DT e-Paper, Saturday, October 15, 2016

22
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2016
DT
Long-Form
The mess in the attic
We cannot afford to ignore the humanities. This is the concluding part of yesterday’s long-form
• Shehzad M Arifeen
The problem starts early.
In school, children who
do well in math or science
are called “bright,” while
those who are good at geography
or history have good “general
knowledge” (note the adjective).
And while “general knowledge”
is useful and fun when it comes
to quiz contests and debate
tournaments, and is important to
be “well-rounded,” it is certainly
not to be taken too seriously.
A child who spends her time
studying chemistry is “studious,”
one who spends her time studying
philosophy or poetry “reads a lot”
(which after a certain age turns
inevitably into “bookish”), and
should eventually grow out of
it (she can keep it as a “hobby”
though).
All of this creates an
environment where the vast
majority of those children who
one lone case, anthropology.
You can study a thousand
different kinds of engineering,
major in anything that can be
labelled as a department in a
corporation, but if you want to
study humanity and society, if
you are interested in our species’
history or the wonders of human
culture -- these are your only
options.
And sure, most universities
require all students to take a few
social science and humanities
courses as “general education”
requirements, but these are
woefully inadequate -- partly
because they are normally treated
as just a few more boxes to tick.
Without any meaningful
structure to help piece together
what can only be called an
avalanche of information that
attacks us every day, these
students are left with an
understanding of society with
all the nuance of a Transformers
Our education system fails to provide a structure of critique
BIGSTOCK
We have to take a long, hard, and collective look at what exactly we
mean by education, what it is that we hope our schools and universities
will achieve, and ask ourselves: Are we content with producing
sophisticated calculators and managers, or do we want our calculators
and managers to be sophisticated human beings too?
might have made wonderful
contributions to some field end
up studying something they don’t
even remotely enjoy.
What is worse, because this
is so pervasive, most of us never
even know it -- we don’t even
realise that we might actually be
able to enjoy what we study.
Things don’t really get better --
definitely not for those who decide
to study in one of the local private
universities (and yes, there are
people who choose this, and don’t
just end up there because they
didn’t get into a public institution
or weren’t allowed/couldn’t afford/
didn’t want to go abroad).
Higher learning
What is there to study in these
places anyway? Until very recently,
anyone who wanted to study the
humanities or the social sciences
(except law) would basically have
to choose between English or
economics (and the problems with
the latter deserves an entire article
-- another day).
Today, we can see some
journalism, media studies, and in
movie.
They are assaulted by war,
poverty, hunger, disease, murder,
rape, abuse, slavery, financial
crises, corporations more powerful
than nation-states, ecological
destruction, the threat of nuclear
annihilation or irreversible climate
change.
With even the most simplistic
and general of introductions to
centuries of progressive, radical
and emancipatory philosophy,
literature, social, economic,
political, historical, and cultural
theory from all over the world,
these students might have ended
up as activists, writers, or aspiring
academics.
What are the options?
Without even an awareness of
such possibilities, however, what
are young people disillusioned by
modernity supposed to do? How
does one frame their critique of
modern civilisation without such
rich and powerful systems of
critique available to them? Isn’t
moralising the only other option?
Isn’t it easiest to chalk it all up
to human greed and sinfulness?
And if someone comes along who
can integrate this latent emotive
discontent into a broader cosmic
narrative of human fallibility and
sin, based on a belief system that
already dominates in one form
or another, why shouldn’t young
people gravitate towards this false
prophet? Having failed to provide
them the means to understand,
how dare we despair and rage at
what they have had to resort to?
An uncle who lives in New York
commented, in the context of the
systematic killing spree leading
up to the attack on Holey Artisan,
that Bangladeshis should stop
“making such a fuss” and focus
on “building things,” because
our country is not “open-minded
enough” (how on earth does a
country become open-minded? By
building better trains?).
Like the comment I started this
article with, this is a regrettably
common sentiment under
different disguises. This is why
STEM subjects are treated the way
they are. This is why someone who
doesn’t enjoy math is expected
to just “suck it up,” at least until
their first year in university (if
not longer), but it is perfectly
acceptable to not enjoy history,
not study it at all after school, and
complain loudly if made to.
We have deluded ourselves into
thinking that we can build and
calculate our way out of anything.
But if there is anything we can
learn from the convergence of
catastrophes we have seen this
year (and there is a lot), it is that
this is simply not true.
There comes a time when a
better way to distribute electricity
isn’t what we need. There are
problems that linear algebra
cannot solve. How many must
suffer and die before we recognise
that whatever we can make, we
can easily unmake?
That a single idea can mobilise
people into destroying the work
of a thousand engineers? That the
only way to fight a bad idea is with
a better idea?
Ironically, I am writing this at
a time when writing about the
importance of education has
become thoroughly passé -- the
post-Gulshan attack narrative has
become distinctly a-educational (if
not anti-educational); something
to the effect of “we used to
think that they brainwashed the
uneducated -- now we know that
education doesn’t matter.”
On the contrary, it seems to me
that education matters even more
now.
Most importantly, we have to
take a long, hard, and collective
look at what exactly we mean
by education, what it is that we
hope our schools and universities
will achieve, and ask ourselves:
Are we content with producing
sophisticated calculators and
managers, or do we want our
calculators and managers to be
sophisticated human beings too?
Understanding human beings
None of this implies, of course,
that the knowledge of science,
technology, and mathematics is
any less important.
What I am merely trying to
suggest is that perhaps, if we had
devoted a bit more of our time and
resources to understanding how
human beings work, we would be
a little less intent on hurting each
other.
We are often told that we
need to study so much math
and science because they are
so “important” for the modern
world. And I will freely admit that
knowing arithmetic might be more
useful, given the choice, than the
history of Imperial Japan or the
subtleties of post-structuralism.
But we don’t stop there.
We seem to think that understanding
calculus really is more
important than understanding
humanity. If this is how highly we
think of ourselves, our history,
politics, and culture, why are we
surprised at how easily we are led
to the slaughterhouse? •
Shehzad M Arifeen is a lecturer of
economics at a leading private university
in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This article
was fitsr published on ergodotorg.
wordpress.com.