WHY SCIENCE SHD BE TAUGHT IN ENGLISH AT THE UNIV.LEVEL...!

Why Science should be taught in English at the University level
– A reply to Aelian De Silva by R. M. B. Senanayake.......(island.lk)

I didn’t realize that Mr. Aelian De Silva was waiting for a reply from me as to why science education at the University level (which is what I was referring to) cannot be imparted in Sinhala. Let me first thank Aelian for popularizing science in Sinhala. This is a very necessary function for it will help to change the atavistic tribal outlook of the ordinary man. We must articulate the scientific disciplines in the linguistic and cultural experiences of our people. We must teach people the scientific outlook to capitalize on students’ thinking and knowledge as points of contact and make the norms and practices of science explicit and visible. We must transform their day to day experiences in the home and community.

Aelian keeps referring to the achievements of the ancient Sinhalese in irrigation. This was the work of practical men who grappled with problems encountered by them in their day to day occupations. Since I am not too familiar with them I like to compare them to the early inventions in the textile industry by men like James Hargreaves in cotton spinning and weaving. There was no science behind them. I am not denigrating our ancient irrigation systems but I don’t know whether there was any body of knowledge like engineering science behind them.

But modern technology is the work not of practical men in occupations but of scientists working in laboratories. This is technology based on new scientific findings like the discovery of electricity by physicists which led to its commercial exploitation. There is the atomic bomb which could not have been produced unless the scientific theory was first established. It could not be produced by practical men but by trained scientists. Here the English language has a distinct advantage because it provides a larger knowledge base. Such a language base may not be necessary to popularize science though. Textbooks and scientific journals have proliferated and they are not in Sinhala. Not even in Chinese or Korean or Japanese. The Japanese undertook a large scale translation program of German texts., beginning in the 1870s. How many such books are translated into Sinhala despite the claims of nationalists in the 1970s when the controversy raged about the switch-over to Sinhala in the Universities in science? I can only talk of Economics, a soft science where students still use an early version of Samuelson which is long outdated, being succeeded by ten or fifteen later revised editions. In saying that translation is at the forefront of the intellectual processes involved, moreover, I am talking about something more than a mere rough-and-ready search for dictionary equivalents. I am talking about a search for the appropriate Western concepts for local concepts and thought-patterns. Typically, the translator doing this kind of work is seeks to convey an understanding of such thought-patterns to the local readers. He must be versed both in the subject matter as well as Sinhala. Wittgenstein said that "the limit of our language is the limit of our world".


Science has its own culture

By culture we mean an integrated system of learned behaviour patterns that are characteristic of the members of the group. I now quote from a scientific writer "The ethos of science has been described by Merton (1942) as involving universalism, communalism, organized scepticism and disinterestedness. `Universalism ‘or what we would now refer to as the internationalism of science runs counter to the efforts of many developing countries to engender nationalism in their population. `Communalism’ embracing egalitarianism is one of the most difficult aspects to be accepted by many people from cultures with a long authoritarian tradition. Science relies on challenging existing knowledge and postulating new theories and experiments. Culture gives young scientists the right to participate in the debate equally with established scientists. While it is customary to hold important scientists and their institutions in respect, it is not part of the practice of science to be deferential. `Organized scepticism’ often invokes public hostility in all societies when cherished beliefs are questioned. Science students need to learn how to question without losing the support of their communities. He goes on to say that Students from non-western cultures at graduate schools need to obtain practical experience in the nuances of the science culture. The study of the history of science can play an important role here, but it cannot substitute for direct exposure to the culture. Students need to attend workshops and participate in international experiments rather than rely on ‘reading only’ theoretical studies.

Science has a high profile in these cultures because it has produced the technological changes of the last centuries which have dramatically improved the general standard of living. This prosperity initially allowed enough leisure time amongst the educated and privileged to pursue scientific enquiry. Later government funded science and technology put men on the moon, pumped oil from the ocean floor, split the atom and spliced genes. The names of the most famous pioneers of science are glorified in western history - Aristotle, Archimedes, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, and Madame Curie. When the Age of Enlightenment swept over Europe in the 18th century, science took a prominent role in the culture of these countries.

At the beginning of the 21st century, no education in OECD countries would be considered adequate without a large science component. Science attracts wide media coverage in the developed countries and children grow up absorbing it in their thinking from an early age. It is part of the culture of these countries.

In many developing countries science does not play an important role in the culture. Students from some of these regions may not be presented with an understanding of the philosophy, practices and ethics of science. To provide "a level playing field" for them, we need to explicitly introduce graduates from developing countries to the scientific culture."

All the above explains why the intellectual leadership of Science is dominated by people from developed countries and why scientists from developing countries are not proportionally represented in the international networks that regulate modern science. Of course Buddhists and Hindus would have to leave their religious outlook which denies the objective external world when they enter the laboratory.


Globalization of University Science Education

Scientific research was one of the first global communication systems, especially at its most advanced levels. And high quality scientific education at the post-doctoral level is also now essentially global. Kumar David pointed out that science is global. Globalization is one aspect of the larger phenomenon of modernization, which describes societies characterized by progressive growth in the complexity of communications. The next steps will be for lower level science education – at doctoral, undergraduate, and even school teaching levels – to become progressively globalized. This phenomenon is already happening in the mathematical and quantitative sciences, and will probably spread to include other kinds of science. But to be efficient requires the development of internationally standardized and quantitative educational credits – for instance, standard certificates, objective examinations, and a hierarchical qualifications structure (which will almost certainly be based on the United States system).

Globalized education also requires a common language for communication, which is already in place for the quantitative and mathematical sciences, and will be increasingly the case as competence in a simplified form of international scientific English becomes more universal. As such a global science education system grows there will be increased competition and migration of teachers and students. The law of comparative advantage in Economics suggests that such mobility will encourage societies to specialize in what they do best. For example, some countries (even among wealthy nations) may provide little advanced scientific education, and import the necessary expertise from abroad – this situation seems to be developing in Germany and France, who lack any top-quality research universities. Conversely, just a few countries may provide the bulk of advanced science education teaching - as well as applied and pure research personnel – for the rest of the world: potentially China and India might supply most of world’s mathematical expertise. In conclusion, there are two complementary aspects to the globalization of science education: these are standardization and specialization. There is likely to be a simultaneous trend towards international convergence of basic educational structures, certificates and English usage; with increasing national differentiation of specialist educational functions.


courtesy: www island.lk