Education vs. Training
I just came across an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times by Brent Staples on plagiarism in academia. Of course, blogger won't allow me to cut and paste it. The Irony. So I will most laboriously type out the passage I wanted to highlight: Staples quotes a professor-friend: Nonchalance from students towards plagiarism "represents a shift away from the view of education as the process of intellectual engagement through which we learn to think critically and toward the view of education as mere training. In training, you are trying to find the right answer at any cost, not trying to improve your mind." Is this ideal of self-improvement and mental freedom unique to Western education? Eastern thought and pedagogy seems to strive for detatchment as opposed to independence . I could be wrong; I find Eastern philosophy rather convoluted and I retain only impressions and snippets of it. But I am thinking of the prominence of our Asian and Indian ("India-Indians&qu