PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION 1. What is a Profession and What is Professional Education?In a vital and rapidly evolving society the words "profession" and "professional" elude precise definition. For a long period in the West there were three recognised learned professions, theology, law and medicine. These had a prestige which was highly prized and zealously guarded.
Then architecture, and later engineering, came to be accepted as professions. With the recognition that there are numerous callings which demand disciplined and scholarly training, the designation "Profession" has come to be claimed by still other occupations. Dentistry, teaching, journalism, librarianship, forestry and nursing are some callings to which the status of profession is generally conceded in mature societies, and the list is by no means complete. It may be that the words "profession" and "professional" will cease to be associated with specific callings, and will relate instead to, standards and attitudes.
Any man or woman who has prepared for exacting service by thorough and disciplined scholarship and training, and who lives and works in the spirit of professional standard, may well be recognized as a member of a profession. Also, the day probably is approaching when, no private business or any other exacting calling can claim the respect and protection of society except in so far as it lives and operates by professional standards.
Professional education is the process by which men and women prepare for exacting, responsible service in the professional spirit. The term may be restricted to preparation for fields requiring well- informed and disciplined insight and skill of a high order. Less exacting preparation may be designated as- vocational or technical education.
2. The Responsibilities of Professional Education--If our im- perilled civilization is to survive, our keenest and most disciplined minds, and to a very considerable degree this means our professional men, must devote their moral energies and intellectual powers to solving current and long range problems 1. The civilized peoples
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of the world are puzzled as to why intelligence and education do not bring peace and order, as to why democratic constitution do not bring democracy, why religion does not bring brotherhood.
One reason is that while professional men in a large degree are in key positions in modern society, professional education has failed in one of its large responsibilities, that of developing over-all principles and philosophy by which professional men should live and work. To the extent that such purpose and philosophy are lacking, the engineer may be at the service of anyone who will pay him well, regardless of the social worth of his services; the lawyer's skill may be for sale for right or wrong (with some professional rationalizing), while the physician may seek the place of largest income, rather than that of greatest service. While each may have high skill, the total effect may be great internal stress and even social deterioration.
3. Fundamentals of Professional Education-The foundation of professional education should be not only technical skill, but also a sense of social responsibility, an appreciation of social and human values and relationships, and disciplined power to see realities without prejudice or blind commitment. While professional men largely set the pattern of national life, that pattern is much influenced by their earlier intellectual and moral experiences, especially their Professional training. The standards and motives of professional practice in the coming years are largely being made in the professional schools of today. An increased sense of social responsibility in the professions cannot be brought about in the main by trying to re-educate mature professional men. It requires a changing of professional education in method and spirit, so that young men entering the professions shall be living and working in the spirit of the new, democratic India.
One of the primary needs is that the professional man shall see the whole problem with which be deals, not merely its technical phases. All technical education should transmit technical understanding, skill and method, not as an isolated discipline, but in its total human and social setting. Failure to do that is largely responsible for failure of modern civilization to produce social peace and harmony.
As has been said by modern students of professional education when professional students are taught the humanistic, social and basic science subjects with the methods of professional education, the increase in power and zest for learning is in some measure comparable to that which characterizes the shift from the textbook learning of law or medicine to the case and clinical methods.
The problem of professional teaching is one of content as well as method. If the professional student has acquired wisely selected basic knowledge and the professional way of thinking and working
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with representative increments of particular knowledge, then he can himself acquire the particular knowledge he especially needs from time to time. If he has mastered the art of using fundamental knowledge to get particular knowledge, the amount of particular knowledge he must accumulate is greatly reduced, and time is made available for the teaching of fundamentals. The converse is not true. If his time is spent in cramming his mind with facts, that very process may make him less competent to work with fundamentals. Every practitioner of professional stature knows that human and social problems are inherent, in all major professional questions and must be dealt with if such questions are to be handled on a professional level. When and only when problems are thus fully dealt with is the, student in facing a problem forced to ask the truly professional question, "What, all things considered, should be done?" Only then can a professional man accept moral responsibility for his own professional conduct, and determine for himself what values his technical competence will serve, instead of leaving this to be determined by others. Professional study is so demanding that unless the spirit and habit of seeing the total problem, professional, human and social, are in the very spirit and texture of professional teaching itself, human and social considerations will tend to fade into the background with memories of adolescence. General human motive and purpose need to be so much a part of professional training that to the student they will be one and inseparable.
There is a fundamental unity to all scholarly and professional thought. For students to come to recognize this unity it is necessary to have teachers with the breadth of mind and outlook to work out and to use in their courses common expressions of the common fundamentals of effective thinking and learning. The various professional schools in a university might well work together at developing these fundamentals. By such common exploration, the stature and quality of all professional teaching might be increased. The common basic methods for using fundamental knowledge in solving particular problems, on being applied in widely divergent fields, may become so characteristic of a university that its students will absorb those methods as one learns the mother tongue. To the extent that the same fundamental methods apply in all professional fields, the professions can understand and cooperate with each other. Also, in professional teaching, the development of fundamental methods in one profession will tend to serve all professions.
We shall now consider in some detail the courses of study, duration, etc. of the following professions: 1. Agriculture. 2. Commerce. 3. Education. 4. Engineering and Technology. 5. Law and 6. Medicine and refer to a few new professions.
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A.-AGRICULTURE
I.-Indian Agricultural Education to the Present 1. The Background of Agricultural Education In India. 2.Present Agricultural Education in India. 3. Facilities for Research.
II.-Agricultural Education in the United States 4. Beginning of Agricultural Education. 5. The Organization of Agricultural Education. 6. The College or Teaching Division. 7. The Experiment Station (or Research Institute). 8. The Agriculture Extension Service. 9. The Educational, Spiritual and Human Values.
III.-Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Education 10. Agricultural Education will reflect Agricultural Policy. 11. The Need for Agricultural Statesmanship. 12. The Need for Training Facilities for Leadership. 13. The Pressure of Emergency. 14. Emergency Solutions may be Dangerous 15. Immediate Research Objectives.
IV.-Proposal for Agricultural Higher Education 16. A Pattern for Agricultural Education. 17. Aims of the First Degree Course. 18. The Curriculum. 19. Flexibility of the Curriculum. 20. Considerations in the Design and Revision of Curricula. 21. Practical Work. 22. Three Functions of an Agricultural College. 23. The Place of Government and of Local Initiative. 24. Education for Functions Associated with Agriculture. 25. Fisheries. 26. Co-ordination of Agricultural Services through Education.
V. 27.Recommendations
I.-Indian Agricultural Education to the Present 1. The Background of Agricultural Education in India-Until about a hundred and fifty years ago Indian agriculture had an indigenous organization and structure which quite reasonably served its needs. The villages were largely self-sustaining. With the development of British rule, the industrial revolution, and the coming of a profit economy, the old village structure tended to break down. That the depressed condition of the Indian farmer was not due to lack of industry and skill is indicated by the report of Dr. J. A. Voelcker of the British Royal Agricultural Society, who was sent by the Society in 1889 to study Indian agriculture. He wrote, "Certain it is that I, at least, have never seen a more perfect picture of careful cultivation, combined with hard labour, perseverence, and fertility of resource than I have seen at many of the halting places in my tour". The fact that the farmer was illiterate did not mean that he was uninformed or unskilled in his way of life.
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During Dr. Voelcker's visit, in 1890, an agricultural conference was held and certain recommendations were made. As a result, an agricultural chemist to the Government of India was appointed that year. Ten years later an Inspector-General of Agriculture and a mycologist were appointed, and in 1903 an entomologist was added. At about the same time a donation of 30,000 pounds by Henry Phipps of Chicago was used to found the Pusa Research Institute. In 1904 the Indian Cooperative Societies Act was passed, in 1905 the central and provincial Departments of Agriculture were expanded and in 1906 the Indian Agricultural Service was constituted. These and similar actions indicated an awakening to the needs of agriculture. However, their total effect on the great mass of Indian agriculture was slight.
In 1928 a Royal Commission on Agriculture in India was appointed to study agriculture and rural life. It made an exhaustive report on research, marketing, financial credit and rural welfare. One of its main recommendations was that a research institution should be established. The Commission concluded that however efficient an organization might be built up for demonstration and propaganda, unless it was based on the solid foundations provided by research, it was merely a house built on sand.
As a result of this recommendation, the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research was incorporated, in 1929. Almost immediately afterward there followed the great depression, during which Indian agricultural income was reduced by about half, while interest on debts, rents, taxes and the prices of manufactured goods did not similarly fall. Therefore, the farmers' plight became steadily worse. By the end, of the nineteen-thirties recovery had begun, but then came the second World War, and attention was centred on military considerations. However, the Council of Agricultural Research has grown and expanded its work.
2. Present Agricultural Education in India-During the half century in which some official attention has been given to agriculture, a number of developments have provided the beginnings of agricultural programme and policy. Twenty-one institutions for higher educational work in agriculture have been established. They are :
Agra : Balwant Rajput College (Agricultural section opened, 1941).
Allahabad : Allahabad Agricultural Institute (Besides B.Sc. (Ag. also B.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering, and Indian Dairy Diploma).
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Amritsar : Government Agricultural College (Located at Khalsa College, Amritsar, (est. 1947).
Anand : Bansilal Amritlal College of Agriculture (est. 1947).
Banaras : College of Agriculture, Banaras Hindu University (est. 1945 ; Besides first degree, also M.Sc. in Agricultural Botany for a number of years).
Bangalore : Agricultural College and Research Institute, Hebbal (est. 1946).
Bangalore : Indian Dairy Research Institute (Post-graduate work; est. 1944).
Baptala (Madras Presidency) : Agricultural College (est. 1945).
Coimbatore : Agricultural College and Research Institute (Affiliated to the Madras University for B.Sc. in 1932).
Delhi Central College of Agriculture (est. 1947).
Delhi Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Pusa, New Delhi (Post-graduate work; established at Pusa, Bihar in 1903, shifted to New Pusa, Delhi in 1936).
Dharwar : College of Agriculture (est. 1947).
Hyderabad (Deccan) : Osmania College of Agriculture (est. 1946).
Indore : Institute of Plant Industry (Post-graduate work, est. 1924).
Kanpur : Government Agricultural College (First degree and Post- graduate work, est. 1906).
Khamgaon : G. S. College of Science and Agriculture (Agricultural section opened 1948).
Lakhaoti : Amar Singh K.E.M.U. Jat College (Agricultural section opened 1941).
Mukteswar (Also at Izatnagar) : Indian Veterinary Research Institute (est. Poona 1890; transferred to Mukteswar 1893; Izatnagar Branch 1913; Post-graduate work).
Nagpur College of Agriculture (Affiliated to Nagpur University in 1945).
Poona : College of Agriculture (est. 1947).
Sabour (Bhagalpur) : Bihar Agricultural College (est. 1945).
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AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES IN INDIA GROWTH IN ENROLMENT 1924-48 No. Applying and No. Admitted
Year No. of No. No. Remarks
Colleges Applied Admitted
1924..... 2 82 30
1925..... 2 86 36
1926..... 2 119 44
1927..... 3 209 109
1928..... 3 216 119
1929..... 3 254 138
1930..... 3 215 136
1931..... 3 189 105
1932..... 4 348 135
1933..... 4 291 140
1934..... 4 330 195
1935..... 4 376 193
1936..... 4 532 188
1937..... 4 457 196
1938..... 4 482 173
1939..... 5 918 255
1940..... 5 770 272
1941..... 6 795 440
1942..... 7 917 457
1943..... 7 1044 504
1944..... 8 1463 722
1945..... 11 3139 956
1946..... 13 3389 1250
1947..... 17 3808 1551
1948..... 17 3261 1448
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The Table gives the number of applications and admissions to these college; from the date of their establishment to 1948. With only about 1,500 students being admitted to all agricultural colleges each year, in case half of them should graduate, this would represent only three agricultural graduates per year per million of the farming population.
We are informed by heads of agricultural schools that of those who do graduate, not more than two or three per cent return to agricultural communities. In 1936 and 1937, Sir John Russell, Director of the great Rothamstead Experimental Station of England, visited India at the request of the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, to review the condition of Indian agriculture. After an extended tour of agricultural stations and villages he reported that, in general, the men who actually till the soil are scarcely touched by the national programme of agricultural education.
The cases where influence of agricultural research has been felt are largely those in which industry has so directly impinged on agriculture that the technical demands of industry could impress themselves on agricultural practice. The Indian Central Cotton Committee, organized by the government and financed to the extent of 18 lakhs a year by a tax on cotton is such a case. It has operated since 1923, and has impressed its standards upon cotton farmers. Similar committees, similarly financed, have been organized for jute, sugar, lac, cocoanut, tobacco, oilseeds, coffee, tea and rubber. It is reported that about 80 per cent of the sugar-cane grown and about 50 per cent of the jute are raised from improved seed, since the manufacturers are able to influence farm practice. Crops in which an organized industry does not take a direct interest do not fare so well, though improved varieties of wheat and rice are coming into general use.