Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) courses have been mandatory and integral components of the BTech programmes across IITs ever since the inception of the IIT system in the 1950s. HSS subjects comprise at least 10% or more of the total credits that a BTech student completes in order to earn the degree. These courses, dependant on the faculty strength and focus areas in each of the 23 IITs, are wide-ranging: Communication skills, Economics, History, Language and Literature, Management, Philosophy, Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, among others.
These courses are graded in very much the same way as STEM courses, and their titles appear on students’ transcripts. Faculty who teach these courses to BTech students also teach MA students and research scholars pursuing PhDs in these disciplines in the IITs. This makes for vibrant classrooms with participation of students pursuing different degrees in terms of levels and disciplines.
The champion of the IIT system, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisaged HSS subjects as integral – and not ancillary – to the education of engineers in modern India. I will focus here more on the increasingly relevant rationale for mandating engineering and science students to engage with HSS disciplines. Three terms that I feel encapsulate the rationale of complementing STEM education with HSS grounding are described below.
Inquiry
The process of knowledge transmission in HSS disciplines is intimately connected to the process of knowledge generation. These courses do not transfer data or information parcels to students in the classroom in a mechanical way. In any case, ‘information’ is more than easily available online. Instead, the teacher acts as a facilitator who trains students to investigate competing truth claims. Facts and models are held to be important but so are interpretations and outcomes.
These courses train students to question, rather than to blindly accept, statements even when they sound authoritative. This is not to say that students are told that all claims are equally valid, but that they are sensitised to techniques through which they can evaluate the merit of claims, whether in a newspaper, a TV channel or by a figure of authority. It helps that HSS disciplines operate on a terrain characterised less by laws and more by human agency, contingency and the interplay of diverse social forces.
For instance, a history of science course may be less invested in explaining the mechanics of human evolution and more in familiarising students about the debates that happened (and continue to happen today) over Darwinian theories. Why do people disagree over something so fundamental? What are their assumptions and what are the implications of the denial of evolution? Once students learn how to ask the right questions and resist the temptation of easy answers, this skill is applied by them in facets of their daily life.
Inter-connectedness
Engineering and Science operate in a multi-layered context. The engineer or scientist is a creation of various historical and sociological forces and identities, which have resulted from a fascinating inter-play of national/class/caste/gender/race and other forms of identification. Similarly, the recipients of technology are themselves not an undifferentiated mass. Technology’s impact too is not binary (good/bad), as we know from our everyday experience of using the internet, or the mobile phone.
Understanding the forces that have shaped oneself, the recipients of technology and the context of technology transfer or application becomes essential.
We have seen debates over the ethics of cloning and search algorithms. Technology has both intended and unintended effects, engineers and scientists trained in HSS disciplines are better oriented towards both perceiving this truth and ideally also grounding technological innovations in a bedrock of non-negotiable ethics.
HSS courses typically do not fetishise the origins of knowledge in terms of flat, undifferentiated categories (‘Indian’/ ‘Western’) but instead focus on the context in which knowledge has been/is produced, as well as the process by which opinions or anecdotes become verified knowledge, evaluated by professional and not ideological standards.
By: Express News Service
New Delhi | Updated: September 8, 2023 15:45 IST
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Humanities also important in IIT
‘The champion of the IIT system, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisaged HSS subjects as integral – and not ancillary – to the education of engineers in modern India,’ IIT Mandi professor says. (Express photo)
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(A Lesson from IIT is a weekly column by an IIT faculty member on learning, science and technology on campus and beyond. The column appears every Friday)
— Devika Sethi
Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) courses have been mandatory and integral components of the BTech programmes across IITs ever since the inception of the IIT system in the 1950s. HSS subjects comprise at least 10% or more of the total credits that a BTech student completes in order to earn the degree. These courses, dependant on the faculty strength and focus areas in each of the 23 IITs, are wide-ranging: Communication skills, Economics, History, Language and Literature, Management, Philosophy, Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, among others.
These courses are graded in very much the same way as STEM courses, and their titles appear on students’ transcripts. Faculty who teach these courses to BTech students also teach MA students and research scholars pursuing PhDs in these disciplines in the IITs. This makes for vibrant classrooms with participation of students pursuing different degrees in terms of levels and disciplines.
The champion of the IIT system, Jawaharlal Nehru, envisaged HSS subjects as integral – and not ancillary – to the education of engineers in modern India. I will focus here more on the increasingly relevant rationale for mandating engineering and science students to engage with HSS disciplines. Three terms that I feel encapsulate the rationale of complementing STEM education with HSS grounding are described below.
Inquiry
The process of knowledge transmission in HSS disciplines is intimately connected to the process of knowledge generation. These courses do not transfer data or information parcels to students in the classroom in a mechanical way. In any case, ‘information’ is more than easily available online. Instead, the teacher acts as a facilitator who trains students to investigate competing truth claims. Facts and models are held to be important but so are interpretations and outcomes.
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These courses train students to question, rather than to blindly accept, statements even when they sound authoritative. This is not to say that students are told that all claims are equally valid, but that they are sensitised to techniques through which they can evaluate the merit of claims, whether in a newspaper, a TV channel or by a figure of authority. It helps that HSS disciplines operate on a terrain characterised less by laws and more by human agency, contingency and the interplay of diverse social forces.
For instance, a history of science course may be less invested in explaining the mechanics of human evolution and more in familiarising students about the debates that happened (and continue to happen today) over Darwinian theories. Why do people disagree over something so fundamental? What are their assumptions and what are the implications of the denial of evolution? Once students learn how to ask the right questions and resist the temptation of easy answers, this skill is applied by them in facets of their daily life.
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Inter-connectedness
Engineering and Science operate in a multi-layered context. The engineer or scientist is a creation of various historical and sociological forces and identities, which have resulted from a fascinating inter-play of national/class/caste/gender/race and other forms of identification. Similarly, the recipients of technology are themselves not an undifferentiated mass. Technology’s impact too is not binary (good/bad), as we know from our everyday experience of using the internet, or the mobile phone.
Understanding the forces that have shaped oneself, the recipients of technology and the context of technology transfer or application becomes essential.
The recent super-hit film Oppenheimer was much more than a biopic of the architect of the atomic bomb. It demonstrated with startling clarity the perils of divorcing ethics and empathy – the foundations of philosophy and literature – from the processes of technological development.
We have seen debates over the ethics of cloning and search algorithms. Technology has both intended and unintended effects, engineers and scientists trained in HSS disciplines are better oriented towards both perceiving this truth and ideally also grounding technological innovations in a bedrock of non-negotiable ethics.
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HSS courses typically do not fetishise the origins of knowledge in terms of flat, undifferentiated categories (‘Indian’/ ‘Western’) but instead focus on the context in which knowledge has been/is produced, as well as the process by which opinions or anecdotes become verified knowledge, evaluated by professional and not ideological standards.
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Ideation
Creative thinking and problem-solving are allied in their methods. Whereas engineers are taught to think in terms of solutions, for which they ideally should apply creative thinking, HSS courses enable them to ‘problematise’ the world around them. This involves thinking of social and other phenomena not in terms of black/white or good/evil, but understanding and appreciating the complexity of the world around us, and within us. If creativity is defined as making new and numerous connections across seemingly unconnected mental or physical objects, then HSS courses certainly facilitate creative thinking that is not confined to any one discipline. Communication skills, which are essential to communicate one’s ideas and one’s self to the world, further help BTech students in real-world situations.
HSS courses in the IITs equip tomorrow’s engineers and scientists with a portable tool-kit that enables them to understand their place – as professionals, as citizens and as human beings – in a rapidly evolving world. This kind of knowledge and these skills are not necessarily to be valued for instrumental (or applied) uses alone, though they may well help in navigating the real-world. Students learn that there is both pleasure and profit to be had from trying to understand how people lived and thought in the past, what forces shape individuals and societies today, how the human mind thinks and functions, what drives people, organisations and social phenomena, and how embedded technology is in real-world contexts.
Courtesy : The Indian Express
