Climate change: An excellent opportunity to overhaul our
education system
Abstract
I shall not discuss the reality or otherwise of climate change. I
have seen & experienced it in Ladakh in transhimalayas. This change, I
feel, offers us an excellent opportunity to completely overhaul our education
system, from primary to higher education levels. The present system fails to
promote ecological understanding, places unwarranted emphasis on technology and
promotes an economic system, which is completely at odds with the physical,
biological & cultural identity of our country.
The overhaul of the system should begin with a clear, realistic
understanding of what tropical conditions imply & explain
inter-relationships between climate, land & water, i.e. physical &
biological factors and how they affect livelihoods & culture. The emphasis
should be on a holistic approach & not compartmentalization of knowledge.
This should begin with primary level. Overall there should be greater emphasis
on field-work at all levels, less on memorization and examinations. Students
should understand what nature & natural resources are and how these are to
be preserved and sustained to generate and maintain a variety of livelihoods
& what kind of economic system is needed.
As far as technology is concerned, the clear understanding of the
ecology of technology is needed so that the right kind of technology is
promoted in India.
The overhaul requires a new genre of personnel and a whole new
literature & text-books.
I shall not discuss the reality or otherwise of climate change. I
have seen & experienced the effects of climate change in Ladakh in
Transhimalayas. Ladakh is a part of Tibetean plateau beyond the Himalayan range
& is almost bereft of rains as rain clouds cannot overreach the mighty
Himalayan range. Ladakh is desert, but a cold desert because of its altitude,
which is around 4000 meters on an average. Much of this cold desert has been
transformed into fresh water wetlands due to rapid melting of glaciers, a
result of climate change. Existence of such fresh water has brought about a
distinct change in flora & fauna. Xerophytic forms are replaced by
mesophytic and breeding populations of mammals and birds have increased
markedly, due to abundance of food. But these favourable conditions are
predicted to continue only for a short period. Melting glaciers are not being
replenished by fresh snowfall and a severe fresh water crunch may develop in
not too distant future.
As patterns of temperature and rainfall change, such effects may
manifest in other regions also. Predictions of an uncertain and dark future
have made scientists and laymen aware of the importance of the environment in
our lives. ( Dash S.K. 2003). Environmental research has gained momentum and
environmental change is being extensively covered by the media. This is welcome
as the current educational system compartmentalizes the environment and the
resulting teaching hardly produces a holistic understanding of our environment.
The system of education, which was imposed by the British in the 19th
century, essentially remains the same with some and not fundamental changes
over the years. The principal aim of this system was to subvert the minds of
Indians as Lord Macualay infamously stated in his address to British Parliament
on 2nd February, 1835. He had said, “I have traveled across the
length and breadth of India and I have not seen even one person who is a
beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high
moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer
this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her
spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace the
old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that
all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will
loose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want
them, a truly dominated nation.”
Since those times principles and practices developed in an alien
environment (e.g. that of Europe) continue to dominate our teaching even in
such an environment related subject as agriculture. Essentials of tropical
environment which basically influence our livelihoods and lives are not imbibed
by students. The education system is yet to treat India as biodiversity rich
land and it is this factor, which significantly influences the lives of the
majority.
What we need to emphasize and teach is the change that modern man
has brought about in different biomes. The present system does not bring out
the chronic scarcity of water that a tropical environment always implies. The
results are fragile soils, transpiration losses and quick ageing of sites,
which means mineralization and production of dust. To avoid this we need
different cover types (i.e. different plant communities), cooling structures
which will protect soil and water losses. The adoption of technology and our
need of agriculture, industry, transport etc cannot be decoupled with our need
to protect the essentials of different biomes that our country has been endowed
with. Education then will have to provide an entirely different set of
prescriptions and policies than are being currently proposed.
The technological human being has brought about fundamental changes
in the distribution of not only plants and animals but also physical forms and
geographical features of the world (Simmons I.G. 1989). The processes of
deposition and erosion and consequent distribution of living forms have been
changed to the detriment of all except the upper class human beings. The
teaching must explain how such actions spurred by modern technology have
affected basic ecological services or life support systems, which were an
unmixed blessing to all living beings on this planet before the Industrial
Revolution (Dorst J. 1971). The necessity of maintaining and improving life
support systems such as:
1)
Maintenance of the quality of
atmosphere
2)
Amelioration of the climate
3)
Recycling nutrients
4)
Assimilation of waste
5)
Generation of soils and
maintenance of soil fertility
6)
Pollination of plants including
crops
7)
Maintenance of the marine
eco-system and provision of sea food
8)
Operation of hydrological cycle
9)
Maintenance of gene bank (Daily
G.C. 1997)
All these eco-services have been affected by high and
intensive exploitation of nature and natural resources. Consequently energy
flows, nutrients cycling, biological productivity and environmental stability
have all been fundamentally modified by human beings leading to death and
extinction of many life forms (Simmons ibid).
Our education system must display a conscious awareness
of these problems and should be able to catalyze viable solutions. Only an
integrated approach will reveal that earth has tolerance limits and cannot
sustain continued exploitation and modification.
Understanding of earth tolerance
limits to expanded human activity can be promoted at local, regional and
national levels. At the local level it should mean sustaining such land forms
as hills and vales, slopes and floodplains and natural resources such as
soil, forest, surface and underground natural water flows, shrub-land and
grassland and agriculture and artisanal raw materials. Students in the age
class 7 to 14 years can be taken out of the classroom to asses these and can
also be involved in actual conservation work & quality enhancement.
Understanding of these at regional and national levels should promote a
landscape approach in development planning. Such an approach not only takes
into account the conservation and quality enhancement of eco- systems &
eco- services inherent in a landscape, but also considers their inter-
relationships throughout the region & inter- regionally. For example, as
rivers imply a continuum from source region to sea, development of water resources
at a place or in a region is likely to adversely affect other places or
regions. A landscape approach works to avoid such irregularities and reduce
regional disparities (Foreman R.T.T. – 2001).
Nature at local level is at best a resource while at
regional and national levels it is treated as a supply depot & a sink. Over
exploitation of resources such as forest, freshwater and marine fish and
pollution of atmosphere, soil & water may occur at any level and cannot be
curbed and managed without understanding the threshold values of different eco-
systems and eco- services. Any use beyond threshold will undermine the very
existence of these systems and services (Chopra K-2001). We are still far from
a real understanding of these thresholds. It is here that traditional practices
prove useful as they guard eco- systems against overuse, both as a supply depot
and as a sink. Modern education should not belittle the importance of
traditional knowledge especially in the field of nature & resource
conservation. In fragile environments where a small disturbance may cause an
avalanche of degradation, traditional knowledge seems as a beacon of light(
Jodha N.S- 1995).
If conservation of nature & natural resources is
properly incorporated in the curriculum of primary & secondary schools, it
will form the basis of multiple livelihoods operating essentially at local
levels. Geography, history & science can be combined into a single subject
& their inter- relationships explained with emphasis on local variations. Such
interdisciplinary coverage may be called “Livelihood Science”. This can be
supplemented by training in artisanal practices & field work wherever
necessary. Such a move will stem the tide of dropouts, that vast resource of
manpower who had left education after the 10th or the 12th
standard. As they have little skills either in their hands or brains, they
remain unemployed and remain a ready target to be exploited by extremist
elements.
Such an overhaul will require fashioning of especial
educational tools; this requirement may further promote research in nature
& environment in all its forms. What is necessary is not pure environmental
research, but one which will probe also social and economic consequences of
each & every economic activity. (Gole P. 1996).
Change
may not immediately be necessary in the present mode of teaching languages
& mathematics, though proper valuation of nature’s services and natural
resource systems may have to be included as the economy responds to emerging
livelihoods based on nature (Pearce D. 1990).
The real challenge is how to incorporate practical
outdoor work and field training in today’s highly class-room oriented
curriculum. Probably a complementary role can be assigned to rural & urban
schools. Rural schools can offer urban students approach in to eco- systems and
natural resources while urban schools can provide rural students gadgets and
equipments to carry out science experiments and audio- visual education. The
present pressure on students of completing tests and examinations &
carryout library based projects can be replaced by an imaginative exchange
programmes in which rural & urban students will experience something, which
they have not experienced before.
Today science & technology dominate graduate and
post-graduate education while languages and social sciences suffer from
inadequacy of students. Pure science offers opportunities to only a few
brighter students. All others have to satisfy themselves with whatever
technological input they can imbibe. Pure sciences attempt to increase our
understanding of the working of nature & natural systems while technology
tries to find out how these systems can be made to work more or less
exclusively for the benefit of human beings. It promises power, dominance over
nature and seemingly unlimited increase in material comforts for humans!
But “the modern world, stamped as it is with the image
of the machine, must learn to look technology in the face & read its
essence soberly & without illusion”
(Juenger F.G. 1956”). The essence of technology is what I call the
ecology of technology. Every student must be given to understand the ecology of
technology, what in truth technology implies. Essentially it tries to redirect
natural flows of energy & materials towards human beings, to the exclusion
of all living forms. In human history the earliest and most vivid example of
this redirection is agriculture. The farmer decides that the flow of sun’s
energy falling on a piece of land, which is normally used by a number of plants
& animals, will be used exclusively by a single plant beneficial to human
beings. As competition from other plants is eliminated, the selected plant
(crop) reacts favourably & offers the farmer abundant yield. But this
abundance is also available to the natural enemy of the crop & the crop is
attacked by pests. Technology then always produces problems & side effects.
(Bayliss- Smith T.P. 1990).
There are other sides of technology, which we tend to
ignore & never make them explicit to the student body. It has been well
said, “Technical progress covers the earth not alone with its machines &
workshops but also with junk & scrap ….. All technical knowledge is marked
by an impersonalism that necessarily results from the purely material facts
that it deals with.” Morconer, “even the smallest
mechanical process consumes more energy than it produces, how could the sum of
all these processes create abundance?…… It leads to an economy of deficit which
grows the more strikingly obvious, the more triumphantly the perfection of
technology progresses” (Juenger F.G. ibid).
The student must understand that the designer of a machine never gets
beyond the degree of efficiency described by Carnot’s cycle. This is assured by
the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics or the Principle of Entropy (Daly H
& Townsend K.N. 1993).
Why are all these facts ignored & never given weight
& importance that are their rightful due? It is probably because all
technological progress then merely becomes a pretence. Technology to progress
needs heavy subsidies from the government, from nature and from sections of
human society who are forced to give up their livelihoods! Recently
technological progress is possible only through contracting heavy debts!! Yet
the bias favouring technology is widespread & pervades especially the politicians,
economists & administrators who manage our so- called economic development.
The economy of deficit, which is the inevitable result of technological
progress is nowhere more evident than in India since 1990. (Alternative Survey
Group 2008).
As Prof Bhaduri said in his address to IUCCA, Pune, “Despite near
double digit growth for more than a decade and a half, available estimates
suggest that more than one third of the Indian population live in sub- human
poverty (a recent World Bank estimate puts nearly 42% as absolutely poor by
international standards), more than 75% of the population has a daily
purchasing power of less than Rs 20, nearly half of the children are under-
nourished, and many crippled by under- nourishment; anaemia is on the increase
among women, and food deprivation in the countryside has not
decreased-----According to Economic Survey of the Government of India
(2006-2007) total employment in the organized sector declined from 28.2 million
in 1977 to 26.4 million in 2004. One can add to this the declining employment
in the agriculture sector, the worsening of agricultural labour, even the
increase in the number of self-employed is nothing but discharged industrial
workers & those who cannot find any employment, “eking out living by selling
tinsel goods which means long hours of work, little earnings, lack of any
social security and protection cover of labour laws.”
Technological progress has thus failed to reach the majority, has
failed to put varied skills in their hands and has therefore, failed to
generate a variety of livelihoods in Indian Society.
Technological progress has only propelled a deficit
economy depriving people of their earnings & work.
What is the alternative? If the technology that is
currently taught in colleges & universities is harmful to the environment
& the economy & consequently to the people at large, it will have to be
phased out and replaced by one that is beneficial to most of our countrymen.
Alternatives like soft technology, appropriate technology, bioengineering,
restoration technology can be introduced (Chadwick M.J. & Goodman T. 1975).
Students must be given to understand very clearly what
the use of energy implies. In any process where energy is used, input is always
greater than the output & investment is normally greater than the value of
the product obtained. Use of fossil fuels is still the cheapest source of
energy, as nature has done most of the work to make this energy readily usable.
This is the reason why modern technology is based on fossil fuels. But their
known stocks are limited and the cost of discovering new stocks & making
them usable is enormous. If alternative sources of energy like solar, wind,
tide etc are used, input cost, i.e. investment in making solar cells &
panels, their ancillary equipment, installation & maintenance, is always
greater than the value of energy produced. For example, the making of a solar
cell requires energy (i.e. use of fossil fuels), which is greater than the
energy that the cell will produce during its entire life. Alternative energy
sources become viable only if the entire operation is heavily subsidized!
The real alternative is to minimize the use of energy,
especially minimizing use of fossil fuels, so that this extremely cheap source
of energy will last another thousand years! Biomass development again offers
the cheapest alternative. We need to develop all types of plant biomass
(Urbanska K. et al 1997). Almost half the area of the country is degraded. All
this area can be restored by reviving appropriate cover types of indigenous
origin. To work this out Restoration Technology is available and is being used
extensively in developed countries. It is cheaper in terms of investment and is
labour intensive creating enormous opportunities for employment. For example, European countries have
taken up large projects to revert their rivers to their natural conditions
(Maurizi S. & Poilon F 1992). The classic example is of the river Thames in
England. In fact, U.K takes pride that they have cleaned up all their natural
flows. USA has a law, which lays down that there will be no net loss of any
water body, especially wetlands. There are representative bodies like the
Society for Ecological Restoration, Wetland Managers Inc etc. Similar
organizations exist in Europe.
There are unlimited opportunities for
creating alternative livelihoods & jobs in the use of such biomass related
technology (Ghotge N. 2004). Our educational institutes must make available
instruction in these fields. Restoration of Nature is the key concept here
(Gole P. 2007). Besides creating more jobs restoration will confer such
benefits as conservation of soil, quality enhancement of atmosphere & water
& revival of nature’s services. It will also provide biomass to fulfill
basic needs of fuel-wood, fibre & timber at moderate prices. Enhancement of
the quality of life will lessen the physical & mental stress, which is the
inevitable result of promoting technology & a deficit economy!
Do we have the courage & conviction to bring about a
radical change in our education system?
Prakash Gole
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