah they are too flaky, too qualitative we need numbers....ask the sociologist to quantify their social impact....they rack their brains...we don't know that kinda math...ok why not just ask the economist....no they are numb number crunchers....why this compartmentalisation....who is to blame for it...you, me...or some superior system or some devious politician....or maybe its Bush!!!