Presented at the Seminar on Quality Education at Patkai Christian College , Nagaland sponsored by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) 18-19 December 2006.
Tuisem A. Shishak, Ph.D.
Founder Principal Emeritus, Patkai Christian College – Autonomous (Nagaland)
Founder Principal, Patkai Christian Academy (Manipur)
“A good educational system may be the flower of economic development; it is also the seed” (Jerome B. Wiesner)
“Education is the key that unlocks the door to modernization” (Frederick Harbison & Charles A. Myers)
“...education must encompass both the tested wisdom of mankind and training for life in a particular community and culture”
(Lucian W. Pye)
“Education must produce global village citizenship” (Tuisem A. Shishak)
I have purposely titled my paper as “Quality Education: Back to the Basics.”
To call classes 11 and 12 “higher secondary” is a misnomer. It should be called “secondary school.” Classes 11 and 12 are the equivalent of the junior and senior years in high school, as in the U.S. Class 10 graduates are not, and never were, ready for higher education. (At present, many are not even ready for Class 11!) To begin with, our education policy makers should accept class 12 as the last year of secondary (high) school, and upgrade the baccalaureate (undergraduate) degree to four years. Today at least half of our College graduates are not educated enough to be employable. The problem has to be traced to the beginnings of education, at the primary-elementary-high school level. Of course, there is the proverbial question: whether the chicken or the egg came first.
In the words of one U.S. college president, “The graduate level is the primary place where educational theories are formed, where hypotheses are judged, and where the moral tone of education is set. The outcome of graduate level issues can be determinative for all levels of learning—elementary, secondary, and higher—because graduate school is where those who shape education are taught.” Secondly, the college and the university have to work with high school graduates as they are. Because the primary-high schools are not doing the job, scholarship is very much wanting at the undergraduate and the graduate levels. Hence the necessity for the UGC, University, and the Human Resources Department (HRD), in collaboration with state education boards, to make every effort to overhaul and build up our education on a solid foundation from the bottom up.
To me quality education can only mean, “Education for development of the Whole Man.” Quality education must not be what the powerful, the influential, the dominant or the “powers that be” determine what is good for the minorities or the public. Like fashion in dress, what is good (quality) education has so far been determined, handed down, and enforced from the top down. Decision-makers are in New Delhi , London , New York , Paris , etc. The definition of quality education is often abstract and subjective. But genuine quality education must be objective and universal. This can be done only if quality education is designed and enforced from the bottom up.
Quality education must have a foundation. Education is for Man alone, not Animal. What type of education is good for Man can be determined if we understand the nature of Man, asking “Who is Man?”
The Judeo-Christian Scripture defines Man as consisting of Body, Soul, and Spirit (Mind). Biblical instructions abound concerning the physical, psychological (mental), and spiritual growth of human beings as meeting basic human needs. Plato and Aristotle would concur with this definition of man. Some of the great personalities of India like Tagore, Vivekenanda, and (Mahatma) Gandhi would consider moral and spiritual aspects as essential ingredients of quality education. Our President, Dr. Kalam constantly talks about the need to integrate moral and spiritual values in education.
Broadly speaking, if we accept the definition of Man as Body, Soul, and Spirit (Mind), man’s primary needs are physical, psychological (mental), and moral/spiritual. Based on this definition we are in a position to provide the basic principles and guidelines for the kind of education which will meet the universal needs of man everywhere. What we consider quality education has to encompass the physical, mental (intellectual), and spiritual needs of humankind. Education lacking any of the three ingredients cannot be considered quality education.
In order to fully integrate quality education into the life of every child, this three-pronged approach to education must be implemented from the primary level. Failure to provide quality education at an early stage has produced a huge pool of college and university graduates who are unemployable except for manual labor.
Since the colleges and universities have to work with whatever graduates the primary and secondary schools produce, the university has a reason to be concerned with the kind of education being provided in the lower schools.
The primary and secondary schools also have a great responsibility to make sure their graduates are really ready for higher education. To quote Prof. Andre Beteille, “The only way to overcome the challenge of providing quality education and being accommodative was to maintain high standard of education right from the primary and secondary levels.”
Hence quality education means “back to basics”. According to Prof. Mortimer J. Adler, “There are no unteachable children. There are only schools and teachers and parents who fail to teach them.” To this I must add: “The direction of students’ progress is largely in the hands of parents, teachers and educational administrators” (V. Sreekanth).
No human society exists and grows without education of some kind. Underneath all the talk and clamor about “high tech”, there is the essential “low-tech” approach to education. What the so-called experts and scholars (UGC officials included) call “non-traditional” education was the real original traditional (indigenous) education. The impact of Western colonial education in India and throughout the developing countries of the world was a complete switch from what was purely informal vocational (practical) education to the purely theoretical and literary type of Western education. The blending of theory and practice was not part of the education system. Hence the failure to meet real human needs in the world today.
I don’t blame Ivan Illich (author of “Deschooling Society) who is opposed to excessive reliance on “education within the school.” Illich has defined school as “the age-specific, teacher-related process requiring full-time attendance and an obligatory curriculum.” There is much we can learn from Illich without agreeing with his extreme position. Much learning can and does result from less organized instruction. We know that everyone learns how to live outside school. We learn to speak, to think, to love, to play, to curse, to politick, and to work without interference from a teacher. Home schooling is thriving in the U.S. Home-schooled children are doing very well in academics. We don’t have to “buy” Illich’s proposal that education through schooling should be done away with. But since education begins in the cradle and ends at the grave, we must seek to integrate the formal and informal as well as the literary (theoretical) and vocational (practical) aspects of instruction and training from the very beginning of a child’s schooling.
Parents must be reminded that their children’s education does not begin when they are enrolled in school. They must be reminded that education is much more than the three Rs: reading, `riting, and `rithmetic. Parents ought to teach their children manners, the importance of obedience to parents, respect for others, especially elders, the importance of getting along with neighbors and peers, instruction in ethics: what is right and what is wrong, with simple concrete examples, instruction in hygiene: things like keeping one’s hands and feet clean or taking bath regularly, wearing clean clothes, etc., teaching children how to do basic domestic chores such as washing dishes, cutting firewood, etc. When children are old enough, parents can begin telling them about religion and God through simple incidents in life. If parents are literate they must let the children learn the alphabet and simple arithmetic informally and leisurely at their own pace. In all this, parents must maintain discipline or everything falls apart sooner or later. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it” (the Bible). “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him” (the Bible). This is the way to begin a child’s education at home. But the parents must do everything out of love for their children.
I would recommend that children below the age of six should not be enrolled in formal education (schooling). Once enrolled, the school is in loco parentis to some extent, though the concentration here is on development of the child’s mind.
The Bible says man is made in God’s image; God’s breath (ruach) has made man a rational being. Aristotle said: “All men by nature desire to know, we are inquisitive, we wonder.” Blaise Pascal in the Pensees says: “Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.” Dorothy Sayers laments: “Although we often succeed in teaching our pupils ‘subjects,’ we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think. They learn everything except the art of learning.” The teaching faculty’s first task is to create a desire in the child to learn. The main academic program in every school has to be geared toward making its students analytical and creative thinkers. In The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman says, “One who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze....will not….at once be a lawyer . . . or a statesman, or a physician . . . but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any one of the sciences or callings . . . with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and success.” The school administration must provide a decent library, study hall, classrooms, and teaching aids for normal intellectual growth.
Teachers are in school to teach and students are there to learn. Teachers often have great impact upon students, not just in academics but in morals and spiritual matters. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (the Bible). Hence the importance of recruiting the right teachers. Academic qualifications, though very important, are not enough. The interview committee must find out if the candidate smokes, drinks, uses drugs, indulges in crime, immorality, etc.
Discipline is absolutely essential for every child’s intellectual, physical, social, and moral-spiritual growth. Schools should help our children build disciplined minds: minds that can work with lots of data, minds that can question, and minds that can live in harmony with an increasingly diverse world. Our children today desperately need critical problem-solving skills. The school authority must see that proper programs are provided for the wholesome growth of the student. The U.S. public (government) schools are struggling with the problem of indiscipline. Today teachers can’t use any stick to punish the student. Teachers don’t have the right to spank children; they can only send them to the Principal. Many children do not listen to their teachers. This is partly the result of John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy of education. He became the dominant and most influential figure in American education in the first half of the 20th Century.
Dewey rejected fixed moral laws and eternal truths and principles. He adopted pragmatic, evolutionist, relativistic concepts as his guiding philosophy. He believed that because man’s environment is constantly changing, man also changes constantly. Therefore, teaching children any of the absolutes of morals, government, or ethics was a waste of time. To Dewey, “Education . . . is a process for living and not a preparation for future living” (John A. Stormer, None Dare Call It Education). Dewey laid the foundation for the future destruction of traditional education. A typical course on algebra: “The ‘algebra’ book has ‘lectures’ on endangered species, air pollution, facts about the Dagon people of West Africa, chili recipes, a discussion of hot peppers and the role zoos should play in today’s society. Page 5 has its headlines written in Spanish, English and Portuguese, a map of South America showing which language is spoken where, followed by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in three languages” (Stormer). How do you like that for Algebra lesson? No wonder most of the students in U.S. engineering and technical colleges are foreigners.
I am against introduction of calculators, let alone computer, in primary schools. Forget about the latest technology. We should not allow youngsters to use calculators for the first six years; let them use their heads to learn spelling and simple arithmetic. It is an absolutely essential part of learning to memorize tables, principles, etc. Dependence on calculators and computers in early stage of schooling will not prepare anyone for life. E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful has much to offer us, especially in the rural and hill areas of India and other third-world countries. Let the child begin to learn by doing; let him start learning by using low-tech tools (rural and village-made) and facilities available in nature. So take with a grain of salt the claims made by the technocrats, UGC and NAAC officials, university vice chancellors, etc. in the field of IT and communication to revolutionize education for the benefit of the poor and marginalized in cities and rural areas.
Our tribal children are very rich in concretes but poor in abstracts. Our children can learn the three Rs by using locally available tools such as round balls made of clay and colored, blocks made of wood (colored and numbered or lettered), beads made of wild seeds, etc. Madame Montessori’s system of education is similar to our traditional tribal education: learning with concrete objects. In rural and tribal societies we learn by doing, observing, imitating, etc. When learned people talk about traditional they mean the colonial, literary type of education; to them “non-traditional” means vocational, practical education. For rural and tribal populations, traditional still refers to vocational (practical) education and training. Hence the present efforts to introduce vocational courses at the +2 level and beyond are in the right direction. However, for successful acceptance and implementation of vocational education at the higher level of education, the integration of vocational and academic courses must begin in class one. The task at hand is to wed the theoretical and the practical aspects of education in the early stages of a child’s education. In the words of Alfred North Whitehead, “Education should turn out the pupil with something he knows well and something he can do well. This intimate union of practice and theory aids both. The intellect does not work best in a vacuum.”
America’s history is still the source of my inspiration and educational philosophy. She was a society which had its roots in the Bible. The founding fathers were the products of Western civilization. That civilization developed over several centuries after Gutenberg invented the printing press and published the Bible. America grew great in a Bible-friendly society, based on a foundation of the following concepts (taken from None Dare Call It Education):
1) The sanctity of marriage and the family.
2) No sex outside marriage.
3) The sanctity of life.
4) The sanctity of private property.
5) If you are able and don’t work, you don’t eat.
6) There are absolutes of right and wrong.
7) The sanctity of written and spoken contracts.
8) National independence and sovereignty.
9) Man’s rights come, not from the government or a Constitution but from God (as the Declaration of Independence declares).
10) Order is maintained in society through a system of accountability to God’s authorities: the Family, the Church and the State.
11) The possibility that I’ll have to answer later even if I get away with it now.
12) There is a God, that He is the Creator, that He revealed Himself through the Old and New Testaments, that He is Sovereign over the earth and that therefore man is responsible to Him for every action and decision.
The founding fathers of America were educated in homes and schools based on these principles. It would be hard to find men with the wisdom, courage, ethics and selflessness of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln (and I will add Mahatma Gandhi) among the political leaders of today.
President Kalam: “Righteousness of the heart of the human being leads to a perfect life of an enlightened citizen. . . . From the Emperor down to the common man, the cultivation of the righteous life is the foundation for all” (University News). We all agree that good people are our best asset. Prof. M. G. K. Menon, during his address at the North-Eastern Hill University convocation, “lamented the commercialization of education, which has defeated the purpose of making better human beings and society” (Nagaland Post).
In the final analysis, quality education has to do with meeting the physical, intellectual, and moral/spiritual needs of every child. Such education is from cradle to grave. Remember, Man is Body, Soul, and Spirit (Mind). Any education which does not meet the physical, intellectual (psychological), and moral/spiritual needs of Man is incomplete.
