Critical Humanistics Part I

Rethinking the Legacy of Liberal Education 

(Approximately 64 Hrs of teaching per semester)

The idea of the University and the nature of education, learning and knowledge that it embodies has been one of the most significant contributions of the West to the rest of the world. For the Western world, the university is the second oldest institution after the church and the institution understandably continues to evoke tremendous passion and reflection, which constantly work as a barometer of its health and vibrancy. The trajectory of this key institution of modernity in non-western contexts in India has been more fraught, with the institution constantly being berated for failing in the essential task of producing and transmitting knowledge traditions on the one hand and for producing unemployable students on the other. This course examines the contemporary debate around the institution of the university and the idea of liberal education that underpins it. Any investigation of the problem of education in India necessarily requires an understanding of the conceptual underpinnings of the modern, Western idea of education and its translation in non-western, colonial contexts such as ours. How best can we characterize the educational problem in India? From where have we inherited our contemporary ways of thinking about the university and education and what is their contemporary significance?

Unit I: The University and Liberal Education: The Indian Educational Problem

• Davesh Kapur “Starting Point of Higher Education” and Harsh Panth "We Do Need that Education", http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?236074
• Gauri Vishwanathan, Introduction to the Masks of Conquest, 1989
• Krishna Kumar, “Appropriate Knowledge: Conflict of Curriculum and Culture” from Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas. 1991, 25-72.
• Suzie Tharu, Government, “Binding and Unbinding: Alienation and the Subject of Literature” (Chapter 1), Subject to Change, 1-32. (or Chapter IV)
• Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons – Introduction and Chapter 1, 1-46.

Unit II: Contemporary Western Reflection on the Idea of the University and Liberal Education

• Robert Pippin’s Aims of Education (Speech to the Incoming students at the University of Chicago)
• John Searle, Mission of the University: Intellectual Discovery or Social transformation?
• John Searle, The Case for a Traditional Liberal Education
• Alasdair Macintyre’s “The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman and Us” and Extract from God, Philosophy and Universities, 1-18 (or 15-18).

Unit III: Indian Problematization

• Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (full text) with emphasis on sections on Modern civilization and Education. And Editor’s note iii-vi, and Section One from Basic Education (Nai Talim) 3-16 Tagore, “Founding a New Education,” Collected extracts from Tagore’s Writings. In “Tagore: Selected Writings on Education and Nationalism”, Edited by Uma Das Gupta., 83-160.
• Daya Krishna, “Building Intellectual Traditions,” Seminar 456, August, 1997 “Rethinking Institutions.” (Interview with Shail Mayaram).
• Arnab Rai Choudhuri, “Practising Western Science outside the West: Personal Observations on the Indian Scene”, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Aug., 1985), pp. 475-505