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TULSĪ PRAJÑA it to the life of human beings is to reveal one's distorted vision of human nature. Scientific view informs us not to believe in miracles. But the truth is that a human mind which refuses to believe in miracles is itself the greatest of all miracles. Let us briefly examine how far scientific view of human life can help human beings. Science tells us that the planet we live on is a single star born through a tremendous boom (whose echoes reverberate even today in the cosmos) amid one galaxy among many. Science tells us that like the external universe, we too are governed byinternal forces not subject to our will, our life is helplessly governed by chemical molecules. Our emotions, including love are the result ofbio-chemical imbalances. Scientific view has deprived us of values, purpose, even meaning in life. Peck rightly remarks in anguish "Oh what possible significance could we be, as individuals, or even as a race, buffetted about by internal chemical and psychological forces we do not understad, invisible in a universe whose dimensions are so large that even our science cannot measure?" (Peck. 1990 332-333)
This is not a vision that can be the heartthrob of the teaching process because a teacher is not an eyeless guide lost in the Sahara. The teacher eye is focussed on a vision of human life, of human potentialities. And the human nature is his best all because
“The human being has within him a pressure (among other pressures) toward unity of personality, toward spontaneous expression, toward full individuality and indentity, toward seeing the truth rather than being blind, toward being creative, toward being good, and a lot else... The human being is so constructed that he presses toward fuller and fuller being - toward what most people would call good values, toward serenity, kindness, courage, knowledge, honesty, love, unselfishness and goodness” (Maslow, 1959, 126).
And these precisely are the values which mark out man from members of other species; and about these scientific view of human nature has little to describe, hardly any explanation to offer!"
If the humanistic teacher is not moved by scientific view of man and human life, he is also not inspired by his role as a counsellor seeking to cure deep-seated neurosis and complexes. This is certainly not what teaching is concerned with. The abnormal and its diagnosis and treatment call for an altogether different type of expertise, a teacher's task deals with the normal and his joy comes from sharing the normal, sustaining the normal and finally promoting the normal.
Thus we find that teaching is no longer autocratic. Students cannot be expected to do things just because we want them to, for our sake. Love and concern
January-March 1993
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