The decline of intellectuality in Academia

Superficial dogma cannot provide fruitful outcomes and cater to a blind path without solid facts. This reality is producing irrational thinking in our academic centers as well.

Intellectuality is the essence of academia. Educationists define their boundaries according to their thinking angles. In my opinion, it is the long-life process of constructing an opinion about surroundings. Professor Shahzeb Khan, Assistant Professor, IES, PU, Lhr interpreted it: “The core purpose of education is to build own intellectuality-based opinion.”

Unfortunately, the intellectuality rate is declining in our traditional academic centers. Pupils give a childish look at their thinking horizons; they cannot express their views – because they have a zero-sum cultivated habit of reading. They do read text merely in terms of reading and understanding, rather than contextualizing it. That trait is a merciless enemy because it dilutes creativity — in the youth. In the reference column published in dawn, transformative learning: Our students are passive recipients of information and teachers are information producing machines. They focus on promoting students rather than on enhancing thinking skills. Learners do read or understand the text but lose the ability to engage with fact-based knowledge, question it, and produce new knowledge from prior existing one”.

I have my own-self observations which are deduced from powerful-critical analysis skills, which are necessary to put here. Yesterday, my instructor announced the mid-term results of one course. At that time, I was sitting in my hostel room and then a few of my colleagues came into my room and began to discuss the announced result with each other. However, I was silenced and was observing their conversation deeply. They have a few arguments in common: Why did the teacher give A+ or A to that favorite fellow boy or girl? One of them poured fuel on the fire by uttering this sentence: “I know, she is the favorite pupil of the instructor, that’s why she gained grade A. They discussed the abstract numbers in the form of grades for the whole batch and spent one hour on a baseless, irrational conversation. It should be crystal clear that these colleagues didn’t visit my room for any academic discussion or debate on rational scientific theories before that result-declaration day. A second observation is a worse display of the emptiness of intellectuality in our academic institutions. Once, I was sitting in my cabin at my department.

I had an appointment for a talk on the occasion of independence day at VIANA CIRCLE. I was assembling my thoughts which I had to present one hour later. In a chain of schedule, I was pinpointing important points in my diary as well. A person who was sitting next to me, a student of doctorate of philosophy, came to me and uttered a sentence that made me astonished but not sad, he said: “We have no enough time to fulfill even our daily – course obligations and you are still memorizing stuff of another academic domain. This sentence from a Ph.D. scholar filled my heart with darkness, which I recovered from later viaana circle meeting. The Designed patterns of designated courses also a devastating role in the decline of intellectuality. In terms of pure-scientific domains, we just focus on fuelling the brains of our students with abstract science-centric stuff. Consequently, they are deprived of profound critical analysis skills As, mentioned by Zubeida Mustafa, a political philosopher in his article”History Lessons”: Our prestigious institutions just focus their potential on technical or business-related fields; rather than on the teaching of philosophy, sociology, or human- history. In the pursuit of the outcome, our academia is not producing leaders for the times of catastrophes”. Linking abstract Ideas is also crucial for boosting intellectuality. To boost up in your particular academic field you also need the contemporary ideas of other fields. According to the published draft, management of science and technology degrees: Establishing logical connections among distinct fields of academia should be the core goal of education”.

It is asserted that this resultant curriculum based on wide-range content will lead towards profound intellectuality in our constructors of the dream future, the bulge of youth. De-linking the pure-scientific fields from other academic domains or vice-versa is the backbone issue of backwardness. If readers are familiar with the history of sciences, then they must know that science emerged as a social institution. As noted by Tobey E Huff in his masterpiece, The rise of early modern science:” To truly understand the science, we should consider its domain as a civilization”. A similar opinion is mentioned by Prof. Dr. Bilal Masud, Director at CHEP, in his selective writings: “For years science teachers have claimed that pupils should study natural science to develop a scientific attitude, yet there is no evidence that enrollment in science classes improve one’s scientific attitude”. In my opinion, following the sayings of experts in academia, if we allow our learners to explore the world by linking disparate academic fields, it will surely enhance their intellectuality in them. They will build an environment that will be based on Ilm-Insan Doseity ( knowledge-human friendship ). A glimpse of hope is still giving us the footprints for heading forward in the room full of darkness. Few solutions are flowing in mind; to boost the intellectuality among learners in academic institutions, we should begin with valuable reforms in the content of curriculum-rely on diversities.

Currently, the curriculum is unique-centric. Rather, it should be multi-centric. Besides, raising intellectuality, it will also give an edge to learners to explore the world according to their intrinsic aptitudes. Suggestions aligned with ground realities give better outcomes rather than impractical or dry solutions. Similarly, a few practical procedures in the application form regarding reforms in the content of the curriculum for the sake of making it multidimensional can be put here. Let’s say, a graduate student enrolled in a class in Computer Programming. Traditionally, he will be able to learn only basic computer languages like C or C++ or C# while imprisoned in the content modules designed by his educational boss. On the other hand–in terms of multi-dimensional curricula- students should be allowed to learn about various new technologies. He may learn Artificial Intelligence (AI), its driven language Java and its subatomic fields like neurological science, image processing et. c, which is going to lead humans in the coming decades.

As quoted by Youval Noah Harari in his work, Homo Deus: “It might be possible that labor force of humans will be replaced by AI, and humans will be unemployed but unemployable”. In addition to other academic appraisals, the connectivity, and coherence between courses are in the framework of the curriculum. It means that the courses of the same genera which are being taught to higher classes should be aligned coherently. It can be understood from the following devised procedure, practical-aligned with ground turmoils; In a Bachelor of Physics, two famous courses are offered: Electronic Theory and Electronics lab. According to degree management mantras, these two courses should be connected, and the same theoretical work which students are discussing in the class should perform practically in the Electronic Lab. In short, it is proposed that the tutors should be the same. If it is not possible, then two different tutors can continue the course by making connections. Reality-centric Suggestions and their implementation criteria have been derived above, but the big mantra is that who is going to lead in this reform journey?