January 8, 2002

Arun Mehta is a software writer, consultant, teacher and activist. He runs www.indataportal.com and has co-authored Technology and competitiveness: the case of Brazilian and Indian machine tools and contributed to the Sarai reader - the public domain

AFTER 50 years of fighting over Kashmir, the Indian and Pakistani governments haven’t just devastated a beautiful land and folk, but also prevented both countries from emerging from poverty. However, this battle wasn’t only between the politicians on both sides: often, even the man on the street exhibits an almost knee-jerk aversion to the neighbour across the border. While such antipathy might be understandable in the case of the actual victims of partition, much greater cause for concern is the tendency of the younger generation to blindly swallow and regurgitate the hatred they pick up from their elders, for this constitutes a long-term threat to peace and prosperity in the region.

Even after the politicians have sorted out our political differences, the gulf between ordinary people may be harder to bridge. Part of the problem, of course, has been the difficulty people have, in factually staying abreast of what is happening in the other country. Journalists have not been exempt from jingoism, and have often uncritically echoed the official line. Access to media from across the border has been restricted, preventing us from appreciating, why people from the other side are willing to go to such lengths to hurt us.

By allowing people in both countries to bypass government controls and communicate directly with each other, the Internet already has charged through this official barrier. Simple facilities such as online editions of newspapers and magazines, chat rooms, and even the old Usenet, are playing a role in helping ordinary people in the two countries discuss mutual problems, understand each other and electronically come together. However, the impact of this is limited to the extent that the Internet itself does not yet reach most people in our countries. But this is changing.

The growth rate of the Internet has been high in both countries, which is providing increasing incentive for others to join. According to Metcalfe’s Law, the value of a network is proportional to the square of its size. Consequently, as the Internet grows, it makes increasing sense for others to join as well. As communities that share languages across a hostile border are discovering, cyberspace has little regard for national boundaries. Potentially, a Sindhi newspaper has far greater reach, if it is available online. In reality, however, the number of additional readers the Internet is able to deliver to a regional language publication has been modest, for it is the barriers of poverty and illiteracy that restrict it far more than the physical one does.

As hardware and bandwidth costs go down, it can be expected that the Internet will be within the reach of most people in the region. The key questions then become, why should poor people access the Internet? How will it help them in their daily lives? And how will the barrier of illiteracy be breached?

The most convincing argument has to be, employment. India has already achieved international recognition for IT manpower and services, and Pakistan could easily catch up. In a single word, as we know, the answer lies in education. Tragically, in this area, both countries face enormous problems, affecting both, the quantity and quality of education provided. Much ink has been spent in analyzing these defects, even in the context of the Internet. However, the Internet isn’t just growing, it also keeps improving, in the variety and quality of services it offers. As a medium for distance education, it has recently matured from promise to hard capability. Yet, the most significant contribution of the Internet to education might easily be at a more fundamental level.

The significance of these benefits of the Internet must not be lost sight of, for among the problems facing the region, education must surely be regarded as basic, for it holds the key to all others. As we look to see what role the Internet might play in education, perhaps we should take a hard look at what is wrong with the current system, which has caused it to be so ineffective.

The education system we inherited from the British suffers from a fundamental flaw. As pointed out by Peter Senge in his brilliant book, Schools that learn, this system was born during the industrial revolution, which faced a severe shortage of trained personnel. At the time, industrialists made a fortune by taking manufacturing out of the community and locating it in a new kind of space called a factory.

Faced with a shortage of people skilled in manning these factories, the owners applied their tried and tested formula once again: they took education out of the community, and made it the responsibility of a new kind of factory called a school. Indeed, our schools are organized along the same principles as assembly lines, where the students are parts moving in lockstep from one class to the next, while the teachers are like machines that impart education. If the requisite tests cannot be successfully passed by a student, he is thrown out, not unlike a part that has failed quality control. Is it any wonder that a system which discards human beings as scrap, produces so many terrorists and criminals?

However, even those that pass through the system intact, are not well trained for the challenges of their professional lives. As an engineer who passed out of IIT Delhi, one of India’s foremost engineering institutes, I knew what happened to electromagnetic waves when they bounced off the ionosphere, but I didn’t know how to produce equipment that might do so. I lacked skills, except in the manipulation of mathematical equations.

More recently, I have been horrified at the almost non-existent programming skills of so-called computer engineers. The value of any education in providing a livelihood is severely limited, if it does not provide marketable skills.

To this flawed model, we have, in South Asia, added our own deadly twist: we have made education the victim of power politics. A wise Pakistani friend gave me valuable insight into the mindset of the power elite, with regard to education. He told me that when two big landlords have a fight, and one wants to really needle the other, he opens a school in a village that is under the control of the other landlord. Education is so scarce in our part of the world, not because we cannot afford it, but at least partly because the elite fear that it creates trouble-makers.

Indeed education does, for those who cannot imagine a life without corruption and greed. However, for a democrat, there is no dilemma here. The community needs to once again take charge of education, and through the Internet, it has the means to do so. Education is too important a task to leave to professional teachers alone. It can only work if every parent and professional make it an integral part of their activities. Using the Internet, working professionals can teach part time, while students can benefit from working on live, industrial projects, while gaining the confidence of learning skills that society values, and making some money too.

Instead of a one-way paradigm in which education flows mechanically from teacher to student, we now can have interactive environments in which the seniors bring to the table their access to industrial and societal problems, along with experience in having solved similar ones. Their juniors contribute skills in the latest tools and the energy to work long hours. The distinction between student and teacher gradually blurs.

What I’m proposing is the 21st century improved version of a model Wilhelm von Humboldt set up in late nineteenth century Germany. Having stayed away from colonialism, that country lacked the riches of Britain, France and Spain. What it had was cheap, hard-working labour. He organized the education of professionals of every kind needed by society, within society itself. If you wanted to become a hair-dresser, or a machinist, you became, after basic schooling, an apprentice, with someone who was recognized as a Master. Once a week, you went back to regular school, to learn the theory of your trade, and the other subjects your personality needed. The rest of the time, you worked at the direction of the master.

You started with menial tasks, but had the opportunity to demonstrate your value. It was in the interest of the Master that you learnt quickly and well, for he earned out of your efforts. When you were proficient, you appeared for an exam designed by the Guild of Masters. If you passed, you were allowed to practice that trade. Your customers had the assurance, that any plumber who was allowed to work in their houses, had passed the approval of his superiors in the trade.

After working in the trade for a few years, the practitioner was allowed to sit for another exam, one which awarded him the title of Master, which gave him the benefit of free labour, in the form of apprentices. And so the numbers multiplied, to build, in a few decades a nation so powerful, that it took on the might of the world not once, but twice. There is a lesson here, for nations taking on mighty rivals and enemies today. In the medium and long term, the way to win a war, is through proper education.

The technology for such interaction is now commonplace on the Internet. As has been demonstrated during the 24 hour Global Learn Day, organized once each year for the last five years by the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Global Education (www.bfranklin.edu), a combination of audio conferencing, text chat, the pushing of web pages to illuminate discussions, and a shared electronic blackboard, make distance education as effective as the face-to-face kind. Even a simple dial-up connection to the Internet suffices to obtain this powerful combination of media in the home.

However, most of the online courses currently on offer are in English, limiting their benefit to a minority. Distance education in regional languages is often considered unviable, because of a shortage of good teachers that are fluent in them. However, since Pakistan and India share many languages, collaboration between the educational institutions of the two countries would allow us to address our mutual problems, while making it possible to bring together enough teachers and students to make the exercise financially viable. What better way to bring the people of these antagonistic countries closer together?

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