As the Russia Ukraine war continues to cause death and devastation of enormous proportions and the so-called global community appears helpless, a basic question crops up. Why are we still ruled by animal instincts with hostility, aggression and propensity to kill continuing with the spirit that was seen in the prehistoric ages. Have all those attempts to make human beings humans through education, religion and other agencies of socialisation failed to make an impact? One more question arises: Who are the soldiers fighting for? Are the Russians fighting for their country or for a person named Putin. All those ideological alibis make little sense. The fact remains that it is one man’s ego, and his paranoid assumptions that has brought this world to the brink. Advocacies of Social Darwinism could not have led to anything better. Survival of the fittest is a jargon that justifies violence and aggression to approve pouncing of the strong on the weak. The law of the jungle is prevailing in human societies, too. Man has proved to be worse than animals. Animals only kill when there is need. Human beings, on the other hand, kill even when they don’t have any pressing reason to do so. And this is not the first time.Animal instincts have had the better of human reason in the past also. And it has always been just one cause. One man’s ego and many peoples’ acquiescence. The way out is application of righteous reason by all those who don’t say no when they want to say no. It is against this backdrop that we need to discuss education. Education, that is supposed to refine human nature and transform the animal in us to human beings. According to a social media post, a letter addressed to teachers was found in a Nazi concentration camp at the end of 2nd World War. It says something very relevant. Even if the authenticity is doubtful the contents need a serious thought. It is quoted below. ‘I am survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no one should witness. Chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians, infants killed by trained nurses, women and babies shot and burnt by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is to help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths and educated illiterates. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve towards making our children humane’. Interestingly, Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder of BHU said something similar some four decades earlier. He said that a teaching university would half perform its function if it does not seek to develop the heart power of its scholars with the same solicitude with which it develops the brain power. He placed formation of character as one of the principal objects of creating the university. It should not turnout engineers, doctors, managers, etc., but also men of high character, probity and honour. It is time to try and re-invent education so that it creates decent human beings rather than cold blooded professionals. It is going to be a daunting task as designing a curriculum to make good human beings is a tall order. But attempts can be made so that the unreasonable and undeserving are not followed by the unwilling.Education must awaken the conscience.

Pathak is a professor of management, writer, and an acclaimed public speaker. He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com