Dear Jeyamohan,
I have been watching some of your recent videos about technical education and what we should really understand by the word “education.” I found your distinction between technical training and real education very interesting, and it made me think about the way technical subjects are generally taught in India.
Personally, I feel that technical education itself can be a complete form of education if it is taught in its original and deeper sense. The problem, perhaps, is not with technical education but with the way we teach it. In many places, technical education has been reduced to a kind of practical training. Students are taught how to operate something, how to follow a procedure, or how to perform a particular task. They may become efficient at doing the work, but their understanding of the subject often remains limited.
A technical subject has a theory behind it, just as every other field of knowledge does. There is a history of how the knowledge developed, the principles behind it, the problems that led people to discover it, and the possibilities that arise when those principles are understood deeply. If these aspects are taught along with practical training, technical education can become a very powerful form of intellectual education.
For example, when a student learns engineering merely as a set of procedures, he may become capable of producing or repairing something. But when he understands why a particular principle works, how that principle was discovered, and how it can be applied differently in new situations, his mind begins to work in another way. He may start asking questions, making connections and imagining possibilities that were not part of his original lesson.
That, to me, is where education truly begins.
Education should not merely make a person capable of doing a particular job. It should expand the person’s capacity to think. It should make the mind curious and receptive to new ideas. It should give a student the confidence to question what already exists and the imagination to create something that does not yet exist.
In that sense, I don’t think we should create such a sharp division between “technical education” and “real education.” Any field can become real education when it is taught with its underlying ideas, principles and intellectual history. Even a very practical subject can open the mind enormously if the student is encouraged to understand it rather than merely practise it.
Perhaps our education system has a tendency to separate knowledge into compartments. Theory is treated as one thing and practical knowledge as another. But in reality, they should constantly illuminate each other. Practice without understanding can become mechanical, while theory without contact with reality can become abstract. When the two come together, education becomes much more alive.
I think this is especially important for young people today. They are often trained to acquire a skill quickly so that they can enter the job market. But if education ends there, we are producing skilled workers without necessarily producing independent thinkers. A person may know how to use a machine or software perfectly and still lack the ability to ask what else that knowledge could be used for.
If the theory behind the skill is also taught, the student’s mind can begin to move beyond the immediate task. He can understand the structure of the subject, see relationships between different areas of knowledge, and perhaps even discover new possibilities within his own field. That is where creativity comes from.
So, after listening to your videos, I felt that perhaps technical education itself should be reimagined. Instead of considering it as something inferior to a so-called “higher” or “liberal” education, we should try to teach every technical discipline in its fullest form—with theory, history, practice, experimentation and creative thinking.
Then a student who studies a technical subject will not merely learn a profession. He will also acquire a way of seeing the world.
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on this. I feel that this question is especially important in India, where millions of young people enter technical and vocational education every year. If we can transform these institutions from places that merely train people for employment into places where their minds genuinely open towards knowledge and creativity, it could make a tremendous difference.
With regards,
Raja Kumarsami
