August 23, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
How Eliot Transformed Education
Even New Zealand which became the first country
(it was in reality a self-governing colony then) in 1893 to grant universal
suffrage it was not truly universal.
While the women were given the permission
to vote which made it universal active suffrage they will still restrained from
being a candidate thus denying them the passive suffrage.
Since the majority rule is the defining
characteristic of democracy it naturally follows from it that democracy allows
political minorities to be oppressed by the tyranny of the majority in the
absence of independent judiciary and sometimes even in its presence
That is why a Hindu living in the United
States will have to live with beef slaughter and consumption all around him
whereas the same Hindu can seek imposition of beef-ban in his native land.
It was thanks to Eliot that for the first
time at Harvard introduced the “elective system” of education for the
undergraduates.
This meant two advantages for the
undergraduates; one that they were offered a wide range of courses.
Second it meant that not only could they
choose the courses they wished to but at the same time reject the courses that
they thought they lacked the inclination towards.
This Eliot thought was a crucial step that
would allow the students to discover their “natural bents” as he had out it in
his 1869 article and specialize and then excel in it.
This single idea led to a series of
cascading events that eventually resulted in a massive expansion of graduate
program with various departments opening up catering to various “natural bents”
and therefore specialization.
It also transformed the Harvard, much like
the German Universities, to a center for advanced scientific and technological
research.
Along with this the whole mode of pedagogy
underwent transformation that was earlier largely comprised of recitations and
common lectures in large halls.
Harvard along with the other
transformations in its institution ushered in teaching in classes of smaller
batches where each student was put under finer scrutiny.
The achievement (or the failure) of each
student began to be graded through testing.
Almost every performance of each student
was assessed with much greater rigor so that competition developed among the
students where each tried to better himself.
If there is one thing that today Hindu’s
parents would share in common with Eliot’s thoughts was his approach to sports;
he absolutely discouraged sports of all sorts at Harvard.
Not just that, he went to a great extent to
get the popular game of football abolished from the campus but of course, he
failed to do so.
He considered football to be “a fight whose
strategy and ethics are those of war” and where “the weaker man is considered
the legitimate prey of the stronger.”
Football was not the only sport targeted by
him.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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