Stepping Stone

Education holds the key to India becoming an impregnable force in the R&D space. But is the education system geared for it?

- Dr Lakshmi Mohan

The global system of education has evolved with wide-scale variances in the approach towards dissemination and transmission of knowledge from one generation to another. Its spatial pattern is not an isotropic plane, and gives an impression of a platykurtic one in terms of difficulty levels. The reasons behind this distinctiveness can be attributed to major thinkers whose inputs contributed towards learning and development in their influence zones. For example, Confucius and his followers emphasised the need for education and learning, as a tradition which can still be seen in China and many other neighbouring nations. as to the influence of Confucianism on education, its principle—those who excel in office should learn; those who excel in learning should take office has guided Chinese education.

Education can be imparted through two different methodologies—inductive and deductive. Aristotle, one of the greatest and most influential educational philosophers of all time explained these two methodologies by stating that knowledge starts with sense perception—we observe objects or events and from these build up in our mind a general principle by which to understand and explain these. This is the process of inductive reasoning, which moves from particular observations to general conclusions. This is of course the prime method of reasoning used in science in contrast to the deductive method of mathematics. Aristotle later concluded that not all reasoning is inductive. once we have established a general principle, we can deduce particular conclusions from it. For example, according to him, deductive logic comes from the premise all men are mortal and socrates is a man, we can deduce that socrates is mortal. This is known as syllogistic reasoning [a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two or more propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.]