Education is the fundamental pillar upon which any human civilization rests. As a matter of fact, no
civilization in any meaningful form or degree has been possible in human history that has not been
built on the bulwark and edifice of education. While literacy may have been limited to the privileged
few in early ancient civilizations, it was these privileged few who controlled the masses and set the
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tempo for meaningful progress in such civilizations; educational systems have proven to be the
bedrock and foundational pillar upon which much of human accomplishment and achievement have
rested, too. In spite of the naysayers, the cynics and the pessimists, education has expanded greatly in
the twentieth century; while the worlds’ earliest civilizations were not western in the canonical sense
of the term, there is no denying that western civilizations have pulled away strongly since then. Riding
on the shoulders on ancient Greece, western intellectualism has been the bulwark upon which the
superstructure of modern civilization has been built. Even as recently as the middle of the twentieth
century, the rest of the world (as opposed to the west) had a lot of catching up to do.
Thankfully and mercifully, a lot has changed since then. India in the 1950’s and 1960’s emphasized
higher education but neglected universal primary education as evidenced by low primary school
enrollments, and a high rate of dropouts. Since then, programs and schemes such as the Sarva Siksha
Abhiyan or education for all programs have increased primary school enrollment considerably; India
now comfortably stands on the threshold of universal adult literacy. While the quantity of education
has been augmented, quality has often failed to keep pace. The tenets and the essential doctrines
forming a part and parcel of the foundational pillars of pedagogy and education are antiquated and
are still steeped in the western experience. What is worse is that is very little awareness on the issue
of the need for change; this must be the foundation of all meaningful change, but alas, that foundation
has yet to be built. In this book, we draw upon our long list of papers on the social science, particularly
anthropological pedagogy and the sociology of science, and propose the direction we believe
pedagogy must take in the twenty first century. This can be no one man army; we invite other scholars
to contribute in eminent measure. We also believe that this i.e., a foundational assessment of the
concepts of pedagogy must become one of the more important and vital movements of the twentyfirst century.
This work is also at the heart of our globalization of science movement as many, if not most concepts
in various fields of the social science are based on old and archaic western-centric paradigms. There is
also an unnatural gap between various fields of social sciences and the non-social sciences too, just as
careerism is rampant across disciplines and what we called “institutional coherentism” is lacking.
Scientists say “however, recent research has shown that…”. Does that mean that old research was
wrong? Why was it wrong? Was it due to the absence of data, or was it methodological error? Why do
we go round and round without a meaningful long-term direction? Very little scholarship is driven by
the absolute desire to do good to society. As Thomas Paine once famously stated, “ A body of men
holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody”. We have theories,
theories and only theories all driven by old-fashioned careerism or academic rivalry, and with limited
explanatory power. All this needs to change in the twenty-first century, and practical application of
knowledge emphasized. To quote C.S Lewis, “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you
learn, my God do you learn.”
Anand Mahindra and several other individuals have repeatedly called for a new world-class education
system in India and elsewhere, but there is very little conceptual clarity on how we should go about
creating one. Let a million scholars bloom! Let a million intellectuals bloom! Let a million scientists
(social scientists included) bloom in different parts of the world, all in the twenty-first century! Why
should we hold our tongue, and suffer in silence? Let intellectuals drive meaningful and productive
change. Let better education systems form the backbone of better societies! Let there be a healthy
rivalry among nations to develop better and better education systems! There is no need for only
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western nations to take the lead here. Those who have better ideas can indeed leapfrog everyone else.
Those who think better and do better, win.