Instil scientific temper in students, says C.N.R.Rao

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, OCT. 13. Much could be done in science education that does not require a lot of money -- the first turnoff for governments -- to inculcate a sense of excitement about science among students, Dr. C.N.R.Rao, Honorary President, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, said here on Saturday.

At the school level, science content should be made interesting, at the undergraduate level, flexible options should be introduced in combination with a core course leading to a basic science degree, and at the post-graduate level, the gap between what was being taught and what was being done at the forefront of research should be bridged, Dr. Rao said.

He was delivering the keynote address at a symposium on ``Challenges in science education -- problems and solutions,'' organised by Vidyabharati Karnataka, Yugayatri, Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishad, and the Bangalore Science Forum.

Teachers should help schoolchildren relate science to the real world. ``Tell them stories -- for example, how do green turtles from Brazil migrate across the Atlantic ocean to lay their eggs in an island 2,500 miles away, and how do the offsprings find their way back to Brazil, in the absence of their parents -- and then they will learn biology or any other science. They must be given a real feel of what science is about,'' he said.

``Combinations in colleges like PCM, CBZ, and so on were artificial boundaries. Instead, teach them a core course in the first year and then allow them to learn whatever interests them,'' he said. A biology teacher for example should be able to talk about the forces between the strands of the DNA or a physics teacher should be able to pick up an example from life sciences to elucidate a physical concept.

Courses in post-graduate levels had become outdated, barring a few exceptions. ``Tell the students about what is happening at the forefront of scientific research and they have the capacity to absorb it,'' he said.

If these things are to be done, ``teacher interest is vital'', Dr. Rao said. ``Bring back the summer schools and the winter schools of the 1960s to enthuse the teachers first.''

Evaluation should be a part of education, he said. If the U.S. could administer one uniform test, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) at the school level, and another, the Graduate Record Examination at the college level, across the world, why not India have a uniform examination system? he asked.

If initiatives like these, and others were not taken to bring back interest in the basic sciences in 10 years, India would face a severe dearth of good scientists, he said.

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