Promises and pitfalls of liberal education

We may trace current interest in liberal education in our country to private initiatives among some groups of teachers and professionals at the beginning of the present century. This interest coincided with the liberalisation of our economy and the decline of our public universities. Delhi University was the first public university to experiment with a four-year undergraduate programme based on the US system of higher education. Just within a year, following the UGC directive, the programme had to be rolled back in 2014. Against this backdrop, the importance given to liberal education in the draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 assumes considerable significance.

It is noteworthy that the idea was mooted amongst groups of teachers and professionals who had had an association with or were alumni of our leading engineering and management institutions like the IITs and the IIMs and had some acquaintance with the US system of higher education. The core team of Indira J Parikh, the founding President of FLAME (Foundation For Liberal And Management Education), now FLAME University, Pune, consisted of former professors and alumni of IIM Ahmedabad. And the founders of Ashoka University, Sonipat, are all products of the institutions mentioned above or the US system of higher education. Thus, we can safely say that the idea sprang from the realisation of the inadequacy of training being provided in our top engineering and management institutions that failed to produce rounded individuals. Though they made excellent managers, technicians, and scientists, their perspective was narrow, and they were ignorant of our culture and civilization. The solution lay, it was felt, in broadening the base of our professional education that, besides vocational and skill-based training, would give students grounding in ethics and our culture and society. "Liberal education" seemed to be the answer to remedy the situation.

This century has been described as a post-industrial society that will need people with a wide variety of qualities. Only a liberal education can produce people who are proficient in their job and are also mindful of cultural differences and equipped for the 21st century's challenges. Now, there are around a dozen private universities in our country that offer programmes in liberal education. It is heartening to note that fascination for skill-based technical and vocational education is on the wane, and the upwardly mobile middle classes no longer seem to be opposed to liberal arts education. However, its reach remains limited to the elite sections of our society.

The idea of a broad-based education that duly recognizes the importance of liberal arts is not entirely a novelty in our country. The Radhakrishnan Commission Report written in 1949 said, “If we wish to bring about a savage upheaval in our society, a raksasa raj, all that we need to do is to give vocational and technical education and starve the spirit. We will have a number of scientists without conscience, technicians without taste who find a void within themselves, a moral vacuum and a desperate need to substitute something, anything, for their lost endeavour and purpose”. In subsequent years, independent India's higher education came to be characterised by the binary of general education in the arts and sciences on the one hand, and professional training on the other, and attempts were made to bring liberal education elements in institutions of professional education.

Four points deserve particular attention while pondering over the prospects of liberal education in our country.

Firstly, we need to see that our experiment in liberal education doesn’t become a blind imitation of the US system. This imitation seems to be a real possibility. Thus, while the Americans might find the idea of having a Centre For North American Studies on their campuses unexciting, we feel fascinated by the idea of having a Centre For South Asian Studies on our campuses! Aakash Singh Rathore derides Ashoka University for lauding itself as ‘an ivy-league university in India’ and for hiring faculty who are out-and-out ‘mimic men’.

Secondly, practical considerations warrant that courses in humanities and social sciences be tied in with professional courses. However, a note of caution is needed here – any attempt at making them an appendage of vocational education will result in the instrumentalization of liberal education. This instrumentalisation may be an imminent possibility if academic leadership is tilted in favour of a techno-managerial approach that focuses on objectivity, scientism, quantification, deliverables, performance, etc. Instrumentalisation will defeat the very purpose of liberal education. And applying the yardsticks of professional courses and natural sciences and straight jacketing will kill the soul of humanities and social sciences.

Thirdly, if the record on the role of the State in education is anything to go by, we may safely say that academic governance in our country remains deeply influenced by the ideological preferences of the government of the day. Our institutions of higher education have fought against arbitrary dictates passed by regulatory bodies. In recent years our campuses have come under siege, and our leading universities have been branded as "anti-national". It is precisely the liberal and critical nature of these institutions and their refusal to become subservient to the government of the day that is behind the government's discomfort with these places of higher learning.

Finally, the nature of the relationship between philanthropists and academia will probably make or break the liberal education project in institutions that started with philanthropic initiatives. Are our great philanthropists willing to put their trust in the academic community? And are some of our great teachers willing to do mediation and provide leadership to these institutions? We academics, needless to say, need to display the virtues of credibility, integrity, and independence to earn the trust of philanthropists!

(The writer teaches courses in Basic Spanish and Political Science at FLAME University, Pune)