Interaction Meeting With the Faculty of Anna University and Its Affiliated Colleges

Engineering Education - Challenge for National Development

I am delighted to participate in the interaction meeting with the Faculty of Anna University and its affiliated colleges. My greetings to all of you. At the outset, I was thinking what thoughts I can share with you. I have selected the topic 'Engineering Education - Challenge for National Development.

Child to Leader

Every one of us has gone through the various phases of education from the childhood to profession. A scene appears in front of me. It is, a child, a teenager, an adult and a leader. How each one reacts to one situation? The situation is human need. The child asks, "what can you do for me"? The teenager says, "I want to do it alone". The young person proclaims, "let us do it together". The leader offers, "what can I do for you". So, the faculties have got a tremendous responsibility to transform a student into a leader - the transformation of 'what can you do for me' to 'what I can do for you'. That will demand a faculty to be a visionary with an inspiring capability. Also the faculty has to ensure that teachers impart learning to the students in such a way to bring out the best in them, for this he has to be a good teacher himself. I am sure, many faculties would have been blessed with transformational capabilities.

Creating an Enlightened Citizen

Recently I met the Vice Chancellors of various Universities of Bihar, School Teachers at Bodh Gaya and Vice Chancellors of universities at AndraPradesh. The focus of the discussion in these meetings was on:

1. The influence of teachers on students to make them enlightened citizen

2. Contribution of Universities and colleges towards nation's development.

To this question, I have come across a thought provoking answer from a Professor from Texas A&M University -

Dr. Robert Slater, who has read this on news item at Hyderabad and responded through e-mail with detailed analysis. He has raised the following points.

• What kind of human beings do want to make of ourselves?
• What capacities do we want to give to our Children?
• What kind of educational system will it take our students to acquire or develop the capacities we think they must have?
• What kind of leadership is necessary to design, sustain and protect these institutions?

Dr. Slater tries to suggest that the students should have the following capacities:

• Capacity for research or inquiry
• Capacity for creativity and innovation
• Capacity to use of high technology
• Capacity for Entrepreneurial leadership,
• Capacity for Moral leadership.

These five kinds of capabilities are most central for economic development and nation building. If we develop in our children these five capacities we will produce a certain kind of learner - what he calls the "Autonomous Learner", a self directed, self-controlled, life-long learner who has the capacity to both respect authority while at the same time he is capable of questioning authority in an appropriate manner. And having created autonomous learners we will be well on the way to creating autonomous adults, the kind of adult that a democracy most wants and needs.

It is very interesting to read this thought provoking analysis from Professor of Education and human development. I suggest each one of you think more about it with the objective of creating enlightened citizens and practice to contribute towards national development.

Role Model

The institution and the teachers should work towards and make themselves as role models in their own discipline. This will attract best of students to the institution. In addition to quality and value based education, the formal education in entrepreneurship is required, this will make the students do things differently, thinking beyond boundaries, being bold, and be able to take risks. In addition, a normalization programme is required for developing communication, aptitude and attitudinal skills among the students coming from various rural areas, which will provide a level playing field for these students.

All the engineering colleges come under one umbrella should develop their own core competence and it should be unique. It is possible to facilitate collaborative knowledge sharing through Tele-Education and knowledge connectivity. This may in large extent help to have the teachers in their field of expertise to share the knowledge among all the engineering colleges and promote self learning by brighter students.

The engineering colleges must setup Technology incubation centers in collaboration with research and development organizations and industries. Industries and private sector participants can establish Vocational training centers in new areas. The core competence, knowledge connectivity, incubation centers and Tele-Education can transform the educational system in to a centre of excellence.

Brand Name

Anna University must get a Brand name in the comity of Universities in the world. For that every Engineering college must contribute to make the best students with innovative and creative ability. Such engineers and technologists will transform of our country in to a developed nation.

It is a general phenomenon that the administrative heads of the institutions are more pre-occupied with the mundane administrative issues. Instead, it is essential that the Principals of Engineering colleges and Heads of the Departments deliver certain technological lectures periodically which will be of student interest. He should encourage interaction with the students during these lectures and provide technological focus.

I have an experience; I would like to share with you. In the field of learning, beautiful environment plays an important role. I have visited Puttaparthi, Amritapuri near Quilon and JSS Maha vidyapeetha, Mysore.I find the students and teachers in this environment have certain unique qualities:

1. Teachers play the role of gurus and Students get Role models

2. Complete anger has been removed and the peace has entered in to them

3. Hard work and excellence are constantly promoted.

Can we create such an environment in your institutions, so that these institutional role models can be emulated and multiplied? I request all of you to deliberate on these thoughts.

Conclusion

When I was thinking what thoughts I can share with you a beautiful divine message was ringing in me :

Where there is righteousness in the heart

There is a beauty in the character.

When there is beauty in the character,

there is harmony in the home.

When there is harmony in the home.

There is a order in the nation.

When there is order in the nation,

There is peace in the world.

Who can give a beautiful connectivity like this between heart, character, nation and the world? This can come from only a divine personality who has transformed from religion to spiritualism by Thapas. The purpose of real education is to initiate learning process that transforms children as good human being with knowledge and value system. Would you, the guru have the righteous hearts, then it follows order in the nation and peace in the universe.

My greetings and best wishes.

Detailed Analysis

Dear Mr. President:

I arrived in Hyderabad last Sunday and while perusing the newspapers came across reports of your speech to educators. I was so struck by it that I wrote an essay entitled "President Kalam's Question" which I then delivered in a press conference I held on Tuesday, a conference related to my own educational work here in India. I thought you might find at least parts of it interesting so I am sending it along with the e-mail as both an attachment and embodied in this communication.

Best of luck in your educational reform efforts,

Robert Slater

President Kalam's Question

by

Robert ! O. Slater

(Text of Remarks made at a Press Conference, Hyderabad, India, June 10, 2003)

Last Sunday, after a long flight from College Station,

Texas,

where I am a professor of education and human development at Texas A&M University, I was taking lunch at the Walden, where I am staying for the three weeks while I am here in Hydrabad. I was working my way through the local newspapers when I happened upon a front-page article on a speech that President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam made last Saturday to a number of prominent educators. I gather from the report that his remarks jolted his audience. He kept posing a question which the educationists found difficult to answer. His question was this:

"What has been your influence on students? What has been your contribution towards the economic growth of this! state and toward nation-building?"

I am not surprised that the educationists found this question difficult to answer. It is a very progressive question and education is a very conservative enterprise. Actually, education has both its conservative and progressive sides but in a democracy its conservative side is the one that gets emphasized. This is because democracies, more than any other political regimes, are about change and moving forward, about the new and improved. They cultivate a dissatisfaction for the status-quo. And this democratic disposition for change influences all of a democratic societies institutions and makes them progressive as well. But if all of a nation's institutions were progressive then all of the values the past would be lost and the nation and society would plunge into chaos. So some of a democr acy's institutions function to preserve old ways and values, and this function is the special preserve of a nation's schools. So, in a democracy, school's and schooling tend toward the conservative. And I suppose that in the world's largest democracy schools and schooling would be especially strong guardians of cherished traditions. So, I am not surprised that President Kalam's question jolted his audience.

I suspect, if the report I read was accurate, that many educationists came away from President Abdul Kalam's speech feeling, as we say in Texas, a bit saddle sore from the ride. But if they take his question seriously and reflect on it I believe they will in the end be appreciative. For, make no mistake about it, this is an extraordinarily important question in our time. There is more than one way to pursue economic growth an! d to build a nation, and some ways pose more risks and opportunities than others. Some ways hold out hope for many while others offer it to only a few. Some ways lead to peace and others to war. How we think about economic development and nation-building is of the utmost importance in our time and few institutions have a more important role to play in this thought process than our schools, colleges and universities. President Kalam's question must be seen as an invitation for educationists to help solve a problem that is much bigger than education but which depends vitally on education for a good solution.

Not only is President Kalam's question important, however, it is also an exceedingly difficult one to answer. I know, because I have spent that past ten years or so struggling with it. In fact, I am here in Hyderabad now because of what I ha! ve discovered from my reflections and research on this and related questions. The answer to President Kalam's question at some point comes down to educational innovation and the invention of a new kind of school, a future school, a school for the 21st century, a school-if I may use economic terms-- specifically designed to maximize human and social capital production. I will say more in due course about the school I have come to Hyderabad to launch. But let me for the moment return to President Abdul Kalam's question and why it is so important.

President Kalam's question is important because it raises three other questions that are fundamental to any educational system or enterprise and that must be always front and justify in the educator's mind. These three questions are as follows:

1) What kind of human beings do we want to m! ake of ourselves? What capacities do we want to give our children?

2) What kinds of schools will it take for our children to acquire or develop the capacities we think they must have?

3) What kind of leadership is necessary to design, sustain and protect these schools?

Let me say a few words about each of these questions.

I. What kind of human beings do we want to produce? What specific capacities do we want to give our children?

We cannot answer this question in the abstract. If we want to give our children a certain capacities we must ask capacity for what? President Abdul Kalam gave the answer to this question. We want to give our children the capacity for contributing to economic development and nation-building.

But what kind of nation does ! India want to build? This I think is contained in Vision 2020 and the President's dream. I must confess that I have not been here long enough to know all of the particulars of the President's vision or dream for India but I will bet, based on what I have read of his style and commitments, that his general vision for India is of a dynamic, progressive, 21st century democracy that provides opportunity and well being for ALL of its citizens.

What kind of capacities does India need for its people to achieve these goals in the context of a high-tech society? I think there are five very important ones:

The capacity for research or inquiry

The capacity for Creativity and Innovation, particularly the creative transfer of knowledge. The capacity to use high technology.The capacity for Entrepreneurial Leadership The capacity for Moral Leadership.

Let me say a word about each of these.

The capacity for research or inquiry-the management of knowledge. The 20th century was about the generation of knowledge. The 21st will be about the management of all of the knowledge and information we have generated and will continue to generate at an exponential rate. We must give our children skills with which they find their way through the sea of knowledge that we have created and are creating everyday on and through the internet. President Abdul Kalam is correct. We now, for the first time in history, have the ability, through technology, to really and truly teach ourselves and to become the life-long learners that any sustained economic and political development requires.

The capacity for creativity and innovation, especially the creative transfer of knowledge. We can best teach ourselves by teaching others. The management of knowledge in the 21st century is beyond the capacity of individuals. The amount of information we must make sense of is overwhelming and has exceeded the capacity of individuals. The management of knowledge, therefore, must move out of the realm of the individual and into the realm of the social. We must learn how to manage knowledge collectively. In other words, we must not only teach ourselves we must teach others. Our schools must teach our children how to teach themselves by teaching others.

The capacity to use technology. Every student in our schools should graduate knowing how to use the basic software programs such as Microsoft office, Appleworks, Movieworks, and so on.

The capacity for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Entrepreneurial leadership as three parts to it:

Problem-finding-solving in the context of development. We must teach our children to keep front and justify in their learning the following question: What do I most strongly feel a need to know and in learning this how can I help others satisfy their needs to know? Entrepreneurship starts with understanding our own needs and realizing that as human beings we all have similar needs. It begins with wanting to help others as we help ourselves. The willingness to take risks. Entrepreneurship requires doing things differently, thinking outside of the box, being bold in our thinking and this always poses risks. We must teach our children how to calculate risks for the sake of larger gain. The disposition to do things right.

The Capacity for Moral Leadership. Moral leadership involves two things:

First, it requires the ability to have compelling and powerful dreams or visions of human betterment, a state of things in which human beings could be better off in the future than they are in the here and now.

Secondly, where entrepreneurial leadership requires people to acquire the habit of doing things right, moral leadership requires a disposition to do the right thing and influence others to do the right thing.

The Autonomous Learner

In sum, inquiry, creativity, technology, entrepreneurial and moral leadership (ICTEM) are the five capacities most central in economic development and nation-building for democracy and democratization. If we develop in our children these five capacities we will produce a certain kind of learner-what I call the "AUTONOMOUS LEARNER, a self-directed, self-controlled, life! -long learner who has the capacity to both respect authority while at the same time he is capable of questioning authority in an appropriate manner. And having created autonomous learners we will be well on the way to creating autonomous adults, the kind of adult that a democracy most wants and needs.

II. What kind of school and school design?

Let me now turn to the second question raised by President Kalam's remarks, the question of what kind of schools and schooling does it take to produce autonomous learners, learners who can contribute to economic development and democratic nation-building?

This bring me in fact to my reason for being in Hyderabad at this moment. As the result of my reflections on the issues I am talking about this afternoon, I have developed a new kind of school, a future school, if yo! u will, a school that is designed for economic and social development, for the production of human and social capital. I call this new type of school the school for inquiry and creativity. I have come to Hyderabad to launch, with the aid of my colleages Mssrs Hyder and Ali Mohammed, the American School for Inquiry & Creativity-Hyderabad.

This new has five features which closely parallel the five capacities we wish to build in students:

Learning through inquiry or research on the internet. Every subject in this new school is broken down into a number of basic elements. Students in the school master these basic elements by researching them on the internet. Their inquiry is guided inquiry, that is, teachers work with them to find internet sites that contain the information they need to answer the questions implied by the basi! c elements. The whole thing is done in a problem-finding-solving mode of learning. Creativity. In this school, students learn by teaching themselves and by teaching other students. High-tech, all-internet based. Everything in this school, save for physical activities, is done in and through the internet. Ethic of contribution. Knowledge and information without values lack meaning. The beginning of knowledge starts with felt needs, with a hunger to know. In this school students are constantly challenged to ask themselves. How can my learning benefit others? How can it contribute to my own development and at the same time to the development of others? Moral development. The following are some of the values we teach in this school

Team work

Fair play

Cooperation

Doing things right and doing the right thing

Hard work is good

Commitment to a cause! larger than oneself.

These are some of the essential components of the Inquiry-Creativity School.

III. What kind of leadership will be required to develop the schools we need for the 21st century?

The answer to this, in a phrase, is moral leadership. Educators today must exercise moral leadership if our schools and educational institutions are to meet the challenge of the 21st century. They must develop a new vision of schools and schooling, a vision of an educational environment in which students can grow more autonomous through very act and process of learning. We cannot lecture students into autonomy. Autonomy must be developed and acquired through a process of action, in the case of schools, the act of learning.

In posing his question as he did, President A! bdul Kalam not only challenged India's educators he presented them with a golden opportunity for exercise of moral leadership. They should take this opportunity and begin the transformation of education that stands to propel India-the world's largest democracy-toward becoming its greatest democracy as well.

Thank you for your time.

Remarks delivered June 10, 2003, Hyderabad India.

Robert O. Slater

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