Feature

The Socratic philosophy about the improvement of the soul is actually what the university education, first and foremost, should aim at. According to Socrates, human knowledge must go around making the soul improved and enlightened. He lays emphasis on the care of wisdom, the cultivation of human conscience. In Plato's Republic Socrates speaks about the most important truth that 'virtue is knowledge'. In fact, on these aims and goals the early universities in Europe and America were established. The subjects with which those universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Chicago etc. started functioning were theology, astrology, religion, philosophy, natural sciences, history etc. Most strikingly, these universities were established as private universities by different groups of intelligentsia, not by some emerging bourgeois; though later on they got assimilated with the state authorities.

In our country, the University of Dhaka, the Oxford of the East, as it was called, in the early decades of its establishment, created many scholars and light bearers and patriotic leaders who truly illuminated the nation. After the liberation war, gradually, the university got deviated from its common goal of education, and the very advent of open market economy replaced the original ideals and spirit. Newly introduced market oriented subjects promoted by western capitalism slowly pushed many subjects of pure science and liberal arts to the fringe. In public universities, subjects like Bengali, Philosophy, Theology, History etc. have now become subjects of compulsion, not of choice. The result is that students do not want to study them. Physics and chemistry which are the mother subjects in the field of sciences are also lacking interested students. It is painfully true that our private universities do not offer these subjects because they do not have market value. In this regard, North South University deserves appreciation for opening up research facilities on Bengali literature by making Prof. Abdul Mannan Syed a scholar-in- residence.

The multinational companies, corporate banks and NGOs find the products of business-related subjects more faithful to carry out the agendas prescribed by the World Bank, IMF, and ADB.

The aim of education has changed from creating better and perfect human beings to the production of some cybernetic and hedonistic organisms. The outcome is, as we see now, a hopeless generation devoid of spiritual rejuvenation. Our youth is seen in the TV ads of many mobile companies in frenzied boogies as if dancing in a trance is the only purpose of their existence. What is more saddening is that we have only borrowed the western fashion design of revealing dresses in our country disregarding our socio-cultural values. We have not learnt how many hours of the day the students of America even of our neighboring country India spend in the library.

From Plato to the 19th century scholar Henry Cardinal Newman to our Rabindaranath Tagore, all put their thoughts on education. They have, through their writings, shown the channels through which education should find its way to excellence. The point where their arguments meet is that all of them have seen education as a means of liberating human souls from darkness of ignorance.

In the 19th century Henry Cardinal Newman in his 'The Idea of a University' boldly talked about the aim of university education. The primary aim of a university in Newman's view is to impart liberal education to nourish the soul to make gentle men and ladies in the society and the professional skills should be the secondary aim of a university that will not contradict the former. Newman condemns Francis Bacon's utilitarian views on education.

Though Tagore is much influenced by Newman's liberal education, he doesn't discard the utilitarian value of it. His incessant desire is to see the ever widening gap between the utilitarian or the physical side of education and the spiritual or metaphysical side of it to be minimized. In his essay 'Bishwabidhaloyer Rop (1932)' Tagore speaks about the combination of liberal education to refine the senses and sensibilities with professional skills to see those refined senses applied to build up a just society so that education can enjoy its pragmatic values. Tagore, in the same essay, hints at an important issue as to why the universities in Bengal may have some difficulties to meet the expected goal. In this connection he says that in Europe the concept of the university was inherent in the socio-cultural background and in the peoples' psychological disposition. They didn't have to borrow any foreign concept for the natives. For this reason, the aim of the university became identical to the aim of life of the people of England.

In Bengal the concept of the university was hired and to some extent, as Tagore puts it, was a gift of charity. The aims and principles on which the universities in England and the Universities in Bengal, particularly the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh were established were not same. The former ones were established to cultivate knowledge and humanism with a view to enlightening the world, while the latter one for creating a British interest group. The kind of university education the British colonizers introduced in Bengal was, of course, meant for making a regional beneficiary educated class far aloof from the mass people, mass production and mass interest. The British not only made this servant group, but also made them mentally bankrupt who were conscious of their duties but were very much unconscious about their sense of integrity and individualism. The very aim of education which is to create a sense of judgment, a sense of honor and a sense of individualism were missing in the initiation of the universities in Bengal. For this reason the main aim of the university education was, from the beginning, distorted and changed from its universal appeal to a narrow colonial interest.

To end, in this modern competitive world, where, unfortunately, everything is determined by the capital or to use Marxist's phrase, by 'economic mode of production', there should be a balanced amalgamation between the liberal education and technical education. What do we now want from a university to give? We want it to create perfect human beings, patriotic citizens, a people enlightened in terms both of the soul and body. In his essay 'Bishwabidhaloyer Kaj' (Function of the University), eminent writer and educationist Professor Sirajul Islam Chowdhury puts it very rightly when he says that a university's aim is neither to create faithful and dutiful servants, nor to make oppressing bourgeois. It must aim to create better and perfect human beings with genial spirits.

(The writer teaches English Language and Literature at IIUC. Chittagong
E-mail: nissanrkn@yahoo.com)