WHERE THE HOPE LIES
The young in India are throbbing with life and that is the great hope. We have to maximise their development through the correct curriculum.
Critical thinking is crucial and the scientific spirit must prevail irrespective of the dogmatic stance adopted by conservatives who are oblivious of the great traditions of the human race that has had cyclical crests and troughs in its evolutionary course.
Civilisation in the past has seen several glorious phases and civilisation has been subject to ruinous reversals that sent it crashing to reach its nadir. We have to look back deep into world history and acquire whatever good and great there yet be in the storehouse of human knowledge dating from the past, without bias or prejudice in acceptance or rejection.
Our country itself is the mine of such cultural gems and we must explore deep into its past to discover such riches. Out of the past is built the present and on the present is founded the future. This continuum of civilisation keeps it soaring to fresher heights and it is this continuum that must not be disturbed through our own negligence and abhorrence for the past.
The national heritage must be laid bare before the children of this land and it must not be a dogmatic assertion that projects only a single perspective on our past but it must be a pluralistic perspective that explores every angle of our national development, its triumphs and its failures.
Most importantly, the national history must be taught without colouring it up with political tinges that favour one narrative or the other and there must be no attempt to be merely politically correct when dealing with the national narrative. The good and great aspects of every aspect of Indian life in freedom and in bondage must be held up for all to see and the damaging elements that wounded our civilisation must also be taught so that a holistic view of the story of our people emerges from such study.
It is dangerous to indoctrinate children with narrow theocratic ideas and ideology and this, unfortunately, is very often the case in households adhering to archaic beliefs of submission to medieval messengers preaching hatred which they in full faith pass on to their progeny creating the ground for future civic unrest. Children must be spared religious indoctrination and must only be encouraged to think critically and believe in nothing without evidence to substantiate it. They must be allowed their frees spaces to develop along the natural line of their unique personalities into fine young thinking individuals. Once this is ensured, much of the world's evils will have been done away with for the up and coming generations, free of indoctrination, will apply themselves to solving the problems that today beset human civilisation.
Written by Sugata Bose
The young in India are throbbing with life and that is the great hope. We have to maximise their development through the correct curriculum.
Critical thinking is crucial and the scientific spirit must prevail irrespective of the dogmatic stance adopted by conservatives who are oblivious of the great traditions of the human race that has had cyclical crests and troughs in its evolutionary course.
Civilisation in the past has seen several glorious phases and civilisation has been subject to ruinous reversals that sent it crashing to reach its nadir. We have to look back deep into world history and acquire whatever good and great there yet be in the storehouse of human knowledge dating from the past, without bias or prejudice in acceptance or rejection.
Our country itself is the mine of such cultural gems and we must explore deep into its past to discover such riches. Out of the past is built the present and on the present is founded the future. This continuum of civilisation keeps it soaring to fresher heights and it is this continuum that must not be disturbed through our own negligence and abhorrence for the past.
The national heritage must be laid bare before the children of this land and it must not be a dogmatic assertion that projects only a single perspective on our past but it must be a pluralistic perspective that explores every angle of our national development, its triumphs and its failures.
Most importantly, the national history must be taught without colouring it up with political tinges that favour one narrative or the other and there must be no attempt to be merely politically correct when dealing with the national narrative. The good and great aspects of every aspect of Indian life in freedom and in bondage must be held up for all to see and the damaging elements that wounded our civilisation must also be taught so that a holistic view of the story of our people emerges from such study.
It is dangerous to indoctrinate children with narrow theocratic ideas and ideology and this, unfortunately, is very often the case in households adhering to archaic beliefs of submission to medieval messengers preaching hatred which they in full faith pass on to their progeny creating the ground for future civic unrest. Children must be spared religious indoctrination and must only be encouraged to think critically and believe in nothing without evidence to substantiate it. They must be allowed their frees spaces to develop along the natural line of their unique personalities into fine young thinking individuals. Once this is ensured, much of the world's evils will have been done away with for the up and coming generations, free of indoctrination, will apply themselves to solving the problems that today beset human civilisation.
Written by Sugata Bose
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