After my last post I was wondering if I gave the impression that I did not find anything to critique in the Western education approaches. The fact that I experienced the Western approaches at a much-advanced level rather than school/undergrad obviously means that I cannot compare like to like. I have no idea what it might have been like at the earlier levels. I can only be appreciative or critical of what I have actually been through and experienced, and that just happens to be the system back home. 

There’s one particular expression of the Western style I have never got behind. Where in the Indian approach there is an emphasis on transmitting knowledge from expert to learner, where the learner sort of passively receives without discussion or question and then reproduces, in the Western one it can be taken to the other extreme where there is no expert as such. Another way of putting this is what I might describe as using a Socratic method without Socrates. The beauty of the Socratic method to me is that the interlocutor skilfully leads a student to problematize the knowledge they hold, and in the process, come to a better understanding or insight. In this sense it creates a moment of awakening. What happens when this is done without an expert or someone establishing themselves as such, which I have seen happen many times, is that there is no problematization at all. Everyone in the room might come up with answers to certain questions or what are called 'prompts', but without anyone to push the answers to the edge of reasoning, the answers just literally float as so many post-it notes on walls. Nobody leaves the room any the wiser or with any awakening. One leaves just as one came in, maybe having socialised with a few people in the room. Again, I might be comparing an Indian approach observed at an initial level of study and a Western approach dominant at an advanced level as well as in professional workshops and such. It's quite possible these approaches are similar when you compare the same levels. 

I cannot but wonder sometimes if the rise of AI is in some way linked to the lack of an expert in some instances and the lack of a rigorous sparring partner in others. I know that I sometimes feel a need for the latter when I am really thinking through an idea, not to get answers but to just logically provoke me, like Socrates would have. This touches on a topic I have been meaning to write for a really long time... AI has been on top of my mind for a while now but somehow I have managed to avoid it here… until now :)