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| Cartoon on Sri Lankan education y Awantha Artigala, Colombo |
(Welcome address at the at the conference, Educational Transformation and Transformative Education: Possibilities and Alternatives to the Educational Crisis, March 21st 2014, India International Centre, New Delhi; organized by the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi)
Colleagues and friends, good morning. On behalf of the Department of Sociology and the Faculty of Social Sciences at South Asian University, let me welcome you.
Today, we are expected to deliberate on the broad theme, ‘Educational Transformation and Transformative Education: Possibilities and Alternatives to the Educational Crisis’ with a very politically conscious focus on South Asia’s multiple crises in education. To contextualize what we are about to embark upon, let me divert your attention to another time that has nothing to do with our region, our times or even our post-enlightenment notions of reality and rationality. For a brief moment, let me take you to mythic times where gods, humans, nature, culture and a multiplicity of ideas interacted fairly freely. I have in mind a very nuanced encounter between a god and a king as outlined in ‘The Legend of Thamus’ by Plato in his book Phaedrus. As we know, Phaedrus is a dialogue between Plato's main protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus. I must admit that I unashamedly and repeatedly refer to this mythic encounter in many of my conversations on education as it allows me to place my thoughts in context, as would be the case today.
Thamus, the king of a great city in Upper Egypt, once entertained god Theuth who was the inventor of many things, including numbers, calculation, geometry, astronomy, and writing. Theuth’s assertion was that his inventions should be made available to Egyptians because of their utility. At one moment, while introducing his invention of writing to the king, the god observed: “Here is my accomplishment, my lord the King, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of Egyptians.”[1] To this, Thamus replied, “Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who will practice it. So it is in this: you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom, they will be a burden to society.”[2]
You might quite legitimately wonder what this mythical conversation has got to do with a series of deliberations on the multiple crises in education in our region. For me, this seemingly unconnected narrative is a point of departure for what we are about to discuss. After all, it deals with the unthinking and ideologically motivated posturing of a specific technology as a solution to all known ills in society when in fact it can well be the foundation for creating a group of citizens who are a burden to society as warned by King Thamus. It is not that different from the way policy makers and politicians in our region attempt to promote education at all levels as something that is fundamentally utilitarian, something decided by the market, something for the market, something useful for development, something in my opinion is shorn of any nuanced historical consciousness.
Can we be satisfied that domains of education in South Asia, from primary to secondary to tertiary as a system, function to impart knowledge along with wisdom and a broader sense of inclusive citizenship or a collective sense of regional identity? Or, does that system simply offer a quantity of information without situating it in the wider political and social contexts within which it must ideally be understood, learned and practiced? If the latter is the case, what kind of citizens and what kind of an intellectual climate would we end up creating? What kind of young people do we train and send to universities, colleges and markets?
I was very amused to read a few weeks ago the vision and mission statements of the Ministry of Higher Education in Sri Lanka very loudly articulated in its website. Its vision is to make Sri Lanka “an international hub of excellence for higher education by 2020.”[3] Its mission is to “To Delight Students, The Industry, Staff And Other Stakeholders Of The Higher Education System Of Sri Lanka By Formulating And Implementing Results Oriented Policies & Strategies And To Deliver Results In An Effective And Efficient Manner Through A Participatory Process, To Produce The Best Intellectuals, Professionals, Researchers, Entrepreneurs; To Deliver Innovative Solutions To Make Sri Lanka “The Wonder Of Asia” (sic).[4] It seems to me that the vision reads more like a hallucination and the mission more like an impossible mission to achieve and a wish list formulated by someone who does not seem to have the foggiest idea of the crises that Sri Lankan education system as a whole is currently enveloped in. But then, that is the nature of hallucinations and missions impossible.
I refer to this example for a specific reason. This is not an exception. If you were to read policy documents, particularly pertaining to higher education in any of the countries in the region, you would read similarly unenlightened verbosity. What exactly is meant by “Formulating And Implementing Results Oriented Policies & Strategies” and how does one “Deliver Results In An Effective And Efficient Manner Through A Participatory Process?” Aren’t these the hallmarks of the kind of market-driven education system, devoid of a conscience, a sense of self-reflexivity or a historical sensibility that has been implemented in our region since neo-liberal ideological premises impacted upon systems of governance in general and education in particular since at least the late 1970s in our part of the world? Isn’t this the description of a parochial technical education that does not allow people to think? Unfortunately, this is the kind of system that is in place today not only in Sri Lanka, but elsewhere in the region too, if we go by the public articulations of politicians on what education is supposed to be like.
But then, can the ‘Miracle of Asia’ as imagined by Sri Lanka’s present regime and ‘Incredible India’ in the case of the Indian state’s self-perception of itself and other similarly fantastic self-perceptions of neighboring countries be achieved in a vacuum, particularly when their education systems have been highly politicized and in dire straits over a considerable period of time? Clearly, in the case of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka heads of major state-funded universities are appointed by the highest political authorities in these countries. What does this mean when juxtaposed with ideas such as academic excellence, cutting edge knowledge, academic freedom and so on which most of us would cherish as ideals and also regularly emerge in the rhetoric of regimes in our region whose practice however very clearly undermine what these words actually mean.
Can we expect anything other than crises when universities, research organizations and think tanks are headed by people not because of their training, competence or integrity in a specific domain of knowledge, but simply because of their proximity to political structures that hold power at a specific time and their uncritical acceptance of the prevalent structures of power. This general state of affairs brings to my mind Edward Said’s comments on post-independence Arab universities outlined in his essay, ‘Identity, Authority and Freedom’ (2001). As he observes, in the post independence period, in Arab countries, national universities were conceived as extensions of the national security states, many of which were established consequent to independence. In such a context, academic freedom and other ideals of higher education as identified earlier, could not exist because they were perceived as a threat to the sustainability of that national security state. What was needed instead was a system through which potentially free thinking zones such as universities could be controlled by regimes or other structures of power. Said makes the following observations with reference to the situation in the Arab academy: “Alas, political conformity rather than intellectual excellence was often made to serve as a criterion for promotion and appointment, with the general result that timidity, a studious lack of imagination, and careful conservatism came to rule intellectual practice”[5] (Said 2001). I am sure you would agree with me that Said’s observations of the Arab academy describe equally well the collective status of South Asian academy today.
But these systemic failures become possible because of wider failures in the societies we live in; because of the shrinking public sphere that we have by and large accepted as a matter of fact over which one has no control; because of the relative absence of wisdom and tolerance of a plurality of ideas in most political contexts in South Asia. It is clear that ruptures in the wider society reproduces themselves in school and university systems which become part of a single process with very little space for publically articulated difference. It is in such a situation we can understand such intellectually demeaning acts as the banning of books: Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey was removed by the University of Bombay from its English syllabus while not to be outdone, Delhi University banished from its history syllabus the Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan and Paula Richman's Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia with a focus on Ramanujan's work. James Laine’s work of history, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India was removed from local circulation due to protests by the publisher Oxford University press in 2003, while this year under somewhat similar circumstances Wendy Donniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternate History was withdrawn by the publisher, Penguin India. Similarly, the novel Lejja by Tasleema Nasreen was banned in Bangladesh as soon as it was published while the Sri Lankan government banned Stanley J. Tambiahs’s book, Buddhism Betrayed? In these kinds of situations, it is not always easy to locate the boundaries between the state’s thinking and the influence of hegemonic political currents on one hand, and the actions of universities and schools on the other. Often, they complement each other.
Let me flag one final issue. I think we need to recognize that much of what has happened in the systems of education in our region is also related to education’s affinity with neo-liberal policies of governance that South Asia has adopted in different ways since about the late 1970s. All of us would agree that as a regime of governance neoliberalism constitutes of an ideology that is organized upon the ideas of “liberalizing the capitalist market from state control and refashioning state practices in the idealized image of the free market.”[6] Within this system, what has happened to the individual, the man, the woman and the child down the street and in the mall, and to their sense of citizenship? Gordon notes that the emergence of neoliberal government means that “the notion of the social body as a collective subject committed to the reparation of injuries suffered by individual members gives way to a new role for the state as a custodian of a collective reality principle, distributing the discipline of the competitive world market throughout the interstices of the social body.”[7] This means that neoliberalism necessitates a radical transformation of the social body which takes a toll in the long run on pre-existing institutions and practices, which includes what we flippantly call democracy. As suggested by Lemke, “the key feature of neoliberal rationality is the congruence it endeavors to achieve between a responsible and moral individual and an economic rational actor.”[8]
Of course, as post-neoliberal South Asia amply demonstrates, it is this ‘responsible and moral individual’ and the ‘economic rational actor’ who has by and large supported the tampering of democratic practices and institutions in the hope of achieving an economic and developmental miracle in which they can be part of. It is this same character who has often tolerated anti-minority agitations in many societies in the region among numerous other tendencies that have destabilized the region’s democratic political environment. It is in this context that Hindess’ ideas also make sense (1996). He notes the marketization tendencies in governmentality significantly impacts the political and social rights of citizenship.[9] More specifically, “political rights (such as they are) may remain but their scope is restricted as market regulation takes over from direct regulation by state agencies and the judgment of the market is brought to bear on the conduct of states, while the social rights of citizenship (where they exist) are pared back as provision through the market replaces provision directly or indirectly through the state.”[10] The issue is that this radical transformation in the value of the individual and in citizenship in order to privilege market prerogatives has been facilitated essentially through our schools and through our universities and colleges. I am not suggesting a reductionist approach in which all the ills in education can simplistically be located in the context of the region’s experimentation and flirtation with neoliberalism. I am simply suggesting however, that this affinity cannot be taken out of the equation which also constitutes of numerous other factors.
I often wonder why policy makers and politicians in our region ruling over different sectors of education simply do not see or perceive the crises that have engulfed these sectors and experienced by ordinary mortals as a matter of routine. These are the crises that you too would deliberate upon in detail as you can also see them. This invisibility is a matter of convenience as very eloquently sketched in a fictional setting by Salman Rushdie in his novel, The Enchantress of Florence (2009). After his inability to win the heart of Alessandra Fiorentina, Marco Vespuchi hung himself and his dangling body was visible to Alessandra Fiorentina even though she never saw it. That is because in the words of Rushdie, she “had long ago perfected the art of seeing only what she wanted to see, which was an essential accomplishment if you wanted to be one of the world’s masters and not its victim”[11]. In this fictional narrative, “if she did not see you then you did not exist”[12] and simply became a casualty of her erasing gaze. It seems to me that we see these crises simply because we either experience them as part of lives; help create discourses on these as scholars or both. We see them because we are also victims of these circumstances. But politicians and policy-makers, centrally located in domains of power, are in the business of becoming the world’s or at least their own fiefdoms’ masters, and simply cannot see these crises as they do not wish to see them. Instead, they will see and become part of grand narratives such as the ‘Miracle of Asia’ or ‘Incredible India.’ In fact, it is their erasing gaze that constitutes how politics unfold in our times.
What I have outlined here is simply the tip of the proverbial iceberg. In building that iceberg, I only focused on a few issues in tertiary education that I have thought about and written about before. I did not even touch on the primary and secondary education systems. These were simply some of the things that came to my mind when I was thinking about how I could contextualize the deliberations that would begin today. Naturally, there is much more that needs to be addressed and probed. We also need to go beyond the critiques that we are quite familiar with and look for practical alternatives. When you do this in the specificities of your own papers and your own experiences and research, I hope some of the larger issues I have attempted to outline today might be of some use.
Let me end with a personal note, which also has to do with education in our times. It gives me endless satisfaction and pleasure to see this kind of exercise taking place in my own department and faculty. Not too long after we came together as an institution and as a collective of individuals, the Department of Sociology was the first in the university to initiate a conference, and that too coordinated by my colleague Ravi Kumar with the support of Rosa Luxembourg Foundation. I am grateful for these efforts. Thank you. And we have continued these efforts in a number of different but obvious ways. After all, it is not only our teaching, but our thinking, what we read, what we write and how we reach out to intellectual domains beyond the university that would ultimately construct our public intellectual personality. We are attempting to build a particular kind of institution with a very specific regional identity and sensibility not as imagined by the regimes of the region, but as we have re-imagined how South Asia should be with porous borders across which people, ideas and manifestations of culture could move with relative ease. This is not too different from the porousness of borders that our own discipline as well as social sciences and humanities more generally have experienced in recent times. But in that re-imagination, while our regionalism is clear, we are also very open to ideas from the wider world. Nevertheless , it endlessly frustrates me when faced with the obvious realization that in spite of the emergence of political structures such as SAARC and the flippant and all too often mantra-like chanting of something called South Asian and South Asia, “we do not have regular and serious forums for South Asian scholarship to showcase our own research and our own thinking on our own terms. Even now, more than half a century after the process of official decolonization began in the region, much of the analyses and pontifications on our problems, situations, histories and dynamics emanate from Euro American academia; this is certainly the case when it comes to conceptual formulations and theoretical approaches from the Euro‐American zone that are being employed in exploring the region’s social and cultural complexities often without much self-reflection”[13] and quite comfortably adopted by our own scholars without seriously exploring their possible contradictions.
My hope is that if conferences like this are carefully thought out and organized, then they should ideally become forums for not simply research on South Asia, but also for theorizing from the Global South. In such a context, we should be able to seriously ask “if Euro-American thought could not be dislodged or decentered from the center of historical practice in non-Euro-American places such as ours. If we do this, then what are the consequences we have to anticipate when cultural practices from our part of the world are translated into categories of social science which derives their own power from a completely different historical and political lineage? Of course, I am not promoting a sense of naively simplistic nativism — This is also not a simple matter of shunning thought from these established centers of knowledge be they in Europe or North America.”[14] Instead, I am arguing quite seriously for a robust engagement with these issues within South Asia on a consistent, dynamic and larger scale.
It is with this kind of dream and hope that some of us came to this university. We were ideologically motivated to create a very special place of thinking rather than simply being enamored by the salary alone which I am told is somewhat higher than the rest of the universities in India. So, “if we are keen to see a dynamic cultural and intellectual environment in the region, delinked from the shackles of religion, ethnicity, caste, nationalism and parochial local politics and expansionist global agendas,”[15] we necessarily have to carve out our own path, our own history and our own way of dealing with failures and frustrations and try to decide the shape, color the directions of our own futures. We have to decide if we want to be the footnotes of history, its lost memories or the major players and authoritative writers of that history.
But these efforts are unfolding and our dreams are manifesting at a time, in a region and in a city where the multiple crises in education that you will be discussing in this conference provide us a veritable backdrop as a disconcerting presence. Despite our newness as an institution, the poltergeist of conservatism is hovering all around us not just in the immediate neighborhood and beyond but in our own corridors of power, our class rooms in the offices of some of our colleagues as well, always casting its long shadow. But then, as I have stressed, these are the repercussions of a larger malaise that afflict our region and our times, from which we cannot clinically escape by simply wishing them away. They have to be overcome despite the odds through a process, which often involves conformations that are by definition unpleasant.
Seen from this perspective, there is no confusion in my mind that in our endeavors we have to deal with many people , who in the words of King Thamus , “are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” I think it was Nelson Manedla who once said that, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” But what if that weapon is faulty or those of us who bear it or claim ownership over it simply do not know how to use it well? What ‘if’, indeed????? I hope my anxieties might disturb your conscience too.
Thank you for your presence, and I hope you will have two very fruitful days.
[1]. http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/the-legend-of-thamus
[2]. http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/the-legend-of-thamus
[3]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission
[4]. http://www.mohe.gov.lk/index.php/en/about-ministry/vision-and-mission
[5]. Edward Said; ‘Identity, Authority and Freedom.’ In, Reflections on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays, Granta Books, 2001.
[6]. Matthew B. Sparke. ‘A neoliberal Nexus: Economy, security and the Bio-politics of Citizenship on the Border.’ In, Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180.
[7]. Quoted in Matthew B. Sparke. ‘A neoliberal Nexus: Economy, security and the Bio-politics of Citizenship on the Border.’ In, Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180.
[8]. Quoted in Matthew B. Sparke. ‘A neoliberal Nexus: Economy, security and the Bio-politics of Citizenship on the Border.’ In, Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180.
[9]. Quoted in Matthew B. Sparke. ‘A neoliberal Nexus: Economy, security and the Bio-politics of Citizenship on the Border.’ In, Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180.
[10]. Quoted in Matthew B. Sparke. ‘A neoliberal Nexus: Economy, security and the Bio-politics of Citizenship on the Border.’ In, Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180.
[11]. Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence; 190; 2009(London: Vintage).
[12]. Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence; 190; 2009(London: Vintage).
[13]. Sasanka Perera, ‘The Introduction’; South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 1 (2008); Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture.
[14]. Sasanka Perera, ‘The Introduction’; South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 1 (2008); Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture.
[15]. Sasanka Perera, ‘The Introduction’; South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 1 (2008); Colombo: Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture.
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