Reimagining Education in an India at 100

Context: In the light of the New Education Policy (NEP), there is a need for the teacher’s role to incorporate such design principles (5 principles) that can successfully oversee the transformative re-birth of citizens.

• The greater insurance for autonomy is excellence in students’ outcomes rather than a piece of legislation. 

• E.g. even after the introduction of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Act there is no change autonomy structure since they have been performing institutions with robust self-correcting systems.

• As long as institutions continue to excel, they will earn their autonomy through social, community and citizens’ sanctions. 

• • Autonomy must be imbibed as an institutional culture rather than a personal perquisite of a vice chancellor, principal or a director. 
  • Outcomes: There will be autonomy in teaching methods, autonomy of the learner in creating her own curriculum, autonomy of thought and self-governance — Swayttata. 

• • Middle class of the world (with little money but hunger for learning) will define the learner base for a networked global university system. 
  • Impact Tangibles: Technology will proliferate intelligence from hardware to software to everywhere. 

• Smart schools and smart classes may soon morph to smart chairs and smart desks. 

• • Impact on Intangibles: Intangibles of the teaching learning process such as creativity, mentorship and facilitation of learning will give birth to the quest for mastery. Teachers will evolve from ring masters to zen masters, raising awareness rather than delivering content. 
  • Synthesis of algorithm and altruism: The four core tasks of the university: creation; dissemination; accreditation and monetisation of knowledge will require a synthesis of algorithm and altruism. 
  • Learning will be about propagation of crucial questions rather than pre-determined answers.
  • Co-existence of Pleasure and Performance: Pressure of performance will have to coexist with the pleasure and ecstasy of learning — Ananda. 

• • Multi-disciplinarity under NEP: 

• Multi-disciplinarity involves experts from di?erent disciplines working together, each drawing on their unique disciplinary knowledge. 
• It helps in acquiring expertise from multiple disciplines to understand real life problems:

• E.g. challenges that COVID-19 has thrown before us require medical scientists, economists, historians, architects, health workers and political scientists and more experts to bring their disciplinary depth to the table 
• Frequent ?ooding of our cities is at once an urban planning issue, an engineering issue, environmental issue, public health issue, and of course a political issue.

• Trans-disciplinarity as the future norm:

• Trans-disciplinarity creates coherence of intellectual frameworks beyond disciplinary perspectives. 

• Knowledge in future will move from discipline based units to unity of meaning and understanding. 

• The reductionist knowledge of the West that explains the whole as the sum of parts will yield space to the quest for the part less whole that the rishis of the Upanishads described as purnatwa. 

• Technology-led innovation will take learning from cognition to immersion. 

• E.g. Traditionally, students of professional courses learnt through ?eld and factory visits, now a factory experience can be simulated in a classroom.

• Technology will not be a cosmetic add-on but serve a strategic purpose, since leading schools of the world will harness talent and technology seamlessly.

• Based on 3 classical values – Satyam (authenticity), Nityam (sustainability) and Purnam (wholeness). 

• Changed Mindsets: will be based on how learners receive in formation and not what information they receive; on how to think rather than what to think. 
• Education to focus on creating and sustaining wholesome cultures rather than serving the templates of outmoded civilisations. 

• For instance, the post-colonial Indian education system has manged to create a mindsets of clerks and coders, who are imitating a civilisation based on material values and increased consumption.
• While civilisation is about what we acquire, culture is concerned with who we become. 

Conclusion: The most valuable outcome of education is the becoming of a competent and compassionate hu man being. A teacher’s role will be to midwife this trans formative rebirth of citizens of our great nation.