Bringing humanities into STEM education

It will need STEM faculty to understand the liberal arts and humanities spheres deeply so that they are able to convey their value to students

As we know, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 guidelines aim to enable notions of ‘citizenship’ for students of higher education institutions. To make this happen – while keeping skills education in mind – it intends to bring in some arts and humanities topics, including modules on understanding India, while students pursue their degree in their chosen domain. This is so that every student, notwithstanding their specialisation, does some foundational courses in the arts and humanities during their undergraduate years in order to become more ‘conscientious’ citizens.

Bringing in different subject areas into streams of education that have existed largely in silos is no easy task. This also is typically where non-arts and humanities institutions, like those in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), business and management studies, hit an intellectual and resources roadblock. An undergraduate student in these programmes may think, “Why should I learn something that is not directly related to what I want to do in the future?” A humanities faculty in a STEM institution may think, “Are these students even interested in the basics of humanities?” Such reflection has not been uncommon in the hallways of higher education institutions.

In this churn, we require a clearer understanding as to why students need such foundational subjects. Perhaps, our various education heads and governing bodies, especially those that oversee technical education, need to hold a wider conversation on these mandates. Without such macro-level interactions, STEM institutions may feel they’ve got broad directives but not concrete instances to know how to bring them about in their programmes. In the absence of relevant discussion, institutions may run them in their own fashions. Some may think this is a perfunctory check-box to be ticked, and thus nullify the import behind it.

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This is unlike parts of western educational practices, which to some extent have influenced educational policy imperatives in India. STEM undergraduate programmes in Western Europe and North America, envision the basics of academic reading and writing as major learning imperatives, and hire teams of people to teach them. For instance, many universities there have ‘writing centres’ dedicated to studying and practicing writing. These enable non-arts and humanities students to gain some grounding in the fundamentals of the humanities and arts, while aiming to hone students’ expressive abilities.

Oftentimes, PhD candidates in western universities, across domains, become writing instructors to undergraduate learners. In some of their top institutions, writing is taught not just by humanities folks but by even those in the pure sciences. Any education in any programme means little if a student doesn’t graduate with good writing chops. Writing is taught as a form of reflection and thinking. Through such learning, in some ways, these students then become aware of social privileges and the underlying undercurrents of the world’s many societies. To use NEP 2020’s language, these help in making them somewhat self-aware, if not ‘conscientious’.

Herein lies the rub for Indian institutions. To achieve such ends, universities have to spruce up resources, and acknowledge that branches of the sciences have also come about through humanistic inquiry. Branches of the pure sciences too have humanities thought underpinning them. If Indian STEM institutions think they can use more or less the same methods through which they enable their domains, then they are mistaken. For, at a minimum, achieving the ‘citizenship’ ends requires hiring more faculty and creating smaller class sizes to enable deeper individual attention. It will need STEM faculty that predominate their institutions to understand the liberal arts and humanities spheres deeply so that they are able to convey their value to their students. The UGC, AICTE and others must make this crossover happen fast.