Bulletin Vol. 4 No. 11 Aug 1968

A recent study of student politics in developing countries (by Professor Lipset) suggests that from the partial data available, the destructive aspects of student politics are minimal in those universities in developing countries where academic standards are high and where there is maximal provision fo r serious study and a teaching staff deeply committed to research communicated in teaching. Since these m inimal and maximal conditions do not obtain as a general rule, I subm it that student politics w ill be a continuing problem of crucial import fo r the role o f universities in developing countries. I l l W ith respect to the importance of graduate studies and research in a university ， let me sketch the issue w ith a few bold strokes 一 leading questions, if you w ill. Is it not true that a teacher lays claim to the high calling of a lecturer on the grounds that lie is capable of research? By higher education do we mean— dare we mean 一 anything less than the training o f botanists, linguists, engineers, historians? To teach botany is secondary level teaching. To educate a botanist is university level teaching. To rephrase my question in Professor Silcock's words: Is it not the case that a student learns from a teacher who is in the habit of learning himself— i.e. from one who sees problems and solves them 一 not one who reproduces the solution to old problems which his own teacher 30 years ago copied from textbooks based on the problem solving o f a still earlier generation? I press this question w ith the conviction o f one who knows how much Asian education is the dreary transmission of the kind of knowledge that passes from teachers' class-notes to students' cram-books by dictated lecture. The elite of developing coun tries are rushing down highways on which Model-T- answers to Model-T-questions are responsible not only fo r the fatalities o f individual minds— but of the casualty of countries. For good or ill, to put the issue w ith an openness o f mind that discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish the merits o f the system, Commonwealth universities must live w ith or live in spite of the examination system. I f the new universities are to live w ith this system ， then we must recognize that examination-questions must have no right answers. I f we are to test something more than memory, there can only be problem-solving questions. Who sets such questions? Is it the dictating lecturer or is it the teacher who earns his right to examine undergraduates because he is a practising problem-solver in daily dialogue w ith graduate students? In any university ， who is the academic autho rity? It is not the vice-chancellor. It is not the Senate. I t is not the professors. The academic authority is what goes on in the classroom, the tutorial, the library, the laboratory, the students' and the teachers' studies. I f what goes on there is worthwhile, neither vice-chancellor nor president, neither external nor internal examiner— nor the dean and all his works can prevail against it. I f it is not worthwhile, neither system nor office, from vice-chancellor to dean to demonstrator, could rectify abuse or reverse the laws of academic gravity. W ill the new universities of the developing countries shake the world with new discoveries? Sometime they w ill. But the immediate issue is that they w ill shape a better world if, even under the regime of mass education programmed to meet a quick demand, they do not lead a student to examinations— but they do induce him to think. Thinking teachers can help to produce thinking students. I f the new universities against odds of a 3.5% annual rate o f population growth could produce by 1975 a high level manpower potential of 2% of the population of developing countries in the most needed professions of teachers, civil service, agricul­ tural and industrial technology, then the two most crucial problems of developing countries would be solved: (1 ) first providing a responsible elite that has the intellectual know-how necessary fo r develop ing the nation's material resources, and (2 ) secondly developing a research-motivated teaching standard that would transform the general need of an elite into an actual demand fo r their services. How can developing countries support a univer sity oriented to research and graduate study? Most A fro -Asian universities have nothing like minimum research library or laboratory facilities. Teaching and examination demands leave little time even fo r class preparation and private reading. The one hope is staff development programmes. A year abroad fo r jun io r staff carefully planned and under conscientious supervision is a reasonable investment w ith maximum returns, involving the promising assistant lecturer in continuing research, keeping him in touch w ith the frontiers o f new knowledge, and hence sustaining vital communication between the classrooms ， seminars and laboratories of established universities and the new universities o f the developing countries. A half year abroad fo r senior staff is just as important, equalizing to some extent the opportunity fo r creative study in A fro -A sia and the West, while providing the occasion fo r participation in the adventure of the new universities where the world history of the next century is in the making. — 4 —