 You can see we have colleagues and friends of Vijay Kulkarni. We have students, we have faculty members from different institutions, be it colleges, universities. We also have the former directors of Homi Vava Center, Professor Arvind Kumar and Professor Pradhan, very much here actually. And most importantly, we have family members of Professor Vijay Kulkarni. So we have Anita, his daughter, his son-in-law, Rajiv. Can you just wave please? And his son, Chandrasekhar, please wave. Yeah, he's very much there actually. And we also have Mrs. Kulkarni. Now I request Professor Sugra, who is Dean of HBCSC, to welcome her. So thanks for joining us for this occasion. It's a pleasure to have all the family members for this occasion. As you all know, this is 18th Vijay K. Memorial Lecture. And actually, this institute, Homi Vava Center for Science Education exists because of Vijay Kulkarni. We used to call him as Viggo in Marathi, actually. And he, along with Professor Udkavkar, founded this institute in 1974, when he was at the peak of his career as a solid state and nuclear physicist. He had a passion for the field of science education. And that is how he decided to venture in this field and formed the Homi Vava Center for Science Education. See, initially, when the institute started, there was a very small group. The institute was not in this campus. We were located at a very small place in Tathdev. It was a municipal corporation school. And we were very handful of us, actually. I consider myself to be very lucky to join HBCSC at that juncture. And to be a student, along with Professor Sugra, to be a student of Professor Vijay Kulkarni. And I still remember what he said to me the day on which I joined HBCSC. I went to his room telling him that I'm joining. And he said, Savita, whatever you do, I don't want your thesis to be dust-free. So it took me a few seconds to understand what he really means, but it's a valuable advice which he gave me on the date of joining. He said, now that you're venturing in education, it's very important that you go and witness the school system, develop a sense about it, develop your sensitivities by going and visiting and working with the system on the ground. There's no point in sitting in ivory travel and do your research. And that is something has really opened my eyes about the field of education. And whatever I could learn from the field of business, that is something which I can really not put into words. That was a real, indeed, useful insights which are developed about the field of education. Sri Vijike is very well-known for his work, both in the education and as a scientist. He was in touch with several institutions and organizations. And he did receive several prestigious awards and honors, including Dr. Govardhan Das Parik Award in 1985. With the students, we were few of us. And the colleagues, Vijike and all of us, started significant research projects in HBCSE. We gave a solid foundation to the work at HBCC. All these projects were basically meant for students who come from disadvantaged groups and who also come from tribal or municipal corporation schools. And that period of HBCSE, we really developed those who were around during that period. We developed very good insights through these projects. He was an excellent writer. He wrote extensively, both in Marathi as well as in English. And he's very well-known for his writing. I remember his writing, especially in the newspaper. And that is another insight which I developed through interaction with Vijike. He really taught me how to write for public. I was being a very fresh MSc student. I was not used to writing and especially for public. And then when I took my first article, newspaper article to him, he told that the language has to be very different. He really sat with me and he discussed. And that really again taught me how one is supposed to write, especially when you're writing for common people. So that was something, another thing which I learned from Vijike. Of course, all of us as a student wanted to learn logic from Vijike. That never happened. We were quite insisting, sir, you please teach us logic. But somehow because of his, I mean, he was too busy and we couldn't learn that particular thing. He was an excellent orator. And what really puzzled me was that he could connect with age group, I mean, with the students, with the elderly people, within no time. I mean, Vijike is there. He will start talking and he has captured the audience. That was something equally puzzling. Unfortunately, we lost Vijike very early. That is in July 2002. And after this loss, as a tribute to him, HBCSE started the series of this memorial lecture, which are known as Vijike Memorial Lecture. Today is the 18th one. And eminent scientists and educational people have been delivering these lectures. The main points of this lecture or the main issues which are covered in the lectures are related to science, technology, education, and society. For the 18th Vijike Memorial Lecture, we have Professor Anita Rampal, who has accepted our invitation. Thanks for that. And may I now request Center Director, Professor Subramaniam, to welcome her. We have Professor Kakodkar, who is joining us for the Vijike Memorial Lecture. Professor Anita actually doesn't require an introduction. She is a well-known person in the field of education, but just for the benefit of audience. Like Vijike, Anita also has PhD in theoretical physics and was head and dean at the Faculty of Education, Delhi University, India. She has been fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, a UGC research scientist, the Nehru Visiting Professor at the University of Baduta, and Director of National Literacy Resource Center, LBS National Academy of Administration, Masuri. Professor Rampal is on the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Mathematics Instruction, ICMI, and has a part of several national and international committees. She has been deeply involved with Hoshanga Bath Science Teaching Program, which is a very well-known program within the country, the National Literacy Campaign, and the People's Science Movement. She was on the Executive Committee of National Council of Education Research and Training, that is NCRT, and was also the chairperson of the textbook development team at the primary stage. Having worked in the participatory development of child center curricula, including writing textbooks and conducting culturally responsive assessment, she has co-authored books such as Public Report on Basic Education, Textbooks for Sustainable Development, a Guide for Embedding, Numerous Accounts, and Zindakeka Hissa. She has written research papers and articles in English and Hindi, and produced films on women's education and participation. Her special interests include curriculum studies, science, technology, society, and critical mathematics education, teacher education, and policy analysis. May I now request Professor Nampal to deliver her a talk, 18th Memorial Logical Education. Good evening, friends, and Professor Vijay Gulkarni's family, which I am really very privileged to meet. I'm honored to be here. In fact, Homiwawa Center has, for us, over the decades been really the mucka of a place, an institution, well-resourced, working specifically on science education, and this has been like a dream for many of us. So even meeting him, off and on, used to be interesting to carry on these discussions, and also to see a place where science was not just looked as, you know, academic science, but implications of science and society were also part of the research here, or at least some of the work being done here, which was again something many of us felt very strongly about. I would like to share some insights and thoughts on what I have called science and sensibility, and also reframing the knowledge commons. And this comes really with the decades of work that one has done in this area, and also the courses that I have taught at the Delhi University. So I would like to say at this moment, today for instance, September 23rd, I think, is a momentous day when millions of young people across the world have mobilized and have really said, unite behind the science. I mean, I don't think in my lifetime have I ever seen such mobilization when millions of people, I mean, many thousands here in our own country, in my own organization, all India, People Science Network in BGVS. In fact, on Friday, we were constantly getting reports from across many states and small towns where children were taking the climate strike, and all saying, you know, I mean, there were different kinds of slogans being raised across the world, which also said, why study for a future which may not exist? The oceans are rising, and so are we. Don't be fossil fuels. There is no planet B. Jungle may dangle, et cetera, et cetera. And we all know that it was amazing that this one person, Greta Thunbaria, as she insists, that her name is not pronounced correctly by most people, that how she, in fact, almost single-handedly first started this Fridays. I mean, she started a climate strike, as she called it. And when we listen to her, it's so poignant that she says that when she was reading in her science teaching, when she was learning about climate crisis and what was happening, she was eight, nine, 10, she says, when she was hearing about these science facts, she said she was getting so alarmed and so disturbed that people seemed to be carrying on their lives as if nothing was happening. And that almost sent her into depression at the age of 11. She was almost in serious depression for a year when she stopped eating and she lost more than 10 kgs at one stroke. She stopped talking. And now when she tells us about it, she says it was selective. She was, and what's ironical is that she was actually, there were many tests done and she was being diagnosed and she was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. She was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder with selective mutism. And she now says, she says, yes, selective mutism means that you don't talk unless it's essential. And right now it's absolutely essential. So it's interesting how she herself looks at the fact that what was happening to her and she says that she says, I now think that many of us who may be called Asperger's actually have a strength because we are persistent, we focus and we look at things as black and white and there are no gray areas when we talk of issues of survival. And what's again crucial is that she says that I think the others are sort of wallowing in cognitive dissonance. She said, the others say one thing but do another thing. And she says, I don't understand how they can be true to themselves. And the most amazing recent on three days back today she must be speaking. She has to speak at the United Nations Summit for Climate Change. And she has really been talking to power. A young 15, 16 year old is telling world leaders that you are behaving like children and we have had to now take responsibility. And she's also saying, don't listen to me, listen to the scientists. So this is what I'm saying. Constantly we're hearing in the last few days of this mobilization, unite behind the science. In fact, even the boat that she took because she stopped flying. So she's changed her life a lot. And she says, the boat she took, they asked her, what is it you want to be written on this boat when she took it from her home in Sweden to the US. And she said, unite behind the science. And that's a huge banner which says that. So what's interesting is when I saw this and I heard young people saying, listen to the scientists. I wondered, are scientists prepared to speak, to empathize with and relate to the concerns of children, of society, and to speak truth to power? Are scientists really ready to do that? And how do we get ready to do that? Does science really, our own science education, does it help us look at things in this way that we can understand? And we can then know what to speak and especially speak to power. I am reminded of a recent letter written by science researchers in IIT, Mumbai. And I was so heartened because I actually shared it with my own master's students that what is, because they, and that's worth reading. They wrote an open letter to the director of IIT, Mumbai. And because I am in Mumbai, I sort of pay my tribute to them. They said that they were responding to the chief guest, the education minister, who had made some statements which they said were bizarre because he also said that the atom was discovered by ancient Indian medical practitioners. So they said that if the politician doesn't understand the process of discovery, he may be forgiven, but not scientists like yourself. And they're telling the director. So what is the role of a leader of an institution? They're asking that, so they're saying that if scientists do not speak now, then who will be left to defend science? And I think this is what is more interesting and more crucial, do our young people. In fact, two days back I saw a statement which was predominantly by scientists and a large number of TIFR scientists on Kashmir. So again, things that we had not seen earlier in terms of professional scientists actually coming out and speaking, speaking about issues that really matter is something that gives hope. So what was interesting was that the IIT, Mumbai, scientists said that it's true that, you know, atomism has been something which many cultures have looked at in India, in Greece. People have looked at the theory in which they say that these are these small building blocks which cannot be divided further, but discovering the atom is very different, which happened many centuries later through work and evidence across different countries. And I think that really is the process of science. So do we understand what is happening and how is our education actually preparing us to understand something even more complex, not just is the science so complex and the uncertainties therein, but also society and the web of relations between society, between groups of society, between amongst themselves and with nature has become really complex. Like, for instance, the philosopher and historian Harari in his book on the 21st century raises this question. He says the challenges of knowing have become even more difficult because he says we seem to be much more ignorant today than perhaps humans in Stone Age times. He says hunter-gatherers cooked their own food, they knew how to make fire, they knew how to make their clothing. He says now what is happening is we don't know any of this and we think we know it. Probably we tend to take, we appropriate the knowledge of others who might be doing this and we think we know it all. So he also talks about power. How do we really address issues of power? Because he says power is something which warps the space around it. And he says it's almost like now revolutionary or unconventional ideas just don't reach centers of power. So how do we as scientists or academics or knowledge creators, and who are these knowledge creators, how do we in fact challenge this? Because what's happening is now more and more we are locked in our own eco chambers. We are fed by self-confirming news feeds where beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. So more information is not going to help here. More information will not help these kinds of eco chambers within which we are existing. So what happens? How do you challenge those beliefs? And he says also to acknowledge that as our education system tells us or even science tells us that we are independent, rational individuals to acknowledge that this is probably a fantasy which feminists and post-colonial thinkers have been bringing out, have been challenging telling us that this is probably a fantasy, a chauvinistic fantasy more of the Western sort of white male, as people might say. But also behavioral economists and evolutionary psychologists have said that human decisions are based on emotions, emotional reactions, and probably heuristic shortcuts. But if in today's world, which is much more complex, if we don't really recognize this and we don't get beyond this myth of the individual rational thinker, whether it's the scientist or it's the student whom we are sort of socializing into science, then we will continue to appropriate others' knowledge and not even know what is right and what is wrong. Because even to be able to take decisions about right and wrong, to know, for instance, what is justice in the way knowledge is being constructed or used, we must understand. And even if we ask simple questions like, OK, what is the food that we eat? Where is it coming from? Who is growing this food? What is happening to those people? Where are our clothes coming from? Much more in other contexts, in the developing context than our own, when this has become completely invisible. So it's only when people even go down to trying and question about the very basics which are essential for their own lives, will they try and understand whether we are, in effect, stealing the land or water or livelihoods of people who may be providing these very basics. And I think that is the question before us. So I come to the idea of knowledge enclosure and knowledge commons. And what is interesting, I find, and I want to extend this even more from the notion which is being right now, which is being looked at in terms of digital technologies or intellectual property rights. The first enclosure is looked at after the Industrial Revolution, where it is seen that land, the physical commons were being encroached and enclosed and proprietary rules being made about it. But the second, the new commons came when, in fact, when the new commons, which were outcomes of human agency, like the internet, like intellectual property, like the electromagnetic spectrum and things like that, when that outcomes of human agency and outcomes of knowledge, or maybe knowledge themselves, were being looked at and enclosed and norms being set as to who can and who cannot access it. And this, in fact, can lead to serious exclusion, which contradicts the very ethos of freedom and democracy. So there has been, we know, work that is going on in terms of the knowledge commons. But what interests me is that knowledge is not just looked at in terms of the digital knowledge or the intellectual property, but also more widely, in terms of all types of understanding gained through experience or study, whether indigenous knowledge, scientific knowledge, scholarly or non-scholarly knowledge, creative music or other arts, anything like that, that is now being looked at as the larger knowledge commons. So when we look at the thinking that goes behind this, it also tries to focus a lot on the process of how knowledge is created and also collective action, collective action which can then help us look at the role that we play, the stewardship and the co-responsibility as people involved in this work or as people who are trying to engage with this work. There is some work in the knowledge commons which looks at youth participation and building associations of youth workers who can understand and who then feel valued rather than being seen as problems. And then they engage in public interest research, mapping biodiversity, water resources, mostly through digital technologies, but also otherwise. And in the global south where we are situated, the commons is more a lived reality than a metaphor. In fact, it provides a vision for sustainable development to resist relationships with nature from becoming extractive and exploitative and to promote agents of collectivities by protection against marketization or even other basic survival needs. So what is it that this kind of a culture of stewardship and responsibility is helping us? In this respect, I can take a small example of a program in education for sustainable development in which I have been involved with a university in Switzerland where a lot of teacher education for a teacher education course on ESD. We were trying to look at how, for instance, culturally, a teacher in Switzerland might look at sustainable development. How would they look at it? And how would we in our context? And specifically because it was an engagement of their coming to India also, we engaged with the Naithalim School in Sevagram. And we tried to understand that if we take a theme like cotton, for instance, how is it that we will understand cotton through all its ramifications? And where will this understanding take us? For instance, in Switzerland, when we ask children, even in the classrooms, what are they wearing? They don't really know what fabric they're wearing. Immediately, they turn to the label of their clothes to try and see what is the fabric. Is there any cotton in it or not? And that's typical. So how do you start from there? Because they don't grow cotton, so they don't, you know. So how do you start from there? And then try and make a link and say that here in Sevagram, students are questioning what's happening to the cotton farmers. Or they're looking at the history of cotton and how the short staple cotton and long staple cotton were, in fact, changed. Because the earlier cotton used for hand weaving had to be made more suitable for the mills in England and Manchester. So even the crop was changed. What is happening today? Why are farmers committing suicide? What is pressurizing the weavers? So it's not just farmers, weavers, and things like that. So the web of relationships and the complex questions that get asked, how do you deal with it? What do you make of it? And how do you say, I don't know too many things, but then try and find out. And this was interesting because there are people now trying these. I know someone who's a maths teacher sitting in the States. And he just took with his senior secondary class, he took the question of, look at the prices of a Levi's gene in the past 20 years. Why is it that this has become cheaper for us, even though many other things are becoming more expensive? And then they go back and then try and see where were these genes made earlier, and now where are they coming from? And they trace it back to Bangladesh in some really dismal conditions, those sweatshops, and even more dismal conditions where the women, mostly women workers, are making these, are part of the government factory. And so I'm just saying that even taking a small thing as to what you are wearing or what you are eating and taking it down the line, it at least makes you more conscious about these web of relations and also what are we doing in that process. So this is interesting, and I think even some work here in CUBE in which many children across the country are participating as I was being shown and told in looking at the biodiversity around them, share it here, and what does it mean to be doing that? I think these are small attempts, but giving us more deeper insights into what really needs to be done more consciously and concertedly. What is happening on the other hand in education is the kind of pressure on standardization and more centralization. And a lot of emphasis more in trying to look at the outcomes, the learning outcomes, more testing, more marks, more learning outcomes. Ironically, Greta comes from Sweden, and Sweden in itself, the academics there and the science educators there are questioning what PISA is doing to them. They're saying that what is happening now is totally opposed to what they have done. Even though these countries, the Scandinavian countries are among the top performing in the way the PISA tests are conducted at the age 15, the program of international student assessment, which is conducted by OECD, which is not an educational body. It's for economic cooperation and development. But today it is the largest, it's the big science, which is controlling education. And more critically, they look at any country and only look at science, mathematics, and language. So everything else is pushed out. It's just these three areas, and you look at the tests and how children perform in these three areas, and you decide whether the countries are geared for economic productivity or not. So there's a competition, there's ranking. And what's curiously interesting is that what they are trying to say, and people from Finland, from Sweden, are saying that these tests are showing us. And they are showing, for instance, very critically in East Asian countries, which are doing well. Or even in Finland and Japan, they found that those who are getting really high marks in these tests, they also take other tests to see their interest in science and their dispositions, their future dispositions in wanting to do a job in science. They say that's negatively correlated. So all those who get very high marks are not the ones who show an interest in science or who show their motivation for future careers in science. And that is worrying. These countries are also being told to adopt policies which are against what they've done. They've not done testing. They've not done continuously multiple-choice, centralized testing. They've not standardized it. But these now OACD is trying to push them into that. And they are reticent about it, because that's one thing. I mean, I was in Finland recently, and that was one thing I happened to be talking to people who were involved in their curriculum change many decades back, the 80s, 90s, which then started showing an effect much later when they were trying to say that our curriculum should be for equity. And in their concept, equity was someone from a rural background or someone from a more privileged background. It should not show the difference. It should not really be addressed to only those. So I met people. I was lucky to meet some people who were involved in the curriculum change at that time. And they said it was a long process, just convincing people, convincing the system, convincing teachers. I mean, 15 years of work and 20 years. And they said it was ironical that when PISA first came in the early 2000, and they said we are doing very well, it almost endorsed all that we had said. But what they then started prescribing was against what we had done. So they said that that is crucial to understand, that it's saying that we are performing well, but it's not really pushing us in the right direction and not for the reasons that they are saying that. And that is something that is worrying. And that's not just now in India. The first time when the right to education was being formulated, there was a pressure for India to take the PISA test. I remember many of us working closely with the government on many things had resisted, the government resisted, and said no, we will not jump into that because right now for us, we've not even been able to provide an environment for learning well. I mean, what are a qualitative environment or an equitous environment? So when we have not done that, how can we push children and start testing them? And that is not fair. And this is going to be completely demoralizing. But what happened was the World Bank pushed two states, Himachal and Tamil Nadu. And they were the best provisioning states at that time. They were pushed into PISA. And then the predictable happened. They came second last. And there was a lot of chest beating here in our own country. And the media went berserk, saying, look at our public system. So there was much more shaming of the public system after that. And shaming of the system in the two states, which had in fact been provisioning. We're not saying that the quality of education or how science or maths should be taught in those schools were at least in terms of provisioning. They were really providing access. And they were doing well. So I'm just saying that those pressures. Recently, I was invited by Indonesia to look at their curriculum, which they changed four years back, five years back, under pressure of PISA. Because they were not performing well. So suddenly overnight, their minister decided they had to change their curriculum. And they had seen some of our own work that we had done here, the textbooks and things. And they said that we would like you to look at, especially science and maths. And I was, again, quite aghast at the way those textbooks were being used and the kind of information that was just thinking that it's now going to be PISA oriented or children have to learn didn't help, doesn't help, the system can't change overnight. And the same, the kinds of questions that were coming. And I saw in grade three, grade four, they were doing multiple choice, only multiple choice questions. How will children learn unless they're allowed to express themselves, to think for themselves, to debate and to even tentatively see what is right, how the explanations are not something which are bad, but they just were asking them to take. So the pressure comes down right into the system and the textbooks were still very bad, just information based. So that is something which now sort of educates across the countries, even countries which are performing well. In fact, they're more worried because they say especially in East Asia there are concerns because just high marks is not encouraging even innovation. They're seeing that it's not really correlated with people taking risks, thinking out of the box. And so there's much more subordination to being obedient and do just what the normal traditional conforming system is. So these are questions that are being asked, but unfortunately not enough voices are coming out. I would really hope that this center would try and do something. And I know that we have been critical of the Olympiads, which the center had been doing for a long time and saying, let's not go into this talent business. Just look out for talent. Talent doesn't come just through a test. We have to really understand how people contribute and participate and not just by looking out for some do we actually identify people's ability to do maths or science. I really hope that a lot of this thing about international testing and what kind of testing is happening is something that an institution like this would really make a major contribution to. Also, I would just bring out one or two other things. For instance, I would like to say that I'll go into this briefly, that the enclosure of knowledge even over the past, if we see how modern science has developed. We know that we talk about the scientific revolution, and that was a term that was given by Alexander Koeray. But he also tried to look at only something in which he called the mathematician of nature. In fact, people have reviewed that work and said he deliberately marginalized experimentalism. He deliberately didn't look at how even Galileo was doing experiments first and not doing experiments later to try and verify his theories, but how people were presenting it as if it was only the mathematical work that contributed. And the names that are being taken are whether it's Copernicus or Newton or Galileo, are again people who are reviewing his trees of science at that time are saying that doesn't reflect what was happening in those centuries. And in fact, what was happening were the revolutionaries, they say, were the artisans. Were the artisans, it was an artisanal epistemology which was taking shape, and also how craft knowledge was something that was in fact appropriated. Galileo actually appropriated. He would meet artisans and craftsmen and appropriate that knowledge. And there was no, they didn't think it at all valid to even try and acknowledge. So in fact, Robert Boyle, who is, there's a law named after him, is being questioned because they say he probably didn't even do those experiments which actually gave the law. He was a rich aristocratic scientist. He employed a lot of people called technicians. And he even went out to say that it can be very demeaning working with artisans and mechanics. And the meaner population, that's what he says. And to be talking in their language and to look at. And so the way he's looking at them, but he says, we have to do that. But then he set up these laboratories and where all these technicians were employed to do certain experiments. So he said that even the drudgery of the experiments are being taken care of by the technicians, but they are not acknowledged. And a lot of after research people have taken out just two names saying that these were his assistants. Probably they were also the ones who actually formulated the law. And so I'm just saying that appropriating knowledge of people who you thought were either below your status or you thought were technicians, you know, were just doing that dirty work, not the mind work. And so especially if you paid them, then you didn't have to. You could appropriate it because you owned that. But what people have questioned is that even after the 17th century, when around that time science were being institutionalized, and what was the kind of cost that scientists actually gave for the purpose of not being questioned by hierarchies? They had actually science. We know there were scientists who were burned or they were even Galileo was under house arrest and had to recant what he said. So when they were challenging authorities, whether it was the church or it was a royal authority, what was it that they actually, what was this social contract? And people have seen that by declaring science as objective and value free, while institutionalizing science, shifting away from natural philosophy, coming to what was being called science, they said that science is going to be based on observation, rationalism, and also to achieve power and dominion over nature. In fact, when we read what Bacon was writing, even at that time, it's actually quite shocking because it was not just control over nature, but the way the discursive ways in which he was looking at nature was almost was sexist because he was talking almost as if it was raping the nature. I mean, that was the kind of language that was being used. And also they said that they will avoid questions of religion, politics, and morals, and that indifference towards any responsibility either to nature or to other people who are getting affected by what science does. So this happens as a kind of social contract. Some people, even some historians of science have even called it a positivist compromise, which allows science to continue doing what it's doing. But by the time the Industrial Revolution has come, and by that time, when in the 19th century onwards, science is getting professionalized. In the 17th century, the Royal Society was formed, and so it was getting institutionalized. But later, then it's coming into universities. And by that time, what was happening is interesting because when they took this goal to have dominion over nature, what happened was that, in fact, it was the technologists who were leading the way. In fact, it was not as if technology is an application of science, but it was often the technologies which were coming in, even if there was water filled in the mines, water had to be sucked out. So suction pumps came even before the theory must come. So there was this recognition by industrialists and by society that technologists seemed to be having not just control over nature, but also control over human productivity. So in order not to be subordinated by this, there was this movement which said we are pure science, and that is practical knowledge. And so pure science was in the universities, done mostly through that. And practical knowledge, in fact, people called it the vulgarities of practical knowledge because that was considered dirty. You're dirtying your hands. And so again, the separation that happened then had its impact also in the way science was being taught. The school curriculum, especially. We know examples in Europe, in England, where a science of the common things had been designed for at the elementary stage around 1860 to address all children, children of the working classes, which made sense to them because they were doing things. They were watching things. They were doing things on the field in agriculture with pumps with everyday life. And people saw that it was very effective. So when the inspectors of education decided that they will actually, science was not, till that time, not in the elementary school. It was not taught. So when they decided this was a good model, there was a lot of hue and cry. And a lot of people wrote against it and even said that this will disturb the social order if science then was understood better by those lower in the orders. So I'm saying that there has always been this pressure. On the one hand, we say that it democratizes education, but it's not necessarily so. And how has it actually kept people out and kept certain knowledges out is something that helps us look at our challenges even today. So there's another example around much later than that, which is, in fact, so crucial to understand even today that when our students read these things, I mean, they are shocked, for instance. Even when we read, it's not just people of a certain class or gender or caste in our case. How, even the pursuit of science, how is it recorded even today? I mean, for instance, more recently, the work on Rosalind Franklin has come out, a lot of work research, which has actually gone down to document and see what was her contribution to DNA. And her contribution was so major, in fact, that she actually provided the evidence. She did all the tedious diffraction, x-ray of the fibers, producing the fibers, doing all that, and provided that. And how that evidence, that crucial photographs which she had taken, was seen by Crick and Watson behind her back. She was not even informed. She was not even consulted. And they went into this race of trying to publish, where she is said to be much more cautious and does not want to jump to conjectures. In fact, she said that's a mere hypothesis. Modeling, I will not go into, unless I'm sure, because she was working with her hands. And in fact, we know that even in the Nobel Prize, and I was rereading yesterday some of the details, because it shocks each time you read what was happening, even in terms of the way they published their article in the nature, in fact, how she was kept out. She died before the Nobel Prize came, but there was no mention. For 20 years, it was only in 82 when one of her younger colleagues got a Nobel Prize and actually presented there, saying what her contribution was, and that without that. So I'm just saying that knowledge, which is not acknowledged, today, when our students were reading the NCRT textbooks again and saying, but even here, even now, it just talks about DNA only, as if Watson and Crick discovered it. So this whole question of who discovers, is it only one person? In fact, T.S. Kuhn reminds us again and again that if you look at oxygen, I mean, in 1620, there was a mechanic, a Dutch immigrant, an apprentice who had actually built a kind of submarine, put people under Thames water for three hours, gave them a bottle filled of some air, which they could take if they needed it, and even, I mean, the word oxygen came two centuries later. So the word or the term or the concept, the understanding of what it is might come later, but do we understand that? We put it as one person, we give credit to one person, and in fact, that is what even the biographer of Rosalind Franklin is telling us, that the Nobel Prize itself and the race for it can be quite damaging, not only is it arbitrary, but it just canonizes a certain individual, and then also then pushes out everyone else, not realizing that these are collective endeavors, and that even if we don't acknowledge, we have to acknowledge the collectivity involved. So that is how I look at, and I would like us to look at the knowledge commons, which is reframed in so many ways, and also lastly just remind us that there is a new policy called the science of social responsibility, the science and social responsibility policy. Just come out in, a draft has come out in September, and one thing is interesting that for the first time, there is a policy definition of scientific temper. What is scientific temper? Very badly needed right now. But it says that, in fact, it says that it's going to be a two-way process, but it's not when you read the policy. It's only a one-way process. It's only scientists going out to society. It's not the other way around. We don't see that policy saying that we can learn a lot from people who may not be scientists, but also it's saying that knowledge workers and except for research fellows, everyone is a knowledge worker. Science worker will be liable for 10-person days of transmission of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, it says it's not mandatory. It's going to be voluntary. But then it says this will be used in weightage for performance-based assessment, and a teacher's output will be measured through this. So again, something I think we need to look at. I would really like our young scientists here and others involved to look at this policy, because this kind of an institution for us means it can serve as a major nodal institution for many of these issues. So what do we understand by the social responsibility of science? And in fact, the policy states, this document states that science and technology has been an integral part of Indian civilizations for the past several millennia. How do we understand that? What has been science in the past several millennia? Have we been trained to do it? Again, I come back to the question of what IIT, Mumbai scholars are saying, that can anyone, how do we demarcate between opinion and fact? Where is our training? Do we ever look at it in terms of what is science? I know that, yes, even as part of our course in science studies, we were looking at, for instance, how there was a culture in South Asia, especially in the eastern part, of trying to deal with smallpox inoculation much before Edward Jenner had discovered his vaccine. And this was a cult. There was a cult of people. It was an itinerant cult, which would travel collecting the pus from the smallpox a year before. They knew empirical observation had told them that you can attenuate this for one year. And then when you go next, when you expect this to happen, you go around the population, pricking everyone and putting inoculating the person with that pus which you took a year back. And this is documented. So we try and look at this and say that what was the science behind this and what was empirical knowledge, what was observation, how is empirical knowledge led to some things? And in fact, even Edward Jenner, when we read his work, we find that he first came to know about it from women who were looking after cows. And they came and told him that we find that we don't get this disease because we're always with the cows, and that's how he tried to do that. But where do we look at this exchange of knowledge and this knowledge commons? How do we understand it? But how do we appraise it also? Because an uncritical passing of anything as science which may be there in the past is not something that we would call scientific temper. I'll close here. Thank you. I think there is a question there. So please keep your question as brief as possible so that we can take many questions. Hi, Anita. Thanks for the lecture. I just can't see. Yeah, hi. I had one comment and one follow-up question. So the comment is there have been recent reports about Greta Thunbury and this new sort of green activism where people have drawn their linkages to an entire $90 trillion industry which is trying to sort of encash on this environmentalist capitalism in a sense. And I mean, Greta is sort of someone from the current generation. And it's not about her personally, but there are accounts of how several agencies and corporations are sort of, in a sense, using them as a face in terms of sort of trying to advocate a complete restructuring of our environmental policies while maintaining the current economic framework under which they are claiming that you can maintain capitalism, but you can also sort of think of a green capitalism in a sense. I mean, so I was wondering like, I mean, our critique of how, I mean, so it's one thing to say that what Greta is saying is from a certain reading of science and scientific literacy and scientific approach towards looking at environment. But my question was, I mean, shouldn't we then sort of extend it further? Like we say in our classrooms that questions should lead to further questions. So for instance, if there is a green rationality behind what Greta is doing, shouldn't that also naturally lead to a question about the larger economic system, which sort of perpetuates some of these things and things of business motives that come from even so-called greening of the economy, in a sense? Yeah, should I respond to it? Yeah, sure. But no, I didn't say that she is talking of the science. And she's saying, don't listen to me. Listen to the scientists. And I think people, especially the IPCC report, and now in the last year, at least, it's very clear that the science now is understood well. And people who are opposing it and raising questions have, I mean, there all we know how even the tobacco industry has constantly even questioned what science has understood about the effective tobacco. So that contestation will go on. And certainly, we should engage with it. But I'm not here. I'm using Greta as the mobilization of young people saying we unite behind the science. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying that she is articulating the science. She isn't touched. She's read up. She is trying to say some things. But she is not a scientist. And so, yes, as people engage in this, we will need to look at what are the kind of possibilities. Of course, people are talking of climate justice, which says that those who have reached certain levels of emission need to do much more. And we know that capitalism is sort of strong enough to try and suppress much work, whether it's here or in the pharmaceutical industry or anywhere else. But I'm saying that it's worth looking at what does it mean to say that there is a mobilizer to say that can scientists really speak up? Because scientists say that things now are understood quite well. Quite well in the sense that in terms of the effect that human agency is doing to the environment, yeah. My name is Jai Ram and I am from KSSV. My question is this. When PISA tests are being evaluated, Estonia did wonderfully well. In the first instance, China also did wonderfully well. Though Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu became 73 and 74, there's a rethinking in KSSV. So some of the best performing schools of Estonia could be transplanted into Indian system. For example, the State Bank of India Officers Association, their 60 schools have gone extensive training on the PISA system as being practiced in Singapore, which got 586. So there is also a dark side to PISA, as you mentioned. But there is also a bright side to PISA. I would like to have your professional comment on this. I would like to know more about what is the State Bank Association. Franco was involved with that. I don't know what they're doing. I'd really like to know better before I comment. But I have my serious reservations to say that just because Estonia is doing something, we are transplanting that in Kerala. I don't think it works like this. I think that we have been looking, me and my students have been looking at PISA assessments for the last many years. We've been trying to look at, in fact, what our own board exams ask students to do at age 15, and what is it that a PISA assessment is trying to do. But there is absolutely no sort of equivalence or compatibility with what happens, the way we teach, our classroom structure, the way we learn. So it doesn't make sense. I can expect that, OK, if I do some special coaching and special work with students, it's not as if it's something. But I'm saying we're talking of systemic ways in which science is being taught. And that doesn't really help. So it's not just how some question answer has to be responded to. Teachers cannot take that test. And China didn't do very well. Shanghai did. Very limited selected schools of Shanghai. And India has declared in 2021 it is going in officially in PISA. And a new PISA for development has been now designed, different from the regular PISA. But that they're going in for that only in Kindre with Dalai and Union Territory of Chandigarh. So they've taken the Shanghai trick of trying to say that we don't have to take the full population. We can do very selective testing. But how does that help? And I don't think that we should at all endorse such an effort. Yes? Good afternoon. The Environmental Performance Index, formulated by the Yale University, shows that India is far behind most of the nations. We are 173rd among 180 countries. So instead of talking generally about something that should be done, why not let us be more specific and try to help the nation to come up? That's my question. Sure. That's not a question. That's a comment which I agree with. Yes? No, that means that a procedure that we can suggest is there some way that real concrete steps in our educational system or in our public lectures in public education, let us say. Are there concrete steps that we can come out with concrete? An experienced person? I thought you spoke about the environmental index. Yes. I don't work in the environment. No, but that is such a great impact on whatever we do now. But we know what in education we can certainly say we've been working towards that. And we know what we should be doing and we should be doing. We are not. Unfortunately, we are not doing anything really. We are only talking generally, only cosmetic. Not real, that's what I'm talking about. In environment or in education? Environmental education. Environmental education, OK. Environmental education, I want to say that at least as far as the NCRT was concerned, it had taken a policy that we won't have separate subjects like environmental education. We will integrate them in every subject. And that's what it was told to the Supreme Court also, where there was a case going on which had mandated that it should be taught as a separate subject. And that was done. I mean, at the level of NCRT, we know that this was attempted that don't whatever you're teaching, whether you're teaching maths or geography or language, how do you look at the environment as part of your discipline? And that was attempted. What gets communicated in classrooms and how teachers are oriented is another matter. There is a last question. Yeah, you were mentioning that the appropriation of work by technologists and how craft workers should be getting their credit. But how does this relate, do you think, to the recent trend to go for skill education or vocational education? Yeah, in fact, that is what is happening. What we are doing is completely creating more hierarchies here. And as we find, even in Delhi schools, right just where we are working, that they are taking tests of children, segregating them on the basis of ability, saying that these are low ability. These are Nishta, that is Pratibha, separate them, and taking different exams. The exam says that you are Nishta or you are Pratibha. So you segregate children on this so-called ability, which is normally a very simplistic test on division or some mathematics and some. So I'm just saying that that is something that we have been opposing. We've been saying, whereas we need much more understanding of how you need to integrate skill with education and also understand what is a modern form of trying to work through a Naid talim formulation where everyone is doing. It's not vocational. You're not choosing a vocation. But you're doing work as part of what you're doing with head, hand, and heart. What's happening right now is complete segregation. And in fact, pushing them out even earlier, pushing them out and pushing them out into national open school so that they don't even show under CBSE results. And the vocational skill development, they have always said that they've had no education component, no educationist ever works with them. It's only the industry which tries to set up standards and competencies. So we don't see how that's education at all. And I think that needs to be challenged. Do you have something to add to this, Karan? That, just a minute. OK. Madam, I just wanted to ask you, what is your stake on this scientific social responsibility document in PAK? We have enough of documents so far. After 2003, I don't think we require any other document because 2000-day document talk about the science technology I know is sense. And what is the social responsibility in PAK like the CSR, it is a become a corrupt social responsibility. And you know the output of it. So I just want to know how your stake as far as the scientific social responsibility is concerned in PAK. Yeah. I mean, this is a policy draft that's come out this month. So I'm just. I just want to ask, do we require that kind of thing? I don't think we require that kind of thing. Yes. But I think that in our own understanding, how do we realize, and how do we really teach science also, not just SDS being social society technology science, in that way, try and understand the relationship and look at science that way, and then engage even our science institutes. How do they engage with this common knowledge system in which you're trying to really understand people's knowledge contribution towards whatever is happening, not just going in a one-sided way? But I totally agree. When she had made an opening statement, he said that Dr. Vijay Kulkari had mentioned that this document should not be accumulated, some kind of dust. That was exactly happening, as far as our documents are concerned. 1955 got a policy. What happened to that? Scientific temper, we never had scientific temper. We had scientific tempered impact. In 1983, we had a policy. 2003, we had a policy. What happened to this policy document in PAK? Is that to think that we are only creating the policy document after a document without looking back in PAK? Yes. Can I ask a question? My name is Vendu Babu. I see this way the purpose of education is either to have the worldly knowledge to a certain extent. And the second thing is a great majority want to have an entrepreneurship, like they want to do cultivation, or they want to start some kind of small scale projects which they will be able to do on their own. Our third thing is, those who are really probably talented have a lot of knowledge and a lot of perseverance. They will go for higher studies and contribute to academics and technology. Today, of course, our system has helped us quite a bit because of that you can see our language has gone up to 68 years. And thanks to all the scientists, they have done tremendous things. But is it still applicable in this country today? Because we have so many graduates coming and there are no jobs. Educational systems would actually go into a lot of changes that will cater to the needs of all the people, isn't it? That is not happening, actually. That's true, but I would just say talent doesn't exist. So what kind of revolutionary things are happening? I would say talent doesn't exist for those who are going into academics. Let's redefine talent also. When you were speaking, you said talent is there. Some who are talented and go into academics. I'm saying let's rethink that and also make a much more inclusive, challenging, and creative system. Yes, that is what many of us have been working for for decades. But I think we really need to also put our hands together. Whatever I have to say in a broader level is there are certain skills which are not really required for certain works. So if our education system can provide proper things for them, say for example, if I have to do it that way, say maybe instead of 12th class, I can keep a student up to 13th or 14th years 14 years in the college where they are given training in everything. Public administration, like for example, today even after graduation, post-graduation, we had to go to government office. We still don't know. We had to go for all these touts and agents. We are not taught any practical skills. If you have to start any business on my own, again I'm at the disposal of others. So that's why I think the entire education system should be overhauled and a new thing should come which caters to the... That has been coming. It is getting overhauled, except I would say that I don't think education system has to teach us how to go to the touts and how to do these things. However, I think, yes, there's much that we need to open up our system and also not look at skills or life knowledge as something separate for only some people. Anyone who's becoming... Let's not look at what employment is going to do to the person. First, education has a humanist perspective and then, yes, how people specialize into various areas. But the opportunities should be inclusive. I have a small question. It is from education. You had been in policymaking in the education system and you had been in many panels in Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha TV. And my question is related to the basic education which needs for a grooming Indian citizen for future. And does the present education system cater the need of the society? This is one point. And could we develop such system where young citizens, young generation can have charm in different field of education? For example, in general, people think the study of science is only the temperament. Only should be the objective of learning of life, for the life, sustenance of life. But we could not develop the need of a study of different areas of science in scientific manner. So do you feel that such kind of thing would have been generated in the system itself so that social science or civic manner would have also been taken as a scientific study in the state of memorizing and reproducing in the system for the assessment? So your comment will be very... There's memorizing everywhere. There's memorizing in every discipline, in every subject, that's the tragedy. That will be part. We don't need to do that. And social science doesn't have to be made more scientific. Social science is a very enriching area of study. But logical. Why logical? It has its own norms, its own procedures. And social science methodology has to be understood. How do... Yes, there is some logic in how people come to certain conclusions. What kind of evidence they take. That is there. Culture develops through societal tradition. And culture is related to the scientific way of learning and we can say growing. When we grow, it is in steps. May I request sir? And that happens as per the requirement. You can be brief and you can continue this discussion afterwards. But Anitha, you can respond. And if there are more questions, we can take it. Okay, okay. Yeah. You spoke about, yeah. About knowledge commons and people's knowledge and knowledge available as opposed to sort of more academic kind of knowledge. So in fact, the new education policy has quite a bit about what it calls Lok Vidya. And says that Lok Vidya should find a part in the school curriculum in school teaching and learning, et cetera. We should invite people from the community to come into the school. Of course, there is some positive side to this as well, to this which is undeniable. But there is also a danger that all kinds of regressive ideas in society, regressive culture, regressive practices might find legitimacy through this kind of a process and might enter the school system. I mean, the school, in some sense, the school curriculum is endorsed through a certain process. Of course, there are limitations to that process, but certainly through university disciplines and so on, there is a certain endorsement. And one arrives at some formulation of academic knowledge. So how does one really look at this? Because this can be a double edged sword of actually letting in or losing the kind of progressive force that schooling and school education represents in society. Sure, I agree with you. In fact, that's why the way it's not as if this was not first talked of the national curriculum framework, also talks about it when it talks about what is socially constructed knowledge and how the resource person is not just the teacher, but people around. But just using the word look within, I think it's not been covered in detail. It's just a kind of suggestion. This draft has made several such suggestions, which in fact can be very problematic, including the suggestion that you will have a huge body of volunteers. I mean, one of them is a national program called the Remedial Instructional Aids Program, which are women from a village who have had the highest level of education, could be 8th, 10th, or 12th. And they will come and they will look at children and they will now teach and they will do coaching. There will be student tutors, a national tutors program, which will be students of a school being asked to tutor others for five hours a week. So the draft has got very, very serious implications when it's just opening up to anyone. It says retired teachers and retired army officers will be volunteers. So I think that has to be resisted. We can't just say that in the name of having community participation doesn't mean that you can just have employee women who are themselves class 8 and then say that we're employing them by the community and they've been called. You're valorizing them. You're calling them the true local heroes who will stop children from dropout. I think we have to understand that there's a professionalism in teacher education, just as there's a professionalism in trying to understand how children learn or how we make syllabi or curricula. That is very, very crucial. I will invite Professor Sugra to propose vote of thanks. So I think Professor Anita Rampal has given us a very stimulating material to think about and ruminate about some of the ideas which she has put forward. And it has generated a lot of discussion in this group also. So I thank you very much for accepting our invitation and also for this talk. Of course, I thank Mrs. Vijaya Kulkarni, Anita, Raju, and Chandu for being here and for continuing to come here every year. So I really thank you and I welcome you every year for this annual VGK Memorial talk. And of course, all the HBCC members were taken part in making this program a success. And Professor Anil Kakorkar for being here. For being here regularly. Our earlier directors also and our present director. And I thank all HBCC members who are present here and who have helped in making this program a success. This tea outside and please join us there. Thank you.