The New Nation - Internet Edition

M.T. Hussain

It is rather a pleasure to hear from celebrities that Bangladesh must now onwards be a knowledge based society. Possibly the need is appreciable for the country has been facing odds for decades in shallowness and poor understanding of relevant crucial issues that made many idiosyncrasies in many areas in the society. Well, it is right to say that real knowledge is light that provides illumination for human mind. But is it that knowledge has nothing to do with moral values? Or is it that knowledge meant to include moral values, as well?

The crucial question, however, is that if knowledge is fully independent of value system; and if not so, how could values be integrated into knowledge in its quality and quantity. Neither knowledge is anything that can correctly be measured for quantification in terms of levels as we know of schooling - primary, secondary, tertiary etc- though schooling levels are taken to be synonymous with learning, education and knowledge.

If we may look seriously into schooling for learning and acquisition of knowledge, it provides simultaneously three basic things, cognitive learning and knowledge, development of physical and mental skill and building up of positive attitude to life and work for productive utility.

Learning in childhood starts informally at mothers lap, then on to schooling in what learned educationists term as 3Rs - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Acquisition of these first level school learning skills essentially call for cognitive learning through one set of alphabets of a developed language. That is the normal way for attainment of literacy. And through learning of numbers one acquires competency in basic arithmetic. Shaping of behavior and formation of mental attitude begin essentially though informally at family level and then what school offers some as additional ones.

Learning, acquisition of cognitive knowledge, psychomotor skill and attitude formation continue as one would go up in further levels of schooling. The crucial matter in further up in schools, however, is that acquisition of cognitive knowledge and psychomotor skills do not differ much both in contents and in quality provided schools would be of equal standard, but attitude formation may differ from school to school that depend on factors not of cognitive literacy nature but for beliefs and spiritual persuasion mainly based first in family practices; school may have only marginal role in formation of attitude or character based on values.

Renowned late twentieth century British educators of Comparative Education like Nicholas Hans etc have listed eight major internal factors for bases of educational goals. They are Ideological, Natural, Geographical, Historical, Social, Political, Constitutional and Educational. It is amazing to note that of the eight major factors, only one is educational, the other seven are not educational in the sense that they do not belong specifically to cognitive learning domain and psychomotor skills formation. Among external factors one could add to the internal eight issues in these days of globalization of matters in economics, employability, obsolescence of skills, acquisition of new skills for increased productivity, earning for decent living, caring for environment, etc to be worthy citizen not only of one's own country but also to form international human personality to fit in with appropriate attitude to work according to one's ability, aptitude, knowledge and psychomotor skill. Importantly, on all the seven apparently non-educational issues, there is at least a common subject matter and that is values inherent in each item but basically originated not only in human rationality but also in spiritual domain of human entity.

Human being unlike all naturally created beings is taken to be rational for possible high level intellect but not necessarily equally gifted by the Nature or the Great Creator. Even so, it is said that all human beings are created 'equal' which is somewhat a misnomer as we do not see anywhere that every body is equally gifted for anything and everything. That is what the advanced human society made the issue of equality question more specifically delimited and accepted as the idea of 'Equality of Opportunity' and not the misnomer 'equality' as such.

Educators further agree that education and acquisition of knowledge is essentially a matter of values (See, UNESCO, Educational Goals, Paris, 1980, p.5). Our great educator of the late twentieth century Dr. Mohammad Shahidullah would hold the firm view, I recall, in his own way that 'If you give students 3Rs but don't give them the 4rth 'R' or religion, you would produce another 'R' or 'Rascals.' He might be taken as little crude for the straight forward comment, but possibly more sophisticated educators would intend to use the term 'values'. It is worth pondering that basic human values did not come by their own only through human experience and rationality but from spiritual origin of man. The source of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust etc, as most religions stated, originated in spirituality, no matter whether you call it religion or not. The late Dr. Shahidullah being a devoutly religious person used the term 'religion' in his own way. What I took from him in this regard is that he wished to integrate school learning with simultaneous development of basic human values in the psyche of each every learner and in upcoming future citizens to lead lives of productivity and of virtue.

That there is hardly any denying the fact that we in Bangladesh of late have been having floods of moral erosion, particularly, among many of the fairly schooled people. I recall once the recently late Professor Dr Asaduzzaman, Chairman of the Bangladesh University Grants Commission, lashing at the moral erosion of many such well placed educated persons, possibly, out of his utter frustration. On the contrary, our non-schooled and less sophisticated poor folks do not easily give in to moral erosion, not for 'idiocy' but for sticking to moral values they had learnt from their older generation and parents. What I wish to drive at is that our schooling must not only impart learning for cognitive knowledge and psychomotor skills but also train themselves in right attitudes and humane character to lead lives of high moral values. In a nut shell, if I may say, the society must aim not only to be knowledge based if that would mean only secular learning but also should be of high standard of moral values that schools must impart simultaneously during operation of schooling curricula. Shall I mention here from a renowned British educator's terms he coined for educational value contents; the British education system produces 'Christian Gentlemen', the Americans, 'Pragmatic Christian Gentlemen', the Chinese, 'Red and Expert', the former Soviets, 'Soviet Marxist man'. One would not miss the value contents based specifically on to their individual basic value system.

I do not clearly see the basic values our schools impart except that what Macaulay had given us to act as their secular 'interpreters' divorced from humane values nearly two centuries back starting in 1835 A.D. that made us literate and also educated but not persons of good moral standard manifested of late as in our ignominious drives against all forms of erosion of moral values. Only acquisition of secular knowledge would hardly improve the situation. For improvement we must at the same time integrate morality learning and positive attitude building through redesigning our school curricula so that we may have our society full of men and women having bases not only on integrated encyclopedic knowledge but also on high standard of moral values that the twentieth century great philosopher Allama Iqbal viewed and termed to produce INSAN E KAMEL or fully equipped balanced human personality.