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The stars aren't beckoning
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Tomorrow is National Science Day. While researchers love what they are doing, students find their curriculum dry and dreary, practically forming two ends of a spectrum, discovers ANAND SANKAR
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IT'S NO TRIP OF DISCOVERY Natural curiosity and creativity have no place in today's science curriculum PHOTO: REUTERS
Recently, the principal of a leading college in the city announced at a gathering that the humanities courses in his college were running full and it was becoming harder to attract students to pure science courses. Though reasons for decline in interest were not elaborated, the statement lent credence to recent reports that all is not well for science in the country, which is renowned for its theoretical scientists.
In fact, it looks like even the Government has noticed this trend and it is said this year's Union Budget is going to allocate more funds to give impetus to basic science education. It is estimated that Rs. 800 crores will be the size of a new science education and research package, which will refurbish existing science research facilities and fund three dedicated science research and education institutes.
Though one keeps hearing about India being a leader in technical education and a wannabe knowledge capital, pure science is a totally different ball game. Its essence is best described by Werner Von Braun, the German scientist who was the builder of Hitler's V1 and V2 rockets and also the father of Amercia's rocket program. He said: "Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing."
No practical purpose
Pure science deals with topics like number theory or string theory, which even in the distant future will not serve any practical purpose to the common man. Technical education meanwhile is geared towards modern day applications. But it should be noted that both Indian physicists who won the Nobel Prize for physics, Sir C.V. Raman and S. Chandrashekar, were into basic research.
"Basic research for me is a personal thing, it is not easy to quantify," says Dipankar Bhattacharya, Chairman, Astronomy and Astrophysics Department at the Raman Research Institute (RRI). Sir C.V. Raman founded RRI in 1948 and the main activity at the institute is basic research.
"What motivates and leads one to basic research is curiosity. You see things around you that raise questions and you try to find the cause. It is a curiosity to understand everything, something next door to the universe," says Prof. Bhattacharya.
Rabbi Akkiba Angiras, another researcher at RRI echoes the same feelings. He has taken a break from teaching to complete his PhD. Curiosity is something he says comes naturally to him. He once tried to experiment with polarisation and scattering, and tried all sorts of "ridiculous" things to prove it experimentally. "I tried everything including putting milk powder in water and then trying to shine a laser through it. Then I looked up at the sky and realised that the sky is the best example of polarisation and scattering," he laughs.
The blue sky, like many other things around us, scatters polarised light. It polarises the light tangentially with respect to the sun. This effect can be seen with polarised glass (sunglasses).
Angiras says that the thrill of problem solving in science is something special.
"I get a thrill, a high, when I solve a problem. You must struggle and get the answer yourself. Only people who get such a thrill will come to research. This high you will get only once or twice a year, rest of the time it is drudgery. Sometimes you might go wrong and you have to start from scratch again, but that is something I enjoy."
The thrill of solving tough and also everyday problems might sound fun but such tasks come much later when one is planning to pursue a career in science. According to students in the city, it is the undergraduate courses that zap the motivation to pursue science seriously. They say that the curriculum and teaching methodology simply don't encourage creativity.
"The syllabus has remained unchanged for years now. What bugs me is why can't I choose the parts of physics and chemistry that I like to study? The textbook has chapters that are too boring and the scope of those that interest me is very limited," says Priya, a B.Sc. student.
Another thing that bugs students is the attitude of the teaching staff. This is what one of S. Chandrashekar's students said while paying tribute to his mentor: "He cared for the personal and intellectual well-being of his students, trained them carefully and was willing to spend enormous amounts of time with them. He was a powerful role model for all who came in contact with him."
Killing tedium
But Ramesh, again a B.Sc. student in a leading city college, paints a different picture of teaching today. "We have a lecturer who dictates the same notes year in and year out. He does not do anything else in class but dictate. At the end of the year chooses the notes with the best handwriting and uses them for the next batch! Even the laboratory experiments today pose no challenge. You have a lab manual, which if you stick to will give you the readings. It does not matter if you understand the principle behind the experiment or not."
Talking about notes and classes, it is said that our two Nobel laureates never really attended classes. In fact, Sir C.V. Raman is said to have got "special permission" to study in the library.
Prof. Bhattacharya says that to get quality manpower for research is becoming difficult and in addition to competition from technical education and the service sector, Indian research institutes have to now compete with institutes abroad.
"Some decades back getting quality people was not a problem, because there were not many opportunities. But today, the lack of numbers is a worldwide problem and the institutes abroad are able to give our students better offers."
"Yes, job prospects are limited, but not bleak. A salary that a software engineer gets today, a senior scientist will get after about 25 years of service. But the excitement in our job is something else," adds Angiras.
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Getting serious on research
Even the U.S. is taking the basic science education seriously because it fears the potential of India and China, which churn out 7,00,000 science graduates annually (according to a study done in 2004). The U.S., in comparison, turns out only 70,000 science graduates though around 50 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is said to be dependent on science and technology.
The 2007 budget tabled by President George Bush plans to increase spending on physical science research from $9.8 billion today to $19.5 billion by 2016. Some $380 million of that money is being promised next year to train 70,000 additional teachers of advanced high school math and science courses, and persuading 30,000 math and science professionals to become adjunct high school teachers.
This allocation comes after the scientific community in America feared that education was being sacrificed at the expense of Homeland Security funding.
In India, the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an autonomous society, was set up in March 2000 by the Department of Science and Technology, for scouting innovations and innovators from remote corners of the country. So far, out of some 51,000 innovations identified, 15 technologies have been commercialised.
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Science...
Over the years science has inspired quite a number of quotable quotes. Here is a sampling:
"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know."
Bertrand Russell
"Physics is very muddled again at the moment; it is much too hard for me anyway, and I wish I were a movie comedian or something like that and had never heard anything about physics."
Wolfgang Pauli
"I do not like it (quantum mechanics), and I am sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
Erwin Schrödinger
"Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."
Albert Szent-Györgi
"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
Albert Einstein
"Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."
Richard Feynman
"The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
Thomas H. Huxley
(Source: The Internet)
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