“The acute problems of the world can be solved only by whole men [and women], not by people who refuse to be, publicly, anything more than a technologist, or a pure scientist, or an artist. In the world of today, you have got to be everything or you are going to be nothing,” —Conrad Hal Waddington, biologist, philosopher, artist and historian

In my last blog, I have discussed at length the importance of ArtScience or liberal arts education at a  higher level and its dire need in the Indian context. ArtScience is a new way to explore culture, society and human experience that integrates synthetic experience with analytical exploration. It moves art out of galleries and museums, science from its laboratories and journals, into newly invented spaces and places. It is knowing, analyzing, experiencing and feeling simultaneously. In nutshell, ArtScience connects and the future of humanity and civil society depends on these connections. In the present blog, I will dig deep to find what should be the appropriate predecessor of the liberal arts so as to provide solutions to the ever-emerging problems before humanity. I will also focus on revamping the entire education system around the globe with a focus on India.   

“If you have ever had a medical procedure, chances are you are benefited from the arts. The stethoscope was invented by a French flautist– a physician named Rene Laennec who recorded his first observations of heart sounds in musical notation”. Thus begins an article by the physiologist Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein in the July 6, 2018 issue of Science. He discusses how incorporating the humanities, arts, craft and design into curricula makes better scientists. He points to the recent report released by the Board on Higher Education and Workforce of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), which has recommended that humanities, arts, crafts, and design (HACD) be integrated with science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM). Dr. Root-Bernstein quotes the developmental biologist Conrad Waddington, who said: “The acute problems of the world can be solved only by whole men, not by people who refuse to be, publicly, anything more than a technologist or a scientist or an artist”; and Professor Charles West, President of the US National Academy of Engineering, who says: “Engineering systems cannot be wisely envisioned, designed or deployed without an understanding of society, culture, politics, economics, and communications - in other words, the very stuff of the liberal arts and also of the social sciences”.

Indian Graduates- The Dismal Scenario
India produces over 1.5 million engineering graduates every year, from 3,345 colleges and institutes. Sadly, a major portion of these graduates are not employable. As Ms. Maria Thomas wrote in the Economic Times last year, the rapid growth of India’s IT industry during the last three decades had led thousands of students, often pushed by their parents, to pursue a profession that often guaranteed wealth, status - and with some luck, a one way ticket out of the country. Likewise, India produces 52,000 doctors (MBBS degree) every year from about 1,700 medical colleges. Over 6.3 lakh students take the pre-medical entrance tasks, and a significant number among them manage to get into private colleges, paying hefty sums. Here again, it is the parental push for a better future for their children. The quality of most doctors, particularly in small towns and rural areas is well known. Most of them are ignoramuses when it comes to HACD. These are not what Dr Waddington termed as “whole men”.

The Deficiency Lies at the Bottom
So, where does the deficiency lie? It is right at the school level. Over the last seven decades, governments - both central and state - have abused the school system by fiddling around with the curricula, depriving schools of much-needed money, appointing ill-qualified teachers through quota systems, playing with the syllabus and myriad other modes of interference. Education analysts such as Pratham have shown that the government school system is so bad that an eighth class student cannot solve a fifth class problem, and a fifth class student is unable to answer a third class question. People have preferred sending their children to private schools, and these are money-making machines, not easily affordable by the lower middle-class families. This, combined with the need for steady jobs and income for the child once he/she graduates, has played havoc with our education system, Thus were born coaching centers, run by the politically connected, which take students right at the secondary school level and send them through tortuous courses so that they may pass engineering and medical entrance examinations. And in none of these coach centers, nor in the schools, are students taught HACD at any level, and those who successfully come out of these mechanized teaching factories are absorbed in the NITs, IITs or medical colleges, but with no ‘soft skills’. It is high time that the school system is revamped and HACD introduced from the very beginning.

It is with this deficiency in mind that the IITs, BITS Pilani, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and a few others, have tried to make up through the introduction of ‘core courses’ in the first few semesters, where the students are taught language, literature, humanities and social sciences, arts and crafts, and design. Happily enough, several IITs now have actual departments in some of these subjects besides technology and science departments where faculty members teach and also do research in areas of HACD. The design of the convocation robes designed at the IIT Hyderabad in 1st week of August 2018 using Ikat stoles made by local weavers is one such classic example. These core courses at IITs and BITS are of some help. Similarly Christian Medical College at Vellore requires their graduating doctors to spend a year in rural India. Working in villages gives the young scholar a perspective of the community, its needs and its talents and enriches the mind. And professional IT companies offer months-long sessions to their trainees in generic and stream learning plus “soft skills”. What about the other technological and medical institutions?

Road to Eminence
Sadly, the Central Ministry of Higher Education does not appreciate the value of liberal arts and HACD. A glaring display of this has been the identification of four institutions of technology, and one “green field” institute yet to be made, as Institutions of Eminence. Tellingly, not one university or institute devoted to HACD was thought of as eminent! What the government decides is eminent is at variance with what the professional scholars think.

Given this disconnect, here is one suggestion: why should some of these ‘green field’ institutes not concentrate on HACD rather than more technology-based ones? Better yet, rather than start institutes, establish Trusts that catalyze and promote HACD?