Guwahati – Addressing a gathering of scholars at a three-day international conference on education, a veteran educationist in northeastern India called for re-imagining education as most pressing need of the hour.
Dilip Kumar Baruah was addressing scholars at Assam Don Bosco University attending a conference on “Reimagining Education – connecting vision, context and curriculum with a reference to South East Asia, march 11-14.
Quoting author Alvin Tofler of Future Shock fame, Baruah, Course Director of Assam Administrative Staff College, said, “The illiterates of 21st century will not be those who can’t read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and re-learn.”
He insisted that “relearning is important in the context of social dynamics.”
“What is excellent today will become ordinary tomorrow,” said Prof Baruah citing 19th century’s great locomotive invention of steam engines.
Drawing a parallel on the educational scenario Baruah said, “Curriculum faces the same fate.” He cited Cambridge University example of restarting Welfare Economics under Prof Amartya Sen who bagged Nobel Prize for Economics some 30 years later.
Curriculum is different from syllabus, said Baruah explaining that ‘curriculum forges links between education and community.”
He lamented, “Our education system has put more emphasis on product than the process.”
He reminded the audience of some 50 scholars that “curriculum goes beyond product to the process which gives base to students to link with community.”
Author of several books on Economics Prof Baruah presented four “E” formula for re-thinking education.
While expansion of education must give access to higher education to more students, equity will ensure social and distributive justice. Add to that efficiency in qualitative improvement, and employability of the graduates as benchmarks for re-imaging education.
“Much more than state of the art infrastructure and smart class rooms,” Prof Baruah underlined the fact that “it is a good teacher who will impart wisdom and the human touch.”
On a nostalgic note he encouraged young scholars to be rooted in their soil, and adapt new learning to their social and cultural scenario.
He concluded on a warning note “to fight the temptation to impose new ideas which are alien and out of context.”
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