Prakash Per­sad

Last week, as re­port­ed in the in­ter­na­tion­al news me­dia, his­to­ry was made as an ar­ti­fi­cial wind­pipe was de­vel­oped and trans­plant­ed in­to a pa­tient. It was al­so re­port­ed that ar­ti­fi­cial ar­ter­ies were be­ing man­u­fac­tured. In­creas­ing­ly, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy are be­com­ing an in­dis­pens­able part of all as­pects of life, lit­er­al­ly. At the same time, iron­i­cal­ly, less and less stu­dents are opt­ing for ed­u­ca­tion and ca­reers in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and many tech­ni­cal­ly trained peo­ple con­tin­ue to not be en­gaged in the prac­tice of en­gi­neer­ing. We can on­ly ful­ly har­ness the po­ten­tial of­fered by the tech­nol­o­gy plat­form if we have ad­e­quate num­bers of rel­e­vant­ly qual­i­fied peo­ple.

Gen­er­al­ly, stu­dents do rea­son­ably well in chem­istry at sec­ondary school and uni­ver­si­ty. It's a dif­fer­ent sto­ry when it comes to physics and math­e­mat­ics. A grasp of math­e­mat­ics is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial if one is to pur­sue a ca­reer in just about any sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal or busi­ness ven­ture. Fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, busi­ness mod­el­ling and cal­cu­lat­ing risks as­so­ci­at­ed with in­sur­ance poli­cies etc all re­quire hefty math­e­mat­ics. So when a farmer buys baigan in the whole­sale mar­ket and when as­set man­agers plan the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio for the pen­sion plan of a com­pa­ny, both use math­e­mat­ics.

Physics is just as im­por­tant, if not more so, for it pro­vides the ba­sis for an un­der­stand­ing of the forces of na­ture and the laws of the uni­verse. So to un­der­stand why, when a glass is filled with wa­ter, the sur­face of the wa­ter curves above the lev­el of the glass walls or why the space shut­tle needs to en­ter the Earth's at­mos­phere at a spe­cif­ic an­gle re­quire knowl­edge of physics. Peo­ple with an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of physics are bet­ter able to un­der­stand the forces at work in cli­mate change and the dan­gers it pos­es. So math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence are part of our mun­dane ac­tiv­i­ties, an im­pact­ing fac­tor on the qual­i­ty of our lives and they pro­vide a mech­a­nism for sus­tained eco­nom­ic progress. Then why is it af­ter such a heavy ex­pen­di­ture in ed­u­ca­tion from the pri­ma­ry to ter­tiary and post-sec­ondary tech­ni­cal train­ing we con­tin­ue to fall be­hind in tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion, in­ven­tion and ap­pli­ca­tions? There are sev­er­al fac­tors that con­tribute to this un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion and it needs to be reme­died.

The first port of call must be the teach­ers of math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence at the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and the lec­tur­ers at the ter­tiary lev­el. If stu­dents form the view that math­e­mat­ics is an ab­stract, te­dious both­er that has no re­al prac­ti­cal use and must be done for the sake of pro­gress­ing through the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem for the pur­pos­es of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, then how can we re­al­ly de­fine, analyse and solve prob­lems. Could this be the rea­son why, for decades, we con­tin­ue to face the same prob­lems? No­body analy­ses. Take for in­stance the sit­u­a­tion last year when the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way at Aranguez was blocked to en­able some work at the over­pass to be done. Did any traf­fic en­gi­neer do any sim­u­la­tion as to the ef­fects on the traf­fic flow?

Peo­ple spent four to five hours on a jour­ney that would nor­mal­ly take 20-30 min­utes. The habit to ap­ply quan­ti­ta­tive meth­ods seems to be some­thing of a taboo. If the sit­u­a­tion with math­e­mat­ics is bad then that with physics is a lot much worse. There is a dearth of good physics teach­ers in the sec­ondary school sys­tem and this is fur­ther ag­gra­vat­ed by the lack of or di­lap­i­dat­ed lab­o­ra­to­ries. Stu­dents thus are, in the main, ill equipped and in­ad­e­quate­ly ed­u­cat­ed in maths and sci­ence when they reach uni­ver­si­ty.

Many lec­tur­ers in math­e­mat­ics and tech­nol­o­gy are not ac­tive­ly en­gaged in solv­ing in­dus­tri­al prob­lems (in fact, quite a few would not be fa­mil­iar with the state of in­dus­try in the coun­try) and thus cours­es can tend to be the­o­ret­i­cal and re­moved from rel­e­vance to the so­ci­ety. Again here the lab­o­ra­to­ry prob­lem sur­faces.

Sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy-based in­no­va­tion are nec­es­sary for our sur­vival and progress as a na­tion. Thus a crit­i­cal look at our sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy-based ed­u­ca­tion from the pri­ma­ry to the ter­tiary lev­el is need­ed. Tech­ni­cal ed­u­ca­tion at the ter­tiary lev­el must be so de­signed and ef­fect­ed so as to en­sure that our sci­en­tists and en­gi­neers have both the an­a­lyt­ic and prac­ti­cal com­po­nents in their ed­u­ca­tion with a prob­lem-solv­ing fo­cus. It is about time that we get the ba­sics right be­fore we en­gage in pie-in-the-sky projects and ap­proach­es. To put it blunt­ly, let us first walk be­fore at­tempt­ing to speed down the run­way to soar in the skies.

Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc