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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