What modern education can learn from the Vedas
People learn in different ways. Some are visual learners - they draw pictures and graphs in order to understand. Others are auditory learners - they attend lectures and listen to podcasts. Some learn only if they use their hands - they construct a model or build a machine. Others learn best when they are sitting quietly with a book. Further, depending on the subject, we have to use a combination of learning techniques; I can't possibly learn cycling by watching a movie but if I want to learn filmmaking, I can't do that without watching movies.
As humans, we are also naturally curious. This curiosity is an essential component of survival. We learn as much as we can about the world around us because we need all that information to survive. Our brain is wired, therefore, to absorb any and all information we can find. Over time, we tend to filter out things that we think are unimportant. This too is a part of survival. If we didn't prioritise our learning, we would face an overload.
In the early days, several skills were needed for survival. We needed to know which part of the jungle was safe to take a quick nap; which plants were not poisonous; which animals to hunt and which animals to avoid; what weapon to use against what animal; where to find water; and so on. Today, it might seem like the basic skills we need for survival have reduced, but by no means are they easy. Managing health, getting nutritious food, building/managing a house, financial planning, getting educated, finding a partner - the list goes on, depending on our expectations from life.
It's only natural that human beings need skills in various disciplines in order to survive, and survive well. But our education system is not geared for such multi-skill learning. We're building a society of experts instead of generalists. In a wonderful article, Robert Twigger builds a case for the need for more polymaths and generalists as opposed to super specialists.
Who is a polymath? The word "polymath" comes from the Greek poly-mathes, "having learnt much". A polymath is one who has attained a high level of competence in multiple disciplines. In the 20th century, we can think of people like Sir M Visvesvaraya, Satyendranath Bose, C Rajagopalachari, Pu La Deshpande, and Satyajit Ray. They excelled in many fields although they were known due to their accomplishments in one field.
We need a framework to understand how a person becomes a polymath. One such framework is the Theory of Multiple Intelligences proposed by psychologist Howard Gardner in his path-breaking work, Frames of Mind (1983). He talks about seven types of intelligences - linguistic (exemplified by poets, writers), musical (musicians, composers), logical-mathematical (scientists, analysts), spatial (navigators, gamers), bodily-kinesthetic (dancers, athletes), interpersonal (counsellors, public relations managers), and intrapersonal (monks).
Given our present system of education, what are the chances someone will come out a polymath? We overfocus on linguistic and logical intelligences and often completely ignore the rest. But this wasn't the case in ancient India, which produced a host of brilliant polymaths from the earliest times - Sushruta (sixth century BCE), Patanjali (second century BCE), Nagarjuna (third century CE) and Aryabhatta (sixth century CE).
The period between the tenth and 14th century CE produced several polymaths in India like Abhinavagupta, the aesthetician; Kshemendra, the poet; Bhoja, the king; Hemachandra, the scholar; Bhaskara II, the mathematician; Vidyaranya, the saint; and Sayana, the Vedic scholar. Each of them is remembered for their major contribution in one field but they were masters of many. And most of these luminaries don't find a place in our textbooks, let alone influence the system of education.
Those engaged in the study of the Vedas or born in such an environment were automatically exposed to the auxiliary branches of learning known as Vedangas. If a person wanted to learn the Vedas, he had to first study the various subjects that were included in the Vedangas, like phonetics, grammar, etymology, prosody, astronomy/astrology, and rituals/law/economics.
This multidisciplinary learning led to a deeper understanding of the subjects. For example, if a mathematician wanted to write a treatise on mathematics, she would still write it in verse, set to a certain poetic meter. If a priest wanted to construct a fire altar to perform a ritual, he would use mathematical formulae. A text like Kama Sutra, which is about lovemaking, also has deep insights into aesthetics, medicine, psychology, and sociology. A text like Manusmriti, which is a law book, also speaks about creation of the universe and discusses ideas of philosophy.
We have an ancient proverb that says, "If a person knows about only one subject, he doesn't know fully about that subject too!" At first glance, it's paradoxical. If someone spent a lot of time with a single area of study and learnt as much as possible about it, s/he would master that subject. But the import of this proverb is simply that multiple perspectives are required even to understand a single subject and oftentimes the different point of view might arise from getting involved in another subject.
This is perhaps a huge lesson that our education system has to learn. And this is not just restricted to India because many countries around the world have a similar system that emphasises language and logic over music and dance. The system should broaden to give equal status to arts. A rehearsal for an upcoming play should be taken as seriously as math homework. Spending an hour on a science project should not be at the cost of missing music practice. The system should not just introduce the arts but should also encourage learning through various means. While several ideas have come up in the last hundred years for bringing about such changes, none of them have really affected public education systems. Unless we rethink this, the appearance of a polymath will be in spite of the system and not because.