[Answered] “Schools in India has failed in inculcating scientific spirit and rational temper among Indians”. Critically analyse.

Demand of the question
Introduction. What is scientific temper?
Body. Give some facts reflecting poor scientific temper in India. What are the reasons for failure of schools to develop the scientific temper?
Conclusion. Way forward.

Scientific Temper represents spirit of enquiry and as such involves the process of logical reasoning. Recent incidents of divorcing a frog couple to the floods in Madhya Pradesh after their grand wedding two months ago, for rains indicate that scientific temper as was mentioned in Article 51A as a fundamental duty has not been achieved even after 70 years of growth and development. One of the reason for this is poor education system and inability of our schools to inculcate scientific values in students.

Facts reflecting poor scientific temper in India:

Unfortunately, the vision of the Constitution to develop ‘scientific temper’ has lost, which can be inferred by following:

  1. Recently a frog was divorced as they were married in hope of giving rains.
  2. Rationalist thinkers like Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare were killed for their crusade against superstition and orthodoxy in society.
  3. As per NCRB data, between 2005 and 2015, more than 2000 women were killed in India following allegations of witchcraft.
  4. Prevalence of ‘God-men’ catering to the educated middle class who even spread their superstitious ideas through media and social media is a glaring example of pseudo-scientific society.

Reasons for failure of schools to develop the scientific temper:

  1. Wrote learning: Schools and curriculum focus on wrote learning. Indian schools focus on exams and marks (factory approach) rather than thinking and reasoning.
  2. Focus on getting jobs: The Indian education system is evolving into a platform of gaining employment rather than gaining knowledge. This restricts the spirit of enquiry.
  3. Poor teaching: Teaching and learning methods used in most schools discourage questioning, learning, application and creativity. Also teachers are less qualified and not interested in teaching.
  4. Illiterate parents: Still millions of people are illiterate. About 25% Indians areilliterate. This is a major hindrance to developing an attitude of scientific temper in Indians. Driven by pressing short-term economic needs, most parents are reluctant to send their children to school. They often pose obstacles to learning.
  5. Poverty: Poor background push people to seek jobs and focus on jobs and earning rather than learning. Winning bread to come out of poverty is major focus.
  6. Women backwardness: Indian women are still not fully empowered. And empowered educated women is must to instil a scientific temper among its children and in the house.
  7. Religion: Often the structural rigidities have their roots in religion. This religious roots makes it a daunting task as there are high chances of communal tension flaring up when these rigidities are challenged.
  8. Orthodox Society: The orthodox elements of the Indian society restrict the inquisitiveness among the children. Thus the spirit of enquiry gets buried in childhood itself.
  9. Attitude: Even the educated blindly follow the norms and superstitions due to lack of spirit of enquiry. This results in growing of superstitions blindly and it is trickling down from generation to generation.

In our country, where a large section of the society is still caught in the quagmire of superstitions and obscurantist practices, inculcating Scientific Temper among the citizens is of paramount importance for development of the nation. This is best done during the childhood and is therefore essential that the school curriculum should serve this important need. This demands inculcation of values like spirit of inquiry, courage to question, objectivity, honesty and truthfulness, which are precursors to the development of various traits characterising Scientific Temper.

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