Role of Enlightened Compassion in Education Policy

The attention of this author was drawn to the present topic on reading a report that the government of India is planning to introduce a national level certifying examination for engineers. Over the past decade and a half a huge number of engineering colleges have come up across the country, many of dubious quality. They are producing a poor quality of professional engineers and hence such an exam would help control the situation while assuring the industry that employs them of quality. While a good move, what lacks in this change is what was mentioned as enlightened compassion. May we try and understand this.

First it is necessary to explain what enlightened compassion implies. It refers to doing an act of good for another person’s long term interest rather than a short term one. The point is well illustrated in a classical story of a robber who was caught and about to be hanged in the public square. He was granted one last wish. He asked to whisper something in his mother’s ears that stood sobbing in the crowd. The wish was granted but the robber instead of whispering something to his mother bit of her ear instead. She ran away bleeding, screaming in pain. The guards asked him why he did that and he explained that when he was but a little boy and would steal little things in the neighborhood his mother would protect him out of compassion and he graduated to becoming an adult thief. Had she corrected him instead at that stage with enlightened compassion he would have led an honest and happier life.

Returning to our topic of the qualifying exam while good enlightened compassion demands that the qualifications and aptitude of a young adult is tested at the entry level to a professional college too so that he does not end up entering a college, spending time, money and effort for several years and then finding at the end of it that he has wasted it all. At the present time some of the poorest students end up getting admitted to the tens of thousands of engineering colleges that have come up across the country that have a hard time filling up their seats otherwise. Some take to crime during the program and many were found applying for jobs of janitors recently after graduation in a desperate attempt to find any work.

At government level there is compassion towards businessmen who have invested huge amounts of money towards setting up a college as help to ensure they do not have to shut down their colleges. However, such compassion is better directed towards young adults rather than business adventures.

Professional programs are more rigorous than non-professional ones and costlier too. Enlightened compassion demands that a certain minimum qualification be prescribed at entrance to professional programs such as a percentage in final school exams, rather than just at the end of it, thereby permitting a young adult to find an alternative career and path in life much before wasting valuable years of his life, perhaps even all of it, on something he is not suited for.

Other Checks:

Another check some of the best universities install in the same direction is to have a control after one year of entry to a longer graduation or doctoral program that might be four years or longer. The student is tested strictly for his aptitude and abilities at this stage and asked to leave the program if necessary, at times even with a lesser certificate of university level learning. This way a student who might end up failing after several years of study and being traumatized or compromised from it gets a chance to reset his life and career at an early stage without significant loss and perhaps even some benefit.