Education

Victory of Secular Education in USA

".....The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won a smashing victory. After a two-week trial in December 1981, on 5 January 1982 US District Court Judge William R Overton turned back the balanced treatment law, arguing in a withering judgment that Creation-science is a travesty of scholarship, designed solely to slip one particular brand of reactionary religion into school curricula (Overton, 1982). The forces of reason may not have won the war, but they won that battle decisively..."

Taking Darwin Seriously: Michael Ruse

Balanced Treatment Law: Act 950 of 1981 (Arkansas). This act required of the biology schoolteachers in he State that, if they were to deal with evolutionary hypotheses in their classes, then they had also to deal equally with that subject which its supporters call creation science, and which is better known as Book of Genesis (the creation myth for Torah, Bible and Koran). If a teacher told students that many people believe that organic life developed slowly down through the ages from simple forms, and perhaps even that life itself grew out of inert minerals, then that teacher had also to tell the students that many people believe in a miraculous creation of fully fledged life, which occurred but a few thousand years ago.

UNIVERSITY

A place in which civilization’s knowledge is divided up into exclusive territories.

The principal occupation of the academic community is to invent dialectics sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories. By maintaining a constant flow of written material among the specialists of each group they are able to assert the acceptable technique of communication intended to prevent communications. This in turn establishes a standard which allows them to dismiss those who seek to communicate through generally accessible language as dilettantes, deformers or popularizers.

SCHOLASTICISM

The dominant medieval school of teaching, inquiry, knowledge and argument. One of the Enlightenment’s main enemies. Scholasticism was duly defeated and destroyed. It mysteriously re-emerged at the centre of power in the 2^nd half of this century.

The key to the medieval movement was its ability to tie up intellectual inquiry and language in an endless maze of high quality irrelevance. In this way protected established authority from serious examination.

The Eencyclopedie described scholasticism this way: It substituted words for things; and frivolous or ridiculous questions for the great questions of real philosophy; it explained unintelligible things via barbarous terms… this philosophy was born of the spirit of ignorance…it reasoned from a basis of abstraction rather than of reality; it created for this new sort of study a new language. And disciples believed themselves wise because they had learnt this language. We can only regret that most scholastic authors made such a miserable use of their intelligence and that they limited their writing to such and extreme subtlety. Scholasticism was launched in the 13^th century by Thomas Aquinas who applied Aristotelian logic to Christian purposes. In this way he managed to smother most relevant debate for a good three centuries. The similarity of medieval and modern scholasticism can be seen in this statement by Frederick Copleston, a great historian of philosophy as well as Aquinas: The practice of starting from a revealed premise…and arguing rationally to a conclusion, leads to the development of Scholastic theology. This is precisely the method used to train contemporary technocrats in most fields. It is also the phenomenon identified by Harold Innis in the social sciences where, confident predictions, irritating and incapable of refutation, replaced discussion of right and wrong.  

In contemporary terms, scholasticism creates impenetrable dialects, uses obscure language to prevent communication and separates intellectual inquiry from reality by adoption and separates intellectual inquiry from reality by adopting a relentlessly abstract approach. Scholasticism continues to serve established power.

Doubter’s Companion: John Ralston Saul

Bangladeshi Educated Class

They could offer moral education to our youth. But instead of being moral agents, they, like pigs, preferred to wallow in corruption. They are busy emulating the mafia elites in engulfing consumerism. They are busy building houses, one after another in aristocratic areas. Busy in ceaseless pursuit of social mobilization. Busy mimicking the west like monkeys. There is no room for morality or ethics in their lives. They have no time for "plain living and high thinking". Insatiable is their pry  for houses, latest model cars and luxury items is. One may ask why they are so ravenous?. Answer is, however crude, "they are taking revenge on poverty". Once they lived in shanty huts, shat by the side of canals, ate left over rice in pots (shanki) and afforded their education only as lodge- in teachers. After graduation they had to marry the unpalatable daughters of their mentors to afford a government job. Now their incessant pry for wealth is nothing but their revenge on their poverty stricken past. 

Not only that whereas two decades ago their wives were called "Abu's mum" or "Dulal's mum". Later those Abu's mum, Dulal's mums became bibi sahiba. In the 70's they were called Begum Sahiba. In the 80s the begum sahiba's became "mem sahib". Now the mem sahib's are all madam. About those absurd Bengalis poet DL Ray wrote: 

" We smile like the British,

 Cough like the French, 

Love to smoke astride"

Professor Mozaffar Ahmed

Nalanda University: The great seat of Learning in  Ancient India

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