sthāṇurayaṃ
bhārahāraḥ kilābhūd adhītya vedaṃ na vijānāti yo’rtham |
He who studies the Veda but does not
understand its meaning is like a post – a mere bearer of a burden.
– Yāska, Nirukta 1.18
A few days ago, I came across a
thought-provoking post on LinkedIn by my BITS classmate, Manas Chakrabarti.
Writing about the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA,
as it is popularly known), Manas wondered why countries like Finland and
Iceland have seen unexpected declines in their scores, while others continue to
do well.
His post stayed with me. It touched a raw
nerve in how we, in India, think about learning.
What does PISA
actually test?
PISA is not a board examination. It does not ask a 15-year-old to
reproduce a memorized formula or write out a textbook chapter. Instead, it
tests what one might call application literacy: can the student read an
unfamiliar data table, weigh two competing arguments in an ambiguous passage,
or use a basic scientific principle to solve a real-world problem?
In other words, it tests the upper floors of Bloom’s taxonomy –
analysis, evaluation, and synthesis – rather than the ground floor of recall.
India’s brief brush with PISA in 2009 (two states, Tamil Nadu and
Himachal Pradesh, took part) was, therefore, an uncomfortable mirror. Even our
better students struggled once the questions were stripped of the familiar
textbook templates. We had built an extraordinary capacity for retention; what
we had not built was the habit of reasoning from first principles.
The misunderstood
Gurukulam
When we look back at India’s classical tradition of education, it is
easy to assume it was simply a culture of oral memorization. Memorization (kaṇṭhastha,
learning “by throat”) certainly existed. In an age without printing presses, it
was the library and the index rolled into one. It was, however, never the
destination.
The tradition itself cautions against learning by heart without
understanding. Yāska’s line at the top of this piece says it bluntly: the one
who recites without grasping the meaning is a post carrying a load of wood.
Real scholarship was dialectical. Students were trained in Tarka-śāstra
(the science of reasoning) and Vāda (formal, good-faith debate, as set
out in the Nyāya Sūtra). The method was demanding:
It is this discipline of steel-manning the other side before
answering it that makes the classical method so modern. In fact, it maps
remarkably well onto the very competencies PISA sets out to measure. That this
was the norm at centers of learning like Nalanda and Takshashila is often said;
that it was the norm in the śāstric tradition is beyond doubt.
Can the NEP bridge the
gap?
The National Education Policy 2020 diagnosed the rote-learning
problem with remarkable clarity. Its prescription – Competency-Based Education
(CBE), and board examinations that include case-based and analytical questions
– is a long-overdue roadmap.
Changing an entrenched classroom culture, however, is a different
matter. As long as entrance examinations such as the JEE and NEET remain
hyper-competitive elimination sieves, the classroom will, therefore, keep
defaulting to pattern-matching and speed drills. Teachers teach to the test
because parents and students demand it. The policy intent is sound; the journey
from rote execution to genuine inquiry has only begun.
A bold
experiment: Ayurveda after Class 10
Against this backdrop, an interesting experiment is taking shape.
The Central Sanskrit University (CSU), working within the framework of the
National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM), has opened a
residential, Gurukulam-style pathway to the BAMS degree for students who have
just finished Class 10.
The idea is to step outside the lecture hall. Instead of learning
Ayurveda only through translated textbooks and borrowed pharmacology templates,
students begin with a Pre-Ayurveda foundation: the Darśanas (the
philosophical systems, including the logic and natural philosophy on which
Ayurveda rests), the classical texts read in Sanskrit, and clinical observation
alongside a teacher.
The promise
If it is done with rigor,
this model could bring back the observational acumen that this kind of medicine
demands. Diagnosis in Ayurveda is not a checklist. Whether it is reading the
pulse (Nāḍī Parīkṣāor reading a patient’s daily routine, it calls for
years at the bedside, a mentor at one’s elbow, and the ability to reason in
context.
The pitfalls
Any such venture also
carries real risks:
a)
The first danger is swapping
one kind of rote learning for another: graduates who can recite verses in
perfect meter, but who falter when an actual patient walks in. That would be
Yāska’s post all over again, merely carrying a heavier load.
b)
The second is drift. The study
of logic and natural philosophy needs clear boundaries, so that it sharpens
clinical reasoning instead of turning into a broad, unfocused course in
culture.
c)
The third is isolation. A Vaidya
who cannot read a lab report, or work alongside a modern hospital, risks
practicing in an intellectual silo. The patient, after all, does not care which
system the insight came from.
Looking back to look
forward
Does this mean we must return to the forest schools of antiquity?
Nostalgia is no substitute for an education strategy.
The real opportunity lies in combining the best of both. Digital
simulations, data analytics, and interactive tools can do the heavy lifting of
carrying information to students. That frees the teacher to do what the
Gurukulam did best: long mentorship, honest debate, and the patient application
of first principles.
Reform, thus, does not ask us to choose between tradition and
technology. It asks us to stop producing cooks who are lost without a recipe –
and to start producing students who can think, question, and, yes, heal.
What do you think? Have you seen a classroom, ancient or modern,
that genuinely teaches students to argue the other side first? I look forward
to your comments.
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