Alumni Speak
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Understanding Humans!
Name: Jaya
I can not forget the biology teacher at my school, who, once, had embarrassed me like anything by criticizing my interest in literature - "Hindi padhne se kuchh nahin hota hai, thoda Science padh lo to career banega" (Studying Hindi won't do. Study Science if you want to make a good career for yourself). One of those exceptional instances, where today, I do not regret having not heeded the advice of elders!
Not to belittle the importance of Science and related disciplines, but I often wonder: Are we not trying to make a God out of Science, which is not an ok thing to do. It is almost a fashion amongst students to consider Social Sciences and Literature to be a burden, which must be gotten rid of, at the earliest. But think over it once. Who comes first - human beings or Science? What good Science will be of if it does not serve humans, if it does not make the life of humans better? How can then understanding humans be of any lesser importance than understanding v=u+at? And where else does this understanding lie if not in history, literature and other social sciences? Its high time we came out of this trap which labels these subjects as "meant for not-so-intelligent" students!
Leave the philosophy apart. From purely a perspective of career, the world is increasingly welcoming those who have the capacity to envision the bigger picture - the traits of such persons are laid down in terms of communication skills, understanding of cultures, cultural differences and changes, empathy etc. etc.
Today, I am at a stage where I have to get prepared to face the world out there; I do not know what it is like or how am I going to fare there but one thing I am sure of that the tools I have with me have really not much to do with Newton's laws of Motion or Theory of Relativity. These have much more to do with Premchand and Tolstoy! Again, I am not trying to undermine the space of science and effort that goes on in excelling in it but understanding of human beings is much, much tougher than understanding principles of sciences. May be we need to start to early in life, so that we do not lag behind and feel helpless when time comes to utilize that training.
Possibly our education system has flaws in the way it deals with these subjects, but flaws are pretty much there with science subjects as well. If that does not take away our enthusiasm for sciences, why otherwise for social sciences and literature?
