University education and arts graduates

By Dr. Dileep Chandralal

I have been following the ongoing debate in The Island on university education, Arts graduates and employment. I have also watched a recent webinar organised by young academics. I appreciate the efforts by university teachers to raise awareness about some pervasive issues that have prevailed, unsolved for a long time. However, I cannot agree with many ideas presented and the manner and the nature of the debate. Most of the articles are deeply ideological in content, full of preconceived notions and socialist jargon but lacks constructive ideas or alternative proposals that lead to a meaningful dialogue, hence seem to have vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

It should be noted that the argumentative essay prepared and publicised by a group of university teachers in response to a report compiled by the audit office, titled ‘Propensity to tend education under the Arts stream and the unemployment of Arts Graduates’ had initiated the discussion with some important facts, ideas, opinions and a list of proposals toward potential solutions. However, the line of argument developed throughout the ongoing debate neither addresses some undeniable issues nor involves self-introspection.

The authors claim that the generalised term Arts education does not adequately encompass areas in Humanities and Social Science in higher education. We know that Arts Faculties provide degrees in the social sciences, such as sociology, psychology, economics and geography, and humanities subjects such as history, philosophy, languages and literature. One pertinent question is, have the universities shown to the wider society or at least the undergraduates, that studying these subjects is crucial to social development? To establish wider acceptance or social recognition of these subjects, university teachers and students should show in practice that such subjects are immensely beneficial to the society.

There are so many problems in our society that deserve critical study and in-depth analysis in terms of humanities and social sciences. To cite a few examples, what prevents us from moving forward even after pursuing free education for more than 70 years? To what extent inequality in the public school system prevails and hinders social progress? How does the myth of our high literacy rate relate to the inability to provide good basic education to all, or to the failure of lifelong education? What are our conventional values toward jobs and employment and how are they responsible for the unemployment problem? How has the pandemic affected school children and family life? What are the merits and demerits of leaving children fully exposed to the Internet? These are only a few examples that come to mind which are neither comprehensive nor exhaustive. Unfortunately, I have not come across any university faculty in humanities or social sciences, or any research group that have tried to address these problems through social surveys, collecting factual data and analyzing the issues, and publishing the findings for the benefit of society while informing policy makers and decision makers.

My sincere opinion is that if we don’t prove that skills, attitudes and perspectives nourished by Social Sciences and Humanities are valid and crucial for understanding social problems and finding solutions to them, the general public and the leaders will remain unsympathetic towards Arts education. Under such circumstances, our primary school children will continue to answer ‘doctor’ and ‘engineer’ when asked what they would like to become in the future. While Japanese children proudly answer the same question with ‘Cake-shop owner’, ‘baseball player’ and ‘youtuber’, our parents and children will continue to hope for an elitist utopia for many more decades, waiting for a foreign force to build a port city or port island for us to live and work in comfort.

Considering the behaviour of our undergraduates or graduates, while conscious of the danger of using sweeping generalisations, don’t seem to be equipped with critical thinking and analytical skills, independent learning and social imagination necessary for understanding contemporary social problems. As a sloppy solution to the graduate unemployment problem, successive Sri Lankan governments have been appointing thousands of graduates as Development Officers or Development Assistants. Do they have a grasp on development problems and approaches to tackling such problems? Are they making any productive contribution to rural or urban development?

Recently, I was shocked to hear that the National Child Protection Policy has not been implemented for the past 21 years, according to a COPE review. Where have our social scientists, humanists, critical observers and social critics been until this revelation by COPE. All these situations, though random, reveal that our Social Sciences and Humanities Faculties have not done enough to nurture generations of students in a manner that contribute to the socio-economic development of the country. Dr. C.S. Weeraratna, a former senior professor with much expertise and understanding of the problems on the ground, had pointed out the case earlier without depending on ideological twists and jargon (The Island, September 4, 2020).

My argument is that just deviating from the Neoliberal framework with its narrow skill set imposed on school education, as mentioned by many writers, is not enough to complete the essential task before us in this age of VUCA characterized by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. The future is uncertain, it is said globally, and difficult to predict. Once upon a time there was a simple rule for success: If you learn the contents of a textbook or lecture notes, believed to be constant and invariable, take an examination and get a good grade, you can succeed. This conventional success story does not hold water any more.

Further, in an age when a massive amount of information can be instantly conveyed via internet, it is important for Sri Lanka, above all, to improve the intellectual level of its people and to nurture compassionate citizens who are respectful and understanding of other classes as well as other cultures. We need to collect data, analyze them, grasp the ground situation based on this understanding, and take steps through feasible action plans.

Recently, an author blamed Neoliberal ideology for compartmentalization and specialisation of education. In fact, the specialisation and subcategorisation of human knowledge had taken place long before the emergence of Neoliberalism, and Western Scholars criticised it as a crisis of Western education (See J.H. Plumb, ed. Crisis in Humanities, Penguin book, 1964). In response to this crisis, Western universities started amalgamating departments and creating new Faculties, Departments and Courses through cross-departmental and transdisciplinary collaboration. In Departments such as Global Studies, Development Studies, Environmental Studies, Regional Studies, Care and Welfare Studies, etc., students have the opportunity to study a wide range of subjects such as informatics, sociology, psychology, economics, geography, history, philosophy, culture, and languages, using transdisciplinary approaches as delineated by university curricular, which lead to holistic understanding of social, regional and global issues.

It is unfortunate that our scholars tend to see all new trends of education as attempts to cater to the profit-centred enterprises of the private sector, without trying to find new pathways for the coexistence of academia and communities. We should encourage students, teachers and researchers to abandon the all-or-nothing approach and look at the problems or situations from many different angles, taking a multi-faceted approach to them. If we do not adopt new pedagogies and strategies in education and research, our country will continue to lag behind in development.

I was surprised to read in a recent article “Disappointingly, curriculum-making, under neoliberalism and the officialdom that prevails at our universities, has become a technocratic, bureaucratic activity done in line with a set of narrow guidelines, introduced by agencies like the World Bank or ADB, and adopted uncritically by the University Grants Commission (UGC)” (The Island, 21.7.2021). According to the lines, the universities do not have freedom to formulate their curricular. What happened to the autonomy of universities and academic freedom in Sri Lanka? This is one of the biggest collective tragedies that has befallen Sri Lanka. All Viyathmaga or Aviyathmaga people should gather to save future generations from this tragedy. Instead of singing hosanna to the Sinopharm vaccine in the name of research, conducted with Neoliberal and Chinese funds, university professors should turn to genuine research and academic honesty lest it should wither on the vine.

After all, not only social reality but also science or, for that matter, technology should not be overvalued or undervalued. Science presents us with crucial information which should never be underestimated. But, when formulating policy, we have to rely on philosophy, ethics, thoughts and social realities. That is where we need Social Sciences and Humanities. In Western tradition, it is called Liberal arts and constitutes the core of the Western university education. Art conveys a sense of learned skill (shishta kala) rather than specifically the fine arts (lalitha kala). As humans responsible for both the present and the future, we should be capable of switching off ideology and interest, of objectifying ourselves. I sincerely hope the debate continues in a more constructive way.

(The writer was formerly attached to the Faculty of Humanities in Okinawa University, Japan and currently serves as emeritus Professor.)