This lecture was delivered at the Global Education Summit at Presidency University last year. On 6.1.17. I wrote a summary of it transcribing it from the digital version...

Professor Charles Bailyn

‘Science within the Liberal Arts: Convergence and Consilience’

In a brilliant, thought provoking and fairly exhaustive talk, Professor Bailyn spoke of the deep divides within current global educational systems,  where institutions and societies found it hard to bridge the gaps between purely technical and profession oriented education on the one hand and training in the Liberal Arts, with its emphasis on language, literature, Philosophy and History, on the other.  Bailyn declared that the ‘relationship between science and the liberal arts’ had been a ‘driving interest’ for him over decades, and then proceeded to explain and analyse what a Liberal Education meant. He added wryly that such an education certainly did not mean ‘liberal’ in politics!

Bailyn began by declaring that he would focus on some of the most important historical moments in the development of a Liberal Arts curriculum based on his knowledge of European and British systems. He said that this curriculum had had an ‘ extraordinary impact’ on the development of higher education throughout the world.’ He further added that the consequences of those decisions at those historic moments are still with us, even if the occasions that gave rise to these decisions are not.  Professor Bailyn declared that he was  going to look at the past  and the present and suggest how the lessons of the humanities can be used for the future of higher education

Bailyn then proceeded to differentiate between the two strata of the educational structure prevalent in Greece and Rome during what we call Classical Antiquity, and which he said would be the structure of a Liberal Arts education.  This structure was divided into the Trivium which consisted of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic, and the Quadrivium which consisted of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. Bailyn pointed out that the Quadrivium included subjects that stressed quantitative skills, Harmonics being an area of commonality between Music and Mathematics.  Bailyn commented that his own discipline, Astronomy, was part of what one would call the Liberal Arts curriculum of the Classical Age.

This same model became the one adopted by a university like Harvard when it came into being in 1636.The format followed was of a four year training in the subjects outlined above providing for a broad competence in the classical languages and Mathematics.

In the meantime, Bailyn posited, Science was growing in complexity and strength and it became impossible to contain its magnitude within the structure of the Quadrivium.  Joseph Priestly (1733—1804) in England and Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790) in America, Bailyn posited, were scientists but polymaths as well. This allowed them the competence to speak on many issues and disciplinary areas at the same time.   

However, with the arrival of a scientist like Michael Faraday (1791--1867), Science became the only point of disciplinary focus and remained so for public lectures as well. A public lecture on Science given by Faraday in 1854 is something that neither Priestley nor Franklin would have deigned to give.

One such historic moment in the evolution and development of a Liberal Arts program, that Bailyn said he would structure his talk around,  came in 1828 as Yale reviewed its syllabus for the Liberal Arts. It was felt that there needed to be a ‘common body of interesting things’ to think of. Liberal Arts was supposed to provide the ‘furniture’ for the intellectual room, so to say. This revisionary moment of syllabus formation witnessed a strong defence of classical languages as opposed to modern languages. The recommendations for higher learning did not advocate the acquiring of any kind of professional knowledge or competence.  This structure of undergraduate learning, broad based that all undergraduates admitted to Yale had to study, was not much different from the curriculum that existed in the best of medieval European universities, Bailyn said. He further added that it also had a great deal of commonality with the classical curriculum that aspirants for the Chinese Civil Service had to study.  The Chinese of course, had to study their Classics.

Gradually however, Bailyn posited, Natural Science ousted Natural Philosophy as an important branch of learning and Cambridge University began its Tripos in Natural Science with only three students in 1851. Germany went for more drastic changes. Research universities were created to encourage scientific research.  Specialized learning in Science was heavily emphasized at the university level and Professors were asked to ‘drill’ into their subjects and come up with ‘nuggets’. The age of ‘narrow specialization’ was ushered in.

In America, Johns Hopkins (1876) and the University of Chicago (1890) were then modelled on the German model. Johns Hopkins is one of the leading universities in science research and medicine in the world.  In the Land Grant institutions of the Mid- West, agriculture and military science were introduced and emphasized.  

Slowly the divide between the Liberal Arts on the one hand, and the Sciences on the other, started becoming real. In America after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957, Americans realized that they were lagging behind in scientific excellence and there was a move to remodel syllabi and curriculum. Public funding tended to go in the direction of support of scientific research and development, for professional and vocational education. The STEM program recently launched by the National Science Foundation with emphasis purely on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, is a case in point. Bailyn wryly commented that the only thing common between these four components of STEM is that they all used mathematical symbols!

 The Liberal Arts thus gradually became the enclave of the rich who had access to money that would fund an education that was not directly job oriented. It also became a branch of learning that only the best endowed universities could afford to showcase.

In Britain by the 1950’s Liberal Arts was more or less out of favour as required or mandatory university curriculum. It was assumed that broad education was finished by the secondary level. University training had to be specific and also job specific. Thus lawyers or doctors working towards an undergraduate degree did not have to study any Liberal Arts. The rift was complete and the British system of education dominated the education policies of those countries who were her former colonies. This was what led to the ‘two cultures’, a rift or divide that  C.P. Snow,  British civil administrator, writer, scientist and politician addressed in a famous essay entitled, “The Two Cultures”  and published in 1959.

Snow’s essay was a jeremiad in which he advocated  integration. His promise is intensely practical. Those in the ‘corridors of power’ needed to know about science and technology, Snow posited. His position was that politicians and businessmen, alike, would  benefit from exposure to a Liberal Arts program.

This brings to mind The Boke named the Governour (1531) that British humanist, Thomas Elyot gifted Henry VIII as a coronation gift, which was a book of learned sayings culled from the greatest of classical thinkers and philosophers. During the Renaissance in Europe in the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th centuries, all those who sought a career in diplomacy and governance had to go through a Humanist training that emphasized command over language, grammar and rhetoric, as well as those taught in the of the classical curriculum.

Elyot was trained in philosophy and Science and also wrote the first Latin to English dictionary in 1538. One is also reminded of the great Oxford Humanists of the 15^th-16^th centuries,  William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, John Colet and William Lyly, many of whom were friends of  Erasmus, the great contemporary Dutch scholar and philosopher, propounded the values of Liberal humanist education that trained its students for a just, productive and ethical social life. For the carrying out of this responsibility a training in classical languages and literature was considered essential. William Lyly wrote the first most comprehensive Latin grammar that was used at St. Paul’s (1510), the first Latin grammar school to be set up in England and was also its first Head Master.   

This is the model for the Boston Latin School set up in 1635 in Boston, which is the oldest or second oldest school in the United States, originally aiming at teaching the sons of Boston’s most educated and intellectual elite. The school still requires four years of compulsory learning of Latin, and many of its students seeking to study the Liberal Arts and even other disciplines, find placement at Harvard. Among its most notable alumni are Benjamin Franklin, Adams, Hancock, Hooper, and Paine. These five were among the 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence in America. Later day alumni include John. F. Kennedy and George Santayana.

It will be worthwhile to mention in this context that Drummond’s Academy at which Henry Louis Derozio studied, was also modelled on the Latin Grammar School, and it is here that Derozio received his training in debating, which too was a core component of the Latin Grammar School model.

Bailyn finally speaks of his recent experiences in the field of Liberal Education and he cites the case of Singapore, where he worked to create a viable academic structure for undergraduate students at SNU. Bailyn said that the entire world knew how practical and entrepreneurship oriented Singapore’s culture was. Bailyn informed the audience that educational policy makers in Singapore gradually woke up to the fact that a purely professional training pre-empts creative thinking even about business enterprises. Policy makers realized that success in business also demands persuasive verbal skills and flexibility regarding rival options  Liberal Arts they felt,  teach a student to adapt to a fast changing world.  Thus a movement to revive Liberal Arts education began in Singapore of which he was a part.  

He thus finally speaks of a system which combines intellectual rigour with the imparting of practical skills. He advocates a Tripartite (British system) which would roughly have the following components:

·         Training in persuasive speaking and writing. The training in writing would be done through the academic essay. Bailyn said that writing was necessary to write proposals asking for grants from funding agencies, for writing blogs and also tweets. He emphasized that it was important to learn or to develop skills to speak both formally and informally.  The training in speaking could mainly be done through discussion sessions.

·         Foreign languages

·         Mathematics and Rhetoric.

·         Humanities, Social Science and Natural Science.

·         In the 21^st century to go beyond the Western canon. In literature to introduce the Ramayana before  Greek tragedy and in Philosophy, Confucianism before Plato.  

·          Introductory Psychology.

·         Problem solving and walking through different methodological and disciplinary approaches to do that. He said that if a student was not going to take one course beyond an introductory Physics course, then there was hardly any point in making the student do exercises in Physics.  Instead he felt, the student should be taught the disciplinary advantages of Physics in solving the kinds of problems in daily life and otherwise, that may come up. In short, he said, it ought to be a kind of ‘Physics in translation’.

·         To teach scientific sophistication, scientific awareness without getting into much technicality.

At the end of outlining this Tripartite system that would carry all or many of the above components he said that educators and educational policy makers must keep in mind that many students ultimately need to take jobs and that their lives are ruled by market forces of supply and demand.

He concluded by resonantly adding that the Bicentenary Global Educational Summit at Presidency University should make all educators, academics and educational policy makers ponder about the future of Higher Education. What indeed to do with the ancient and incredibly rich legacies of the academies of the ancient Western world, the great libraries of the Islamic world,  universities like Bologne, Oxford  and Cambridge during the Renaissance, Harvard University of America and Presidency University in India. He said that we should all think profoundly and deeply at a global level. 

Kolkata, Je t'adore. Kolkata, I love you. Kolkata, ami tomai bhalobashi...

I wanted to put in pictures. However, I don't know how to do it. My little friend Sudeep who helps me load pictures is not around. So, I tried, but couldn't .

I would like to tell you about my travels and adventures in and around the city, lately. My friend Lalita lives in Kidderpore. On my way back from Presidency, I usually take Red Road all the way down to Alipore. But recently, I have turned right on the road that goes with the South Gate of Fort William on the right.

Fort William. So much went on there in the 18th century. William Carey, a missionary from Serampore helped in the growth of Bengali as a scripted language. He wrote or supervised the writing of textbooks in Bengali for the British administrators who were trained at Fort William.

I am quoting from Rosinka Chaudhuri's book Gentleman Poets in Colonial Bengal

'Bengali prose was nonexistent in the eighteenth century, as traditional literature comprised oral folk poetry, devotional songs or literary verse in Brajabuli or Sanskrit. it came into being as a direct result of colonization, the first specimens of Bengali prose being translations of legal statues (1785) followed by William Carey's translations of the Bible from Serampore (1800--09), and finally at the Fort William College. publications ranging from colloquies, popular stories, chronicles and legends to definitive editions of literary texts, produced by British and Indian scholars in close collaboration..' (52)

And then as the car raced by, I got glimpses of the Calcutta Race Course and the elegant stands with turrets..

Soon after, squatters below the Second Hooghly Bridge connectors, close to Kidderpore, with their 'establishments'. Makeshift houses under the eaves of the bridge connectors, clothes hanging out to dry just anywhere, children, cooking rituals and some horses that stood around in a desultory manner. These must be horses that are used in the horse drawn carriages which throng the road going past the Victoria Memorial. A sad, tragic, lost, dimmed colonial left over or vestige.

More scenes of semi poverty as one enters Kidderpore. Fancy Bazaar where hawkers display their wares, discarded items perhaps from ships bringing in clothing from other parts of India, may be Mumbai, and also perhaps, abroad.

One sees fifteen, thirteen, sixteen year old boys hawking wares. Running fruit juice stalls. Often teeth not properly brushed, hair not washed in weeks, taking time off from school, to run a business. Makes about 10000.00 a month. Helps family out.

At Rabindra Sarovar park, vistas of children being. Gurgling, laughing, exploring the world. I catch them in all kinds of postures. Some privileged and some not. Mostly happy, though.

Saraswati images on a sidewalk on Ballygunge Garden Road. Made by the Pals of Sodepur and Panihati. Not kumortuli.

So much swirling, magical, encircling and interconnected realities and lives. Kolkata is inexhaustible and I love it:)