Besides being fundamental to human existence, knowledge is crucial for personal progress, national development, and the larger good of humanity. It enables individuals to make informed decisions, solve problems, and create new ideas and technologies that benefit society as a whole. The pursuit of knowledge must not only be appreciated and encouraged but also proactively facilitated with the creation of conducive conditions. It, therefore, bemuses us to come across a growing disdain for knowledge.
Such a disdain can take myriad forms. It might begin with scepticism about expert knowledge, provided by scientists, academics, or researchers, whose findings are rejected without any counter evidence. Disdain for knowledge rejects evidence-based decision-making, preferring instead to rely on personal beliefs and opinions, or information from non-credible sources.
It can manifest in anti-intellectualism, a belief that intellectual pursuits are unimportant, unnecessary, or even harmful. This leads to a preference for simplistic or populist ideas, rather than more nuanced and complex ones. Individuals who do not value knowledge may lack curiosity and show little interest in learning new things or exploring new ideas. They may view education as a chore rather than a valuable pursuit. Being prone to conspiratorial thinking, they believe in unsubstantiated claims, and are invariably more susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation.
This may lead to disrespect not only for specialised knowledge and expertise but also for those engaged in the pursuit of specialised knowledge and expertise. They are viewed as arrogant, elitist, and armchair academics engaged in futile activities in their ivory towers. ’Harvard’ and ‘hard work’ are neither substitutes, nor mutually exclusive. Symbolic of excellence, Harvard is as much about a high level intellect as about hard work, even if the work is less physical and more mental. The binary, however atrociously farcical, may tantalise some. At times, the pursuit of knowledge can get labelled as dangerous and detrimental to certain ideologies, whose proponents may seek to proactively deter and discourage intellectual activities.
In its mildest form, the disdain for knowledge attaches more value to practical knowledge than to intellectual pursuits. Pragmatically, this becomes evident through overemphasis on job-oriented skill-based vocational qualifications as people are deterred from pursuing higher education leading to academic degrees. This could in turn culminate in transforming universities into exalted polytechnics.
This disdain is often used to distract degree holders from demanding employment opportunities commensurate with their qualifications and aspirations. As economies fail to redistribute resources equitably, blame is passed on the education system, with the argument that those who get schooled are spoiled and so aspire only for white-collar office jobs. A further argument is that education doesn’t encourage enterprise, and the educated and knowledgeable regard hard-working jobs as being beneath their social status.
The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is seen as wasteful, and not as a virtue. Higher education institutions including universities are expected to produce employable graduates and become suppliers of a trained workforce as demanded by the market. They are required to seek legitimacy and validity from a host of ranking, grading and accrediting agencies, particularly from those that measure success in terms of a higher education institute’s abilities to define learning outcomes to suit employability.
Indians covet higher education degrees. They apply in hordes for admission to higher education institutions. Annually, 1.05 million and 1.9 million students register respectively for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) to seek admission to undergraduate programmes in engineering and technology, and the Undergraduate National Eligibility and Entrance Test (UG-NEET) for admission to bachelor programmes in medicine. Similar is the case with general higher education, with more than 1.4 million students taking the Common University Entrance Examination (CUET) for admission to undergraduate programmes.
The longing for higher education has only been rising even when efforts are afoot to entice students to pick up early start-up, entrepreneurship and skill-based vocational certificates and diplomas, with the claim that they provide higher employability and income opportunities. Rising graduate unemployability notwithstanding, higher education qualification continues to remain the foremost preference for a dominant section of society. They are perplexed why they are prompted to go against the Indian ethos that emphasises Gyan param balam, Sa vidya ya vimuktaye and Gyan vigyan vimuktaye. Don’t they have the right to empower themselves? Shouldn’t they aspire to free themselves from evil thoughts and deeds?
They are all the more intrigued that most of those who seek to persuade them to go in for skilling and vocational education send their children to the highest level of higher education not only in India but also abroad.
Why should higher education be important to them and not to the masses in general?
It appears that the disdain for knowledge has never been about the knowledge per se but the ability of knowledge to quicken critical thinking and challenge the status quo, especially religious dogma and narrow nationalism. No wonder rationality and knowledge are deterred and intellectuals are derided. Such a narrative might insist that knowledge, as promoted and perpetuated by the powers that be, should alone be trusted and acted upon.
Everything else, however vigorously academic and scholarly, needs to be viewed with suspicion. In any case, we the civilised choose faith over inquiry. Of late, newer ways have been devised to undermine the intellect and the intellectual. These are reflected in the way faculty is hired, research priorities are assigned, textbooks are written, and policies framed.
When dictums such as ‘ignorance is bliss’ are taken literally, ideals such as ‘Where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high’ get undermined. Sadly, with such a pervasive disdain towards knowledge, intelligent and critical thinking is bound to succumb to bigoted faith-driven macho nationalism.
(Sharma teaches in the Dept of Education, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala; Qamar is professor, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and former advisor for education in the Planning Commission)