i wonder if this is one of those nerdy days of my life..well here it goes. for the first time in my life i experienced this...
i have this paper, development of economic ideas. (for non economic students,google it for details) and this is my favorite paper this semester.(handled by Dr.Suganda and Dr.Jeyanthi).
its all about evolution of thought process in economics. i have always wondered how ideas shift from one to another. like from materialistic development to human welfare and now to economics of happiness. well after this paper i realized we don't actually think anything that s new. right from Plato there has been the same ideas and these are only being modified to the current situations. and this revelation is important.
for us to really understand what is happening and to an extent predict what would happen the study of history is important. and by history, i don't mean mugging up dates. i mean undersatnding the old culture to appreciate the indigenous value of each race; understanding the reasons for a war, and believe me, this is huge. the reasons have always been the same.. the only thing that s new is the warfare. more recent the wars, deadlier the weapons.
it is a pity that students in a country like ours don't give importance to history. we were one of the biggest civilizations with a well developed economy and trade practices (when our supposedly world power was still nomadic. we did the greatest invention ever, ie., number '0'. we have had such great economic thoughts and ideas with trade flourishing (a favorable BOP too). for the little indian kids out there, we have to be teaching them all these..not just to make them proud and patriotic but to teach them tat they should continue the tradition of prodigy.
and if u are jus rolling your eyes now and having this "yeah right" expression written all over your face post in ur comments (i ll help u in following the instructions given above for the indian kids)
Let me be the first to comment on your blog.
ReplyDeleteYa you are right.I realised that late but not too late.
Most of the things only change.There is no such thing as absolutely new.Everything just originated from some previouos element which gets altered meaning fully.
Even scientific discoveries are like that.
Our growth ,success all depends on several factors which originated and got necessary help from many existing things.
We are actually interdependent creatures.
Anyway G8 work keep it up.
Yep, History has always been considered as a subject to store facts,facts, facts into the human memory for the majority of the educated masses around us. But they fail to recognise the real fulcrum of the subject.
ReplyDeleteHistory is not LEARNING THE PAST, rather its LEARNING FROM THE PAST.
Knowing the history, is to make history not just to let the grey cells disappear in Sand or Fire after death.
Some of the present day politicians might have read about Sher Shah Suri, who was one of the most able administrator INDIA has ever seen. But as expected they haven't leanrned anything from him. Had they done it, India would be one of the most happiest place on earth to live. Because SherShah within a very short span of time was able to do heruclean tasks about which his contemporaries never even had the iota of idea about. If politicians have derived a meagre learning from him in this span of 60 years or so, things would have been much better.
But the very problem lies at school level, importance of history and its social inclusion in this present day world should be made clear to students. Being a rational optimist, i hope things will change and there will come a day when students are made clear as to what and why they learn a particular subject.
P.S : I am not againt politicians or politics.Rather i admire politics. I strongly beleive in change, thats the point.
-Senthil