Book Review

Education as Emancipation:
A Review of Avijit Pathak's Book 'Recalling the Forgotten: Education
and Moral Quest'

R.KUMARAN
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Gandhigram Rural University
Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu

Avijit Pathk, Recalling the forgotten: Education and Moral Quest,
Aakar Books, New Delhi. 2009, pp 204; Paperback Price: Rs 225
Here is a book that may inspire you, drag you into a world filled with
idealism, optimism, possibilities and hope, and rouse you to brim with
anger at many of the contemporary trends in education. But, for the
incurable pragmatists among you, as you close the book and look around
the real world, the same book may appear to lose its relevance and
significance.

Perhaps even after reading this book, you may, as parents, still send
your children to the same 'success-crazy' schools, or, if you are a
student, you may still wish to study in the most 'prestigious'
schools/colleges/universities and wish to choose the most
'job-oriented' courses, or, if you are a teacher, you would continue
to teach your students in the same old 'note-dictating' manner.
Nothing may change. But still, this book is important. Make no
mistake, this book was not written with a naïve hope that everything
would change overnight. The author is much more sensitive to and
seized upon the harsh realities and cold truths of the demands of
everyday life.

This book is merely a plea for recalling the forgotten faculty of
critical reflection in all of us to focus collectively on the state of
education in India. The way the present state of education, with its
commodification, instrumentalisation and technologisation, has become
so reified and normalized that there is a sense of
taken-for-grantedness about it. No one pauses to reflect on them.
Leave the ordinary people, even most of those who are in the
endeavours of education are becoming votaries of these processes of
commodification, instrumentalisation and technologisation of
education. In the social science tradition too, there is not much of
severe condemnation of these trends or search for alternatives. More
and more teachers are happy if their courses are professionalized and,
happier even, to use high-tech devices to teach their students,
because that is what draws respect.

In the midst of this culture of silence and meek acceptance of the
media- and market-mediated images of education, we all seem to have
forgotten our critical quest for emancipatory education, as well as
the ideals of education that we ourselves cherish in the morally most
intense moments of our lives. That is why Avijit Pathak's book does
not sound totally new. These ideals, ambitions and hopes and dreams of
what is good education have not been unknown to any thinking and
reflecting human person. It is just that we have dumped them in the
dustbins of our own conscience. That is why this book is suitably
titled 'Recalling the Forgotten'. Surely, this agenda is more than
well-achieved, as the moments spent on reading the book are also the
moments of intense self-reflection on the status of education in
India. It is extremely difficult to disagree with any of what Avijit
Pathak has to say in this book. And the dialogical mode that Avijit
Pathak adopts in this book only adds to its appeal. One may take this
as a long open letter written to the reader – the reader could be
anybody, parents, students, educational planners, politicians,
teachers, or activists.

But Avijit Pathak speaks from a particular platform – the platform of
sociology. As he remarks in the introduction, within sociology,
education (or sociology of education as a specialization) has remained
a largely neglected social institution, despites the acknowledgement
that education is an important and decisive agent of socialization.
For Marxist it was a 'soft' institution perched somewhere in the
superstructure; and for functionalist it was more of a correctional
institution, and they were more interested in studying caste and
villages, wherein education did not figure prominently. Sadly, these
are the two traditions that have dominated Indian sociology for long
time. Thus, Pathak's task is of strong sociological significance, as
he makes a serious case for sociology of education, more importantly
in a time when education as a social institution has been so much
outsourced and under serious threat of being hijacked by corporate and
their interests.

Come to think of it, the great thinkers of education have come largely
from outside the bounds of sociology (one can here recall the
contribution of Illich and Freire among others), and within India,
Krishna Kumar has been the sole critical voice for analyzing education
as a social institution. Within Indian sociology it has been condemned
to remain in the domain of footnotes. Indian Sociologists, on the
other hand, have kept their reflections on education reserved mostly
for their speeches when they chair or inaugurate a conference on
education. Against this background, this book, in line with other
books of Avijit Pathak, assumes importance.

This book is divided into three substantive chapters preceded by an
Introduction and followed by a Conclusion. This is important, because
this scheme is easy on the mind. The first chapter locates the debate
on education on modern India in the context of sociology. Pathak has
an uncanny knack of reintroducing many of the classical sociologists,
such as Comte, Durkheim and Karl Marx as educationists. He teases out
their reflections on education from their vast corpus of writings and
convinces us as to how sociology as a discipline has also perpetually
engaged with education and its potentials. This is not surprising
since the title of the books itself is 'Recalling the Forgotten'.

But the author does not just stop with modern western sociologists and
goes further to trace deep reflections on education found in Indian
social reformers like Ram Mohan Roy, Vivekanand, Aurobindo, Gandhi,
Phule and many others. In fact, it is with the help of many Indian
visionaries, the author attempts at "Rediscovering Educational Goals"
(this is the title of Chapter I). By traversing east and west Pathak
establishes that though modern education is the product of modernity,
it is in the philosophy of education offered by modern social
thinkers, both west and east, that one finds severe criticisms of
modernity. In other words, though modernity has promoted and
celebrated rugged individualism and privileged instrumental
rationality, the modern thinkers were wary of their negative impacts
and, more often, put their faith on education to restore the balance
and to offer a moral critique. The same is true of Indian modernists
like Aurobindo, whose The Human Cycle is a scathing attack on reason.
This way the author affirms that the present day Indian education has
taken a pathological turn, as it has deviated from the cherished
visions of those thinkers.

The remaining two chapters are on the state of education as it obtains
in schools (school education) and colleges/university (University
education). In these chapters the author highlights the nature and
kinds of illness that have afflicted our education. At the school
level, the author mourns as to how knowledge has become technicised,
instrumentalised and thereby detached from the everyday concerns of
the learners. Learning is like labour, schools are like factories.
Subjects such a Science, Mathematics and History are so boringly
packaged that they no longer inspire students. Teachers have to become
coaches by repetitively forcing the students to learn by rote, so that
they can score marks and 'succeed'. This has created a situation in
which those who refuse to adhere to these regimentations are declared
'failures'. Some of them have no option but to die, (so high suicide
rate among 10th and +2 students.). The author does not just condemn
these cultures of oppression, but also offer some interesting
alternatives based on his experiments with school children. Some of
the alternatives must be taken seriously by educational planners and
curriculum designers.

At the university level, many of what had begun at school gets
reproduced, particularly the arts/science dichotomy. And the author
sees intensification of the separation in the present juncture. This
is more dangerous, because as University education becomes more
specialized, the possibility of science not talking to arts and
humanities is much higher. Since post-colonial nations like India, in
its attempt at restoring an elevating self-image for herself, has
privileged science and technology education, arts and education has
reached its nadir now. In this, the privatization of higher education
does not augur well. Now, education has become a commodity to be
purchased in the open market. Teachers behave more like CEOs in their
outlook and even attire. Students respect a high-speed internet as a
better teacher than highly committed teachers. In education high-tech
has replaced high-touch. The wall between science and social sciences,
between teacher and students, between metropolitan and
non-metropolitan institutions have only become thicker and thicker and
there is a severe 'breakdown' of communication. But the author says
solution is possible – it lies in allowing the dialogical relationship
between these two. Western knowledge systems should dialogue on equal
footing with eastern knowledges: arts and social sciences should
dialogue on equal footing with sciences. The merits of all these
visions across the walls must be shared. And as the author concludes,
"These are real difficulties and obstacles. I have always believed in
human wonders and possibilities. I have seen that some of the finest
moments of our existence emerge when we overcome obstacles and realize
our creativity… Herein lies hope. And with this hope begins the quest
for a new world" (p. 192).

The readers of this review may wonder if I have any issues with this
book. Avijit Pathak's sociology is an art form. Reading this book is
like reading poetry. It is nothing but a loud form of inner dialogue;
a prayer for better education which promotes inclusiveness and
privileges the language of love. I guess, art forms are beyond 'right'
or 'wrong' argumentations. Yet, there are few longings: instead of
confining just to Upanishads and Vedas, the author may well use
inspiration from Holy Quran and the Bible so as to add strength to his
claim for inclusiveness of many visions in education. Similarly, our
hope would have becomes brightened if the book had included the cases
of micro-revolutions and refreshing innovations that people in India
are engaged in and are evolving in the field of education in a highly
informal way either as individuals or as part of some structure. Their
struggles and joys can offer some lessons. Maybe, that could become
the agenda for another day and another book!
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