Knowledge for the sake of knowing

I now understand the importance of learning classical (read “old”) languages, say, Latin, Sanskrit ... The title would have been crisper.

MGM lion roars and you think its message “Ars Gratia Artis” is “Art for art’s sake.” No. It says, for those who can lip read a lion (and I can!) – “Don’t believe the motto. The truth is movie making is for profit making”.

Now, understand what the title of this post is saying. I do not need to spell it out (and get into trouble with that ruthless and motley group – educators and the so-called eduprenures).

A Lebanese-American poet-philosopher wrote

Your children are not your children

They are sons and daughters of

Life’s longing for itself

They come through you but not from you

And though they are with you

Yet they belong not to you

You may give them your love but not your thoughts

For they have their own thoughts

I have read these lines hundreds of times, and every time agreeing with the sentiments in different ways and never once disagreeing with it. The first line thumps you; or you may call it a sidewinder as it hit you from nowhere. You catch your breath to go to the next line.

It is in one such moment – moment of weakness perhaps – I applied these lines in the context of teaching, leading to knowing, speaking optimistically.

I am a teacher now, do not know for how much longer; and, at least from the perspective of most of my colleagues and a stray student or two, I do not know how to teach. But, there are students who say that I am very entertaining, in the limited sense of making what they thought a dry subject lively, whether they understood the subject or not. That is kind of a big boost for me!

But, hand on my heart, let me tell you what I think of myself when I am in front of a classroom. These are my students (read the first line of the poem to understand what I am saying) and when it comes to teaching, I should not stand in the way of “Knowledge’s longing for itself”.

Wittingly or unwittingly I have become an agent of knowledge, just as parents are for “life”. Then, things become clear to me.

Read lines 4, 5, and 6. In the class, knowledge may come through me, but I must subdue the temptation to claim ownership. But, sometimes, I am unable to stop myself. There are a few situations, in which, during a lecture, what I think is a “new thought” pops into me and I claim ownership of it, internally, “Yeah, that was very good; a new way of thinking - yours ...”

After the class, that “yours”, however fleeting that thought may have been, grates on me.  I had not earlier seen, read or heard the explanation I gave. In that sense, it is justifiable to claim “ownership”. Fie! the sixth line admonishes me. “...they belong not to you”. I hang my head in shame.

I share the new way of explaining a concept to my colleagues, but not more than a couple of them give even a good listening. They are happy to go the way they are being led, by the “Pied Piper of Hamelin”, the text books and other sources that offer soothing words, and not much more to the teachers and on to the students.

The magic of the subject is lost. No, it is never even realized. No, its existence lies beyond the teachers’ realm, and therefore the students' too. Mental imagery is found nowhere; only words, equations and numbers. Here, I feel my teacher colleagues have not even heard the first line, about whose students the students are. Check that – “are not”.

How does the following sound – “Knowledge for the sake of knowledge”?

Did not make any sense, did it? Well, this is neither a new phenomenon nor acceptable, if it indeed is new.

G H Hardy liked “pure mathematics” which did not pose the crucial question, “What is it useful for?” Mathematics for the sake of mathematics.

In our times, it is possible Andrew Wiles labored trying to prove, and eventually succeeding, Fermat’s Last Theorem in this spirit. If the proof became useful, let it be. 

Don’t blame Wiles!

That was what Europeans did in the time of Ramanujan and Hardy and Britishers, doing the then version of Brexit, did not. Britishers focused on the utility of mathematics. Now, when the Empire is just a few specks of islands in the Atlantic, the remnants are truly thriving in the sub-continent. Now it is the usefulness of knowledge – read “profit” – that drives education.

The direct derivative of the focus on profits has corrupted teaching. There is no more “teaching for the sake of teaching”, a direct pathway to “knowledge for the sake of knowing.”

If an educational institution ever promoted itself as providing knowledge for the sake of knowledge, that is the MGM lion roaring. “Read my lips”, as the US president George H W Bush said, must be your driving force to be wary when an institution claims it is founded on the tenet,

“Knowledge for the sake of knowing.”

Stand back, relax and take the message in the only dimension it should be understood.

Please, translate the above in Latin/Sanskrit ...

Then, I will change the title to it, and then perhaps a few of you would care to read this babble.

When written in Latin/Sanskrit (a title standing proxy for the piece), even a nearly thousand-word babble gains wisdom!

Go figure! The MGM lion had figured it out. Did it in three words, hmm ...

Raghuram Ekambaram