Technical Education for Sustainable Development

Lecture Delivered at the ISTE Annual Cinvention (Kerala Chapter) 2014

Strengthening Technical Education for Sustainable Development

Dr. M P Chandrasekharan,

Retd. Director, NIT Calicut. (Life Member, ISTE)

1.     Introduction: The Context

The subject matter chosen by ISTE this year appears to stem from a widespread feeling that today’s Engineering education is inadequate in inculcating the essential interest and passion among the students towards sustainable development. To appreciate the gravity of the problem it is necessary to understand both Development and sustainability jointly and severally. The well known UN document “Our Common Future” (also known as Brundtland Report 1987) defines sustainable development thus: “Development that meets the need of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need”. Many educators harbor the notion that sustainability is associated with environmental issues and we have no direct involvement with them. But the “environment” does not exist as a sphere separate from human actions, ambitions and needs, and we are very much a part of that.

Development is an interesting idea, though rather complex. It appears to be synonymous with “Getting richer”. Rich countries give development aid to poor countries with the intention of making them richer. We have many development programs within the country (and the State) which also appear to have similar intentions. Nobody seems to worry about “quality of life” as different from financial status. Once we incorporate these ideas the intangible variables increase in number making measurement and comparison rather difficult. The single parameter comparison of monetary power is simple enough, but leads to the false notions on development that prevail today. The sad story is that most of us believe that development is tantamount to creation of a consumer society that acts as a market for goods and services produced by richer people.

By simple laws of conservation it should be clear that a section of society can get richer only by making another section poorer if money or material wealth is the metric or yardstick used. Intangibles like education, knowledge, goodwill, happiness etc. do not follow the laws of conservation, and can remain in abundance even after distribution in the society. Selfishness, bigotry, violence, anger, diseases etc are intangibles that harm the society.  It is time we relied on development indices that consider such intangibles besides material wealth. The question that this paper is trying to answer is how we tune up technical education to create an interest and passion among our students to work towards Sustainable Development.

2.      Philosophy of Exploitation: its colonial beginning

Throughout the last century a derogatory word like exploitation gained a certain amount of nobility that it never had before. A few centuries ago most of the small European countries conquered Asia and Africa with the singular purpose of exploiting these lands and people. All of them gained riches disproportionate to their national resources and human effort. The process they used was straightforward plundering, enslaving the original owners with muscle power and firearms. When they left these countries after the Second World War they left the legacy of exploitation with the nations they impoverished by centuries of misrule. These countries (and even the erstwhile rulers) had only natural resources to exploit further. Essential needs of large populations eking out a living and the continuing greed of richer countries together cause a fast depletion of the earth’s resources to the point of impoverishing the future generations.

Giant corporations using technologies of greed sprung up all over the world and accelerated the depletion of resources. Some of those corporations, shaping themselves like Frankenstein Monsters are larger than government and often install and control governments both in democracies and dictatorships. Our Scientists, Technologists and Engineers are hired by these monsters and are destined to serve their interests. There is sufficient justification on the individual’s part to work for them because all that one aspires is a good life and career and the monster may pay you better. Although colonialism has, in theory, vanished at the end of the World War II, the new avatar in the form of multinational corporations do the same act of exploitation on the sly, in a subtle, but deadly manner. Technical Education as we obtain today is designed to serve the interests of these monsters in the name of “Development”. Students, teachers, parents and the Universities across the world never raise a little finger, either as they are ignorant or are lured by the bread crumbs of short term benefits.

A student reaches the undergraduate program by the age of seventeen and it is too late to begin programs of awareness on such a fundamental issue.

3.     Where do we start??

If you ask me this question personally I would answer: “From the mother’s lap”. For a growing child it is never too early to learn about Nature and the environment he/she is part of. I have the strong opinion that it is the parents and the early schooling that convert children to insensitive robots. Never introduce in the mind of the child the idea that he/she is studying for the purpose of becoming a doctor, engineer or the District Collector.

The sheer pleasure of learning should be reason enough for the child to learn. This pleasure can be derived by looking at the sunrise and sunset, clouds passing over mountains, waves crashing on the rocks of beach, butterflies emerging from flowers and singing little poems about them. No amount of time spent by the child watching closely the long lines of ants or the star-filled sky will ever go to waste. Make them write and draw pictures in the wet sand on the beach and make them laugh when the waves wipe it out. In our misplaced emphasis on teaching internet and information technology we are losing connectivity with the Natural world around us. Close contact with other living beings will make the child intellectually honest and alert. He/she knows what she knows and would acquire more by an innate quest due to proximity with Nature. Most mothers think that education is learning the questions and answers by heart and reproducing them in the exams. Schools also follow a regime suited to this end and impose punishments like shaving the head and locking up in the kennel for trivial offences if the child behaves differently. This entire exercise kills the initiative of children towards any independent work or original thinking.

4.     School Education and Intellectual Honesty

The student’s ability to face hard realities is getting curbed as he/she goes along to higher classes. He does not encounter any failure until he writes the SSLC Exam. The student, parents, teachers and even the Government wish to believe that they all have been doing a wonderful job during all the ten years of schooling. The recent results of SSLC examination in Kerala did proud to everyone: Government, students, teachers and managements: a win-win situation in the modern jargon. Our children have performed an amazing forward leap in academic quality, thanks to the sincere effort of evaluators and policy makers who wielded the magic wand. It was the umpires who played this time to bring about such an incredible advancement by reducing the minimum requirements for a pass to ridiculously low levels. This act of charity enabled the lazy and dull to pass and join the rest. (Note:  It should now be possible to enhance the country’s prosperity overnight by bringing the “poverty-line” to similarly low levels. If the concerned agencies wake up to this task India will no longer be a poor country.)

Education is concerned with acquisition of knowledge and skills. Evaluation is an essential and integral part of this process. More than anything else, evaluation should give valid feedback to the student as to whether he/she has scaled the requisite levels in the concerned subjects. At the end of the evaluation, if the teacher tells a lie the process simply becomes invalid. Somehow a sizeable population of teachers believe that they are empowered to award “marks” as a matter of gratis. Students and parents eagerly look forward to this largesse after every examination. Acceptance of this premise causes many factors other than academic to creep in and vitiate the system. We have witnessed several extremely degenerate cases where administrative bodies such as University Syndicates decide to award marks to chosen favorites for political reasons. We should realize that “mark” is a scale of measurement and not material wealth for distribution among the have-nots

Education in India is hounded by two demons namely Degree Mania and Exam Phobia. Degree maniacs are typical cases of the society that craves the label and not the content. They want only the final gilt edged certificates, and are least bothered about what they learn, nor if they learn anything at all. Exam phobia is a quality inherited over generations: most students consider regular learning during the year/semester unnecessary and prepare for the short term target of passing the examinations. Thus all exams become fearfully difficult. This together with the basic distortion in the evaluation has relegated acquisition of knowledge as the last priority. Things have come to such a pass that learning and scholarship are hardly considered as of any value. To a large extent teachers are also responsible for such erosion in the fundamental objective of education.

Political and administrative authorities, in their blindness emanating from delusions of grandeur arrogate to themselves the right to donate marks as they please, blocking reliable feedback information and sending wrong signals to the student community that the days ahead are for the mediocre. Students will certainly take the cue and conclude that striving for excellence in learning is rather futile. I said this much on school education because this habit is entering professional education also.

5.     Technical education at Degree Level

All university degree programs in engineering are conducted on the basis of a four year curriculum where most of the courses have classroom lectures, and an examination at the end of the semester. Some courses have laboratories instead of lecture classes. There is also a project work at the end of four years. The courses are taught in such a way that the student can gain the ability to answer the questions asked in the examination just as in schools. This pattern has remained unchanged in all affiliating universities and to a large extent in autonomous institutions. The moment we think of the subject matter namely “Strengthening Technical education for sustainable development” we think of introducing a few three credit courses on the subject, look for text books and run the course like any other. It is fairly clear that doing a few courses and answering questions in the examination do not inculcate the necessary mindset in the student to preserve the planet for future generations. The philosophy should percolate to the learning of all subjects.

For instance we teach design courses that essentially should kindle the student’s creative mind. A lot is taught about materials too. Every designed object is constructed and used for a certain period of time. After the life time of the constructed object it is usually discarded. It sometimes goes for a second hand use and ultimately gets ripped apart into component parts. These scrapped materials find further use and finally end up in the furnace. This was the life cycle of most engineering equipment. With the advent of IT industry the enormous waste produced due to the shortened life cycle of gadgets (computers, mobile phones and other equipment) the accumulation of waste has gone to phenomenal proportions. The designer has obviously specified only its birth and life and not the death.

Our design courses should be so revamped that the designer should specify the materials used, the manufacturing process, expected duration of life, the process of death and disposal of the earthly remains of the equipment. The questions of environment, pollution and sustainability are to be answered at the time of choosing the raw material and the final disposal of the defunct equipment. This specification should be mandatory in all cases including packaging wrappers. (Packages of edibles like Lay’s , Kurkure cannot be reprocessed and constitute a  permanent affliction to the earth’s surface like nuclear waste)

I suggest a legislation to the effect that the brochure of the equipment kept for sale should contain clear information of the materials used and mode of disposal when it is defunct. Let us make a beginning at the level of curriculum and syllabi to inculcate the urgency of this need.

6.     Changes needed in the academic style

The entire process of teaching and learning should change and we should come out of the present vicious circle if sustainability of development has to enter the curricula in a meaningful way. A classroom lecture, done in the popular style of monologue  of the teacher in a silent or unresponsive classroom can, at best give the student a ‘familiarity’ with the topics discussed. When an examination is announced some students consult notes or textbooks and try to memorize them in order to reproduce in the exam paper. About 30 to 40 percent of students do not do even that, and they are the ones who fail!! Any remedy that aims better learning should take the student to levels of analysis and synthesis. Creativity is a far cry, but can be attempted in Project work and some unconventional courses. Unless we deliberately reorient classroom work the situation will remain unchanged for years to come.

The most ineffective component of our teaching-learning process is feedback. Examinations do not serve any purpose as a form of feedback to the student to apply mid-course corrections. Results of exams are so delayed that, by the time it is announced there will be no opportunity to apply any change in the methods. A real feedback can be taken only by the teacher, during the classes. An idea that I have tried to propagate for over two decades is called “Monday Quiz”. A quiz, or a test of three or four short questions exclusively from the portions done in the previous week is the first thing that the student faces during the week. The questions are so designed that the paper could be answered in 15 minutes without any preparation other than listening in the class and browsing through the class notes. The teacher evaluates and returns the answer sheets the next day. By the third or fourth week in the semester the whole class turns alert and responsive. This is a method I have used successfully in many undergraduate courses. I can guarantee its success.

I find there are two types of teaching learning process: I call one of them “pull system” where a student, desirous of knowing something pulls it out of where it is available, be it teachers, internet, library, textbooks or journals. The second one is the “push system” where the teacher tries to push knowledge down the throat of the unwilling recipient. In India we find that University education goes by and large in the push system. Under the circumstances I have no hesitation in asserting that e-learning is a colossal failure in India as a substitute for classrooms.

If Technical education is to be tuned towards Sustainable Development the student and teacher should come out of the age old “push system” and come to the “pull system” where the student is so motivated as to grab knowledge and information from where it is available. Modern Internet Technology becomes relevant only in this context. Philosophy of sustainable development can enter their minds and heart only if we motivate the students to accept it as urgent and important.

7.     Summary

This paper analyses the idea of Sustainable Development as defined by UN in the Brundtland Report (1987) and takes the view that it is illogical to compare financial status for development as against more valid intangibles that define quality of life. Exploitation that started  a few centuries ago continues in a different form through multinationals using new technology and influencing and manipulating governments across the world, resulting in fast depletion of natural resources. Educational systems in general and technical education in particular cater to the greed of these neo colonial forces. This can be changed only by renewing our educational systems in content and delivery. This involves breaking the vicious circle of conventional lecture-examination-marks mode. Feedback system should be made continuous and effective with the introduction of “Monday Quizzes” in classrooms. Teaching-learning process should shift from the present push system to the pull-system with better motivation.

 Design courses should be restructured to include the disposal methods of designed equipment and gadgets. It should be mandatory for brochures of gadgets to specify how to dispose of it after its life time. A legislation to this effect is recommended.

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