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Sunday, June 30, 2002
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The prescription for a
distinguished human life, French philosopher Pascal felt, was to know
the advantage that the universe holds over us, and to turn it around to
our advantage. A liberal education is one way to do it — to defy the
universe in this Pascalian manner — because it places the human being
at the centre of the quest for knowledge. We seem to have forgotten this
with the triumph of the IIM/IIT culture and our understandable mania for
the computers and information technology. It is important, I think, to
remind ourselves about the place of the liberal arts in building future
leaders and citizens. Leaders of tomorrow will
need vision; hence they will need
to be familiar with the humanistic ideas of the great books. Too
many young people I find — even
CEOs of our best companies — have
a tunnel vision, says Gurcharan Das.
Marbles
are not for children only
Shirish Joshi
NOBODY
has the faintest idea when the first marbles rolled across the earth’s
surface, but small stones, deliberately chipped and rounded, have been
unearthed at Stone Age excavations on three continents.
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