Flaw in Education and How to Fix It
Dr. Benjamin List (Source: https://www.mpg.de/17662734/portrait-benjamin-list)
Speaking about being competitive, how do you like to spend your spare time? Do you do any sports nowadays?
I also do lots of yoga in the morning, like body maneuvers, and I enjoy this also quite a bit. It keeps you flexible, young, smart and open. So I’m open to fresh ideas every day. I think it comes from the yoga.
Nobel Laureate, Dr. Benjamin List (Chemistry 2021) in an interview to nobelprize.org, February 2022
The contributions of Europeans and Americans are primarily responsible for human progress since the renaissance period. Products of reason (sciences, laws and policies) are largely responsible for this progress.
No wonder, then, that societies across the world are emulating the West by limiting themselves to the products of reason, convinced that products of reason are entirely sufficient to solve all problems in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
And, sadly, this includes India too whose own seers had made new discoveries some thirty-five hundred years ago by enhancing the focus of attention, discoveries that couldn’t have been made with any existing knowledge as there was none.
My research into technologies for achieving perfection in manufacturing and services spanning several decades in academia has produced a new understanding of what we, educators, have been doing wrong, and how education can be dramatically improved.
To elaborate, there are two approaches to problem-solving: One uses the existing products of reason, and the other through an enhancement of the focus of attention. The second approach is appropriate when the first approach fails to deliver the results.
New discoveries can occur when the focus of attention is enhanced. Actually, all discoveries happen when the focus of attention is enhanced, often unknowingly, as they did to Albert Einstein, smoking a pipe and deeply engrossed in his famous thought experiments, or to S. Ramanujan in prayer, or to Indian seers through meditation.
Meditation can enhance the focus of attention and also bring about positive changes from within, enhancing our emotional excellence. Since emotions can be measured (EQ Radio, Bio-Well), progress can be audited.
Enhancement of emotional excellence to cultivate positive emotions (love, kindness, empathy, and compassion) at the exclusion of negative emotions (anger, hatred, hostility, resentment, frustration, jealousy, fear, sorrow, and the like) is not an intellectual exercise. The required positive changes must come about from within. Just do a thirty-day self-assessment to convince yourself that this is the case.
Meditation enhances emotional excellence and it possesses the capacity to make new discoveries.
Ancient seers made numerous discoveries by enhancing the focus of attention. The Vedas are perhaps the best known ancient example. We can be sure of this claim as the knowledge therein couldn’t have been sourced from previous knowledge as there was none.
Physicists discovered only in recent years that the energy phase of the big bang event, incredibly small (10–33 cm in diameter), unbelievably hot and immensely dense, created the universe some 13.8 billion years ago, and that on the other side of the energy phase, there is absolutely nothing, a void.
No product of reason can ever explain how nothing can transform into something, the energy phase of the big bang event.
The universe may end one day but consciousness will remain for consciousness is eternal.
H. H. The Dalai Lama (Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, 1989)
Ancient seers answered this question through Puranic stories eons ago: Creation requires both consciousness and energy. They coined the name Shiva for consciousness and Parvati for energy.
Shiva also goes by the name Ardhanareshwara — Half male-half female, emphasizing the need for both, consciousness and energy for creation and for life. Government of India’s Atomic Energy Commission presented a statue of dancing Shiva to CERN in Switzerland in 2004.
Enhancement of emotional excellence has a direct bearing on the performance in the external world. The best possible performance cannot be achieved in the absence of an adequate level of emotional excellence. Boost emotional excellence and the performance will zoom.
Relatedly, in 2002, UNESCO reportedly began a worldwide campaign to promote social and emotional learning (SEL) when they approached ministries of education in 140 countries urging them to include SEL in school curricula.
Emotional intelligence is the notion of knowing the importance of emotions within oneself and in others, while emotional excellence additionally includes the know-how of how to bring about the required positive changes from within.
Intuition and emotional excellence are linked. Intuition is cognition without the benefit of the five senses and the rational mind. So, purposeful inculcation of intuition implies that there is definitely something higher than reason.
Intuition can be enhanced through yogic training provided the training is given at a young age. Children completing training have a demonstrably higher level of emotional excellence. I have several video clips from a demonstration program conducted for my benefit several years ago
Intuition and leadership too are intricately linked as leaders are often called upon to make split-second decisions at a moment’s notice.
At present, we are only focusing on products of reason in the classrooms. Emotional intelligence itself is a product of reason. This is tantamount to fighting with one hand tied behind the back.
It should be relatively easy to prove these ideas and concepts in your classes. Just select two sections of a class taught by the same instructor who would make sure that everything in the two classes is identical except that the fundamentals and practices of emotional excellence are included in one section while they are not in the other. The students in the two sections should be randomly selected. At the end of the semester, you will find that the students in the section which included emotional excellence have performed significantly better than those in the section in which they were not included.
Progress is definitely possible but that will require an openness of mind and a willingness to think outside the box. It is essential to remain steadfastly committed to relying on data (evidence) alone for decision-making at all times except at the time of meditation. Then, the rational mind should be sent on a well-deserved vacation, or else, it will turn into the worst enemy.
Further Reading
1. Pradeep B. Deshpande and James P. Kowall, The Nature of Ultimate Reality and How It Can Transform Our World: Evidence from Modern Physics; Wisdom of YODA, 2015 (amazon). James P. Kowall is an independent researcher based in suburban Eugene, Oregon. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physics from Brown University, and an MD from the University of Miami. He retired from private practice several years ago to spend time researching the nature of ultimate reality. Jim succeeded in his quest in 2014.
2. Pradeep B. Deshpande, Scientific Framework for World Transformation, Dialogue and Alliance, a Publication of Universal Peace Federation, New York, 33, 1, June 2019. (Dialogue and Alliance is a publication of the Universal Peace Federation, a New York City-based international organization with consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Cultural Council).
3. Bruce Kasanoff, How to Measure and Enhance Your Intuition, Forbes.com, November 26, 2020.
4. Pradeep B. Deshpande, The Secret of Exemplary Performance, BizEd, August 2019.
5. Pradeep B. Deshpande, Turbocharge General Education Requirements with Science of External and Internal Excellence, ASEE Annual Conference, Columbus, OH, June 2017.
6. Daniel Goldman, Emotional Intelligence, Bantam Books, 10th Edition, 2006.
7. Aha Dharana Intuition Enhancement Program, Universal Peace Foundation, 2019.
