Download Book Reviews 245 Contemporary Education Dialogue, 8, 2 (2011

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245
Avijit Pathak, Recalling the Forgotten: Education and Moral Quest. New
Delhi: Aakaar Publications. 2009. 204 pages. ` 425 [HB].
DOI: 10.1177/097318491100800209
Avijit Pathak scrutinises education through the lens of critical theory’s
penetrating critique of modernity and its dilemmas. Like Herbert Marcuse
and Erich Fromm, he believes that education must address the challenge
of the relation between the individual and society. While modernity
claims to free the individual from the fetters of tradition and feudalism,
modernity’s major contemporary forces are neoliberalism and
globalisation, which belie its promise. An education that bows to these
forces has only the freedom of consumerism and the life of a submissive
corporation employee to offer.
Freud and Nietzsche laid the foundations of our understanding of
modernity when they debunked the universality of morals and revealed
them as convenient fictions that are needed by civilisations to suppress
otherwise explosive desires and urges. Education is a part of this process
of repression and sublimation. However, the consequences of repression
can also manifest themselves in pathological ways, as we witness in the
form of the violent identity politics of Hindutva and Islamic terrorism.
These, too, are expressions of modernity, and along with the problem of
freedom, education must also rethink its ways of addressing these
pathologies.
At the forefront of modernity is a vision of development that seeks to
conquer and overcome nature. In the process, it builds a monochromatic
version of humanity, and reduces education to an instrumentalist tool.
Pathak, like all critical pedagogists, calls for an emancipatory education,
and adds to this his own uniquely Indian interpretation of what this would
mean. A critical consciousness must be cultivated, but along with that
what is needed is an aesthetic orientation as a counterpoint to the technical
and instrumental tendencies of modernity. Quoting Karl Marx as well as
Devi Prasad, Pathak argues that it is through aesthetic processes that we
gain the capacity to love and to be human. Drawing from Aurobindo,
Tagore and Gandhi, he argues that the cultivation of humanity must
include an inner awakening and what is called the ‘spiritual’ in religious
idiom. An individual must learn to deal with her inner forces and to look
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with equanimity at both joy and sorrow. This is how wisdom is acquired,
a goal usually overlooked while training children to become successful
in getting marks, jobs and promotions. Pathak pleads for a sense of
vocation, a swadharma, an inner calling to one’s chosen career,
overcoming the fear and the homogenisation that make only technology
and commerce the preferred destinations of education.
Pathak points out that the response of Indian civilisation to various
challenges, including commercialisation of social exchanges, has been
a search for inner truth and for the all-encompassing Brahman. He
would rather follow the strand of this civilisation, which Gandhi developed, where the quest for inner truth went hand in hand with attempts to
change the world. Through critical dialogue it is possible to embrace the
world, rather than shun it as maya. Pathak’s spirituality is in the sense of
Émile Durkheim, for whom it is an effervescence created by solidarity
with the social order. He understands, like Durkheim, that this solidarity
cannot come about through a monolithic reading of Indian culture.
Aggressive Hindutva does the latter, and hence is not far removed from
the violence of globalisation. Instead, Pathak calls for a syncretic organic
solidarity, which allows one, like Gandhi, to love the British while also
struggling to overthrow their colonial rule. Pathak’s interpretation of
critical pedagogy involves teaching a universalism that is syncretic
along with being egalitarian and just. It questions the division of theoretical and manual labour, and calls for the de-brahminising of
knowledge.
Keeping in line with his Indian interpretation of critical theory,
Pathak’s education would have two necessary components: first, it would
teach reflexivity, a connecting of the self with knowledge, to participate,
to laugh, to suffer in the process of knowing, and thence to awaken the
self and get the learner to think about what she is learning; and second, it
would cultivate a bond of compassion and understanding, not one of
domination or conquest, with the subject that is being studied. Pathak
applies this perspective in a refreshing manner to look at how common
school subjects could be studied. Science, for instance, as taught in
ordinary schools is intertwined with the idea of nation building and the
construction of modernity and the technological artefacts that are
believed to go with it. It is true that in many schools, the teaching of
science also has a more diffuse message of empowerment through the
overcoming of superstition. It is about wonder and the exploration of the
Contemporary Education Dialogue, 8, 2 (2011): 229–255
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world. It speaks the language of precision and bears a sharp identity of
hard knowledge in contrast to all other forms of knowledge. It is about
the practical world and offers job and employment opportunities. Pathak
proposes more than tweaking this meaning of school science. For him,
science is also about learning certain values like commitment to one’s
ideas and struggling against the establishment. Science is about humility
and believing that one does not have any final answers. Total certainty is
impossible to achieve, and one must always treat one’s opponents with
dignity. For, who knows, there may be something worth accepting in
what they say, too. Science is part of a broad, and not a narrow, sensitivity.
This sensitivity sees human beings as more than clouds of sub-atomic
particles. Pathak’s science would not see any contradiction in teachers
talking about poetry while also teaching atomic structure. The boundaries
of science become diffused, and it is permissible for children to learn that
Newton saw his work as a quest for God and not as a way of helping
corporations make greater profits.
Pathak’s alternative curriculum for school subjects like mathematics,
history and the social sciences makes for electrifying reading. The same,
however, cannot be said for his discussion of the reasons that hold us
back from implementing his pedagogy. One wishes that he had gone
beyond the usual culprits of textbook-centric and exam-oriented learning
and the hierarchisation of subjects.
Pathak is one of the rare few who combines attention to the school
along with a focus on higher education. The university, for him, is a
space where humanism is nurtured and from where it may spread to the
rest of society. As such, it is a strategic institution in the growth of a
civilisation. It must struggle against many processes of the world that act
against humanism. The division of knowledge into ever more specialised
streams acts against this vision of the university. Narrow disciplinary
identities may satisfy the sense of self-importance of those who get more
funding or those who believe themselves as somehow engaged in
exploring a higher knowledge. Yet, the university is also about openness
and humility; it is about communicating knowledge to the wider world.
The dissolution of disciplinary boundaries will not hamper the growth of
knowledge, but will actually lead to fresh infusions of energy and insight.
The humanities and the social sciences have a special role to play in this
process since they have the capacity to develop a moral and cosmological
vision within which the natural sciences and technology can be placed.
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Teaching, Pathak says, is central to the significance of a university for
a society, and the creativity, research and hard work of teachers are what
communicate the products of academic research to the rest of the
community. Without vibrant teaching, a university would amount to
nothing.
To be sure, our current system of higher education is tottering and is
the seat of many morbidities. There may be some basis to the current
trend of seeing the market as the solution to the troubles of the higher
education system. Preparing students for the job market is, of course, an
important goal of any education system. However, the market can also
destroy what a university stands for. In a sparkling passage, Pathak points
to disciplines like aesthetics and feminism to demonstrate his argument,
contending that they go against the grain of the market’s view of useful
knowledge. But both are essential to the growth of Indian and world
civilisations, and when they decay, or when they cease to be taught, our
universities will lose something vital. Market relations primarily create
consumers, and this is in a basic way antithetical to being free, autonomous
human beings.
Pathak considers education an important domain or arena where the
struggle to create a better world is being fought. He agrees that the
economic and political domains are of great importance, and that many
social movements are needed. However, unlike several other radicals, he
does not dismiss the significance of individual and everyday actions.
These are the necessary prerequisites for any social movement to form
and to have a sustained effect. There are many constructive and farreaching actions that Pathak considers possible in education. To begin
with, it is essential for teachers to strive as far as possible to put their
theories into practice. It is always difficult to do this, and some distance
between the two is inevitable. However, when the divide is too vast, the
theory risks losing its credibility. Besides, it is when an academic
community lives and upholds its values that its teaching has a truly deep
impact. Praxis is what gives shape to the deepest learning.
At a more specific level, Pathak argues that to rescue the relevance of
universities, it is necessary to adopt a fresh approach to their curricula.
He advocates orienting the undergraduate arts curricula towards making
a more direct contribution to the world. Students need to learn how to
listen to, and communicate with, the rest of society about social and
political issues. The selection and recruitment of students needs to be
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completely revamped. Pathak does not object to having students who
know little. What frustrates him are students who have little desire to
know. This situation does indeed call for a change in the structural
context of higher education, so that students do not feel compelled to
enrol for courses in which they have little interest. Pathak firmly wants
to keep such students out of the wrong courses. At the same time, in an
even-handed and thoughtful discussion of reservations and the concept
of merit, he argues for being open to students who have not had the
advantages that are enjoyed by those who were luckier in the family of
their birth. Merit is distinguished into three components—the desire and
zeal for learning; patience and persistence in efforts to learn; and
previous knowledge and skills—which provide a greater familiarity and
dexterity with the curricula. The last, especially, is the result of privileged
social backgrounds. But even at the college and university levels, all
forms of merit can be learnt and cultivated through hard work and by
setting up and attending additional and compensatory courses. This is
not to say that those coming from underprivileged backgrounds are
deficient in everything. They often possess special knowledge and
attitudes that the metropolitan and high-born lack. The opening up of
higher education to groups that were hitherto excluded will only enrich
these institutions.
Pathak writes in a dialogic, personalised style, with exclamations that
make one feel as though one were actually sitting and listening to him.
The book is a remarkable testimony to a committed teacher. For him, the
teacher is modernity’s high priest, who conveys the sacred knowledge of
a secular era. It is the role of the teacher to emancipate, to teach how to
engage in a dialogue and to teach how to inquire. For critical pedagogues,
this is what a morally informed education should mean.
Pathak has examined the deep flowing currents in our education
system. Those who are looking for an analysis of the Right to Education
Act or for a critique of public–private partnership policies will search for
them in vain. Nevertheless, this volume is a welcome addition of
theoretical profundity to the literature. It is a book that no one who is
serious about engaging with Indian education can afford to ignore. One
wishes, though, that Pathak had spent more time addressing the worldly
processes through which institutions and societies are transformed. His
focus on how individuals matter is empowering, especially to many who
feel lost and disillusioned in contemporary institutions. His is a voice of
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courage and integrity against dehumanising social forces. Yet, it would
have been interesting to know what specific social formations and
institutions he looks towards as sources of hope. One wonders how he
would have imagined and fleshed out the building of institutions. Also,
one wishes that he had spelt out the political and economic structures
that he regards as complementary to his moral quest.
Amman Madan
Professor
Azim Premji University
Bengaluru, India
E-mail: [email protected]
Poonam Batra (Ed.), Social Science Learning in Schools: Perspective and
Challenges. New Delhi: SAGE Publications. 2010. xiv + 320 pages. ` 425
(PB).
DOI: 10.1177/097318491100800210
This review is about a review of the school curriculum, textbooks and
pedagogical guidelines developed and executed by Eklavya for a period
of nearly more than two decades. Such introspection is new, innovative
and is unparalleled in the history of curriculum making and textbook
writing in India. The exhaustive process that went into the making of
textbooks in social sciences (studies) for Classes 6, 7 and 8 is documented
minutely in this book—meticulously and threadbare. The editor has
taken care to combine the theoretical perspectives that explain how
curriculum should be made, or can be looked at, given the larger goals of
education in democratic societies with specific instances of content in
the curriculum and textbooks. The unique contribution of this
documentation is that it provides a guide and a perspective to those who
are interested in what is transacted in the schools.
Scholars of education in India have hardly touched on the issue of
how to make the curriculum, what goes on in the process of curriculum
making and textbook writing, who contributes and to what extent in
these processes and how educational knowledge can be produced and
constructed from below—from the perspectives of both the teacher and
Contemporary Education Dialogue, 8, 2 (2011): 229–255