Transforming Education

family

religion and universities are among the

few institutions that have survived

over centuries and millennia

universities are considered gifts of

religions

to the world of buddhism to

the indian subcontinent and to asia

of catholicism to europe of

protestantism to the us

and of islam to the middle east and

northern africa have universities

been the same throughout the history

did they transform over these millennia

if yes why and how

we do not know much about how the

ancient universities

in the indian subcontinent such as

takshila

nalanda jagadala vikramshila

odantapuri dharmapuri wallabi

sompura pushpagiri survived and

transformed

these universities were mostly in the

modern day bihar

undivided bengal gujarat

and orissa

there are some stories of course we know

us to their transformations one of them

is that king dharmapala of the pala

dynasty

starts a new university in modern day

bihar

called vikram shilla to tease nalanda

university as we know it out of its

complecency

which he thinks it is complicit

modern universities in india draw their

tradition from the

european tradition of higher education

thanks to

a colonial legacy europe begins

their histories or its history of

universities in the medieval period

wherein the universities were focused on

training

clerics who would be the knowledge

keepers

in fact many of the terminologies we use

today in the university come from them

the word university comes from medieval

europe

where which which is uh which is a latin

phrase

called universita magistra room it’s

colorium which means

communities of masters and scholars even

though many words like

dean dienery convocation chancellor

vice chancellor all these words also

come from the

medieval universities

wilhelm von humboldt a

prussian a diplomat minister

philosopher education in modern day

germany then prussia starts

a new university in germany called the

university of berlin

with the support of the prussian king

which

moves the university model away from the

medieval roots medieval forms

humboldt starts the university in berlin

which is focused on

not not primarily on teaching but

primarily on

research where the research is central

to the

mission of the university and of course

to the

society as well incidentally the modern

day

phd format which we are all aware which

has a

course work six months in india mostly

two years in the us and many other parts

of the world

research leading to original output

public defense of the thesis through a

viva voce was also designed by him

this new kind of university the

university of berlin

goes on to produce some of the finest

minds

that shape the 19th and the 20th

centuries

some of them are you’re familiar with

all disciplines

ficte schlemmaker hegel

sharpener shelling walter benjamin

albert einstein max planck karl marx

friedrich engels foreign bismarck

dubois schumann heisenberg

max weber ernst kasira

almost all disciplines these are some

central figures

in the disciplines that we study

why did the why did humboldt start this

new kind of university

the answer lies in the french revolution

french revolution was this peculiar

moment

in europe where a european society

became a

self-cancelling society

what happened in french revolution is

that

the institutions that europe had built

over the two millennia or

centuries were destroyed

the intellectual tradition in some sense

was overthrown

which was largely housed in the

seminaries and judiciaries and libraries

the revolutionaries burnt the seminaries

burned the libraries guilt in the judges

and the and the priests and and the

monarchs

in other sense the entire knowledge

system knowledge keepers knowledge

institutions

were being destroyed in the french

revolution

this set of panic alarms across europe

uh different monarchs in europe uh

europe was worried

humboldt was worried many asked

why did the french revolution take place

we all have studied in a high school

history textbooks

that french evolution took place because

of poverty

because of exploitation because of

despotic rule

revolutionary ideas uh

uh and of course some of them some of us

have also heard this line which is often

ascribed to

uh marian toynette queen miriam toynet

who supposed to have said that

if you don’t have bread let them eat

cake

humboldt also asked the same question

why did the french revolution take place

his answer is that france had a

political order

which was the product of the feudal

system the medieval feudal system

but the society was

rapidly changing at the time because of

european colonization

and because of which and explorations

into the new world

which were causing new ideas new wealth

and new transformations within french

society

and according to homeworld there was no

institution to mediate between the ruler

and the ruled so that this changing

society’s need

changing society could be factored for

political shifts and the social shifts

and because of the absence of such as

such a institution

which could mediate between the ruler

and the rule whom world

concludes the french revolution took

place

therefore that was the reason why french

revolution took place and if you want to

avoid one more french evolution

elsewhere in europe

the answer would be to create an

institution that would

mediate between the ruler and the ruled

and and and also avoid a self-cancelling

moment

for europe other european countries

by this uh mediation and humboldt thinks

that this institution which would

mediate between the ruler and the rule

would be the university in its new form

the new university primarily would be

in the homework and model would be an

elite institution elite research

institution

that would be focused on research which

would be primarily of use to the state

its scientific and social projects

social needs and that of the society

the in the homeworld university model

the university

has three primary functions

first is research do original research

the professoriate is supposed to be

engaged primarily in research

and then they have responsibility to

disseminate this research so writing

through

seminars and thirdly

to produce future knowledge producers

through the form of teaching

and that is why universities offer

degrees and offer courses

the homework model also incorporates the

kantian ideas of the human faculty which

permeate

the modern university especially the

idea that human mind has the faculties

of pure reason

practical reason and and judgment

the himalayan model in the 19th century

was imported in the u.s by the

universities by the presidents because

of the interest that it had created in

the

youngsters in the u.s were traveling to

germany to study at the

world university and

in the 20th century the model then from

the u.s

travels to rest of the world

in india modern universities were

established by the

colonizers we had of course the british

the french the dutch the portuguese and

others

one of the first universities in india

was established by the jesuits in

1542 in portuguese gova called

saint paul’s college which is said to

have had about

3000 students from all over asia

including

japan interestingly it also had the

first

printing press in the indian

subcontinent

the british established universities in

india in 1857

in the three ports cities calcutta

mumbai

and madras or chennai today

for the colonial needs and for

from a colonial world vision the

university they established was

in the form of an affiliation system

there would be a university

which would be a hub it was taken from

the london university model

and also informed by centralization and

control

under this model the university would

have

would be only a grad school having

masters and phd

phd came much later but mostly masters

and

would do examinations and it would have

it would not have undergrad programs it

would have several undergrad colleges

under it uh something today’s

amazon universities have as many as 800

undergraduate colleges in india

and these colleges would have no freedom

to start they would have to get request

permission from the university

the curriculum is given by the

university examination is connected by

the university

when to start the classes how many to

admit how much to charge the fees

is all decided by the university and the

degree also comes from the university

and this model today survives in india

pakistan

nepal bangladesh and sri lanka is not

seen in the rest of the world

post-independence indian universities

continue this model

but create a create parallel

institutions based on the new models

emerging from the us and russia

taking the learnings from the second

world war such as

in the form of iits or the indian

institutes of technology

and indian institutes of management

the national education policy 2020

released by the government of india

is a significant departure from the

colonial model

while it is unable to fully de-link from

its colonial legacy

you cannot divorce history

history is part of who we are and it

shapes what we do in the present

but structurally and philosophically the

new model proposed

in the the new uh national education

policy

is very close to the homeworld model

of course the policy in its present form

also owes a lot to the

sustained civil society debates and

interventions in india

the human model emerging out of the

concerns of the french revolution

has remained perhaps the biggest and

single most transformation

in the known history of the universities

however the universities

and knowledge disciplines within

universities have been transformed

through various social events and

individual innovations

the first and the second world wars had

a deep

impact on the university disciplines the

birth and the transformations of

disciplines of literature

psychology management emergence of

applied disciplines

and interdisciplinarity oh much to

these two world wars philosophical

thoughts and movements such as county

and idea of human faculty have

significantly influenced and structured

the

university and the disciplines as we see

them today

universities and countries also learn

from each other and

and transform public debates uh and

civil society interventions

shape universities and reshape them

constantly

governments remain one of the strongest

forces of

changes or lack of it in countries

around the world

individual innovations of presidents of

universities such as the school system

from harvard university

choice-based credit system from

california university system

are some of the examples of the

innovations coming from university

presidents

or vice chancellors as we know in india

local ethos also influence universities

for example

the inclusion of the working class is a

very very important

part of the higher education debates in

the uk

whereas academic freedom becomes central

for higher education

debates in the us and inclusion and

access becomes central tenants of higher

education database in

india lastly

do technologies transform universities

the answer is yes

technologies of storage and

dissemination have made universities

what they are today

but they transform them as part of a

much larger social shift caused by

technologies and over a long long period

of time

perhaps the universities would not have

been born today

if the technology of writing had not

been born

printing press has been seen as pivotal

to french revolution

with its ability to disseminate the same

message

across the masses large spots of mass

muscles without distortions

many say that this ability of the

printing press or printing technology to

disseminate the same message without

distortion

managed to cause french revolution and

because of french evolution the

university system

got transformed in the way

we have seen them and experience it

today

how will the digital technology

transform university

experiments native to digital culture

such as the

minerva project experimented in the u.s

a massive open online courses which have

very quickly taken up

taken over all over the world have had

not much impact on the

institution of university

digital culture shaped by digital

technologies will certainly transform

universities when

how to what extent we do not know yet

thank you

you