How to impart values to engineers the right way?

How to impart values to engineers the right way?

My gastroenterologist once told me that my gut microbiome has been fixed based on my DNA and the bacteria that I encountered in my mother's birth canal or the sarkaari (govt.) hospital room (in the case of Caesarean delivery). Now, it cannot be altered, and my risks for developing everything from diabetes to multiple sclerosis have been pretty much written in stone. A person can however delay the onset of these diseases with better diet and lifestyle till he kicks the bucket for some other reason. You may then argue that the person never had a risk for developing these diseases, because he never developed them, which would be incorrect.

Let us not go into the scientific merits of what he said; let us appreciate the spirit. The spirit in this context is that one's personality is set in early childhood based on what she has experienced and heard from her parents, caregivers, relatives, and close friends. After the formative pre-teen years, nothing much can be done. You cannot make someone more honest or sincere or dedicated or law-abiding (at least constitutionally).

Given my experience as an educator, hostel warden, member of countless disciplinary committees, I could not agree more. If someone is a systematic plagiarizer, look deeper, you will find an answer with his parents. Till date, I have not seen a single set of parents who were sincerely apologetic about their ward's systematic plagiarizing behavior, which was incidentally enough to warrant disciplinary action. Their attitude is, "my son was unlucky to get caught or kids make such mistakes or who doesn't do it or a perfunctory `he won't do it again'". I have never seen any sincere remorse. If there would have been, the ward would not have done what he did in the first place. People are answerable to their parents. If they know that their father will skin them alive??, they will not even look at another answer script even if left unattended.

The moral of the story is that one only does things that will be okay with what he considers to be his "inner circle". Consider the case of a corrupt govt. officer. He gets away with what he does because when he goes back to his parents, wife and kids, he can look at them in the eye and say, "see what papa has bought for you" (of course with someone else's hard-earned money taken away forcefully). Sadly, in our society, such things are quite acceptable these days and people are proud of their black money. People say, "dekho kitnaa dildaar aadmi hai, teen kothiyaan banaa liyaa hai, poore gaanv ko noukri de diyaa hai" (look at this great guy, has constructed three houses, secured employment for his full village (of course, illegally)). But the same person, almost never, harasses a woman, or has an extra-marital affair, because he knows that this is not acceptable to his family. Morals are very context dependent or let's say upbringing and family dependent.

Like gut microbiome, this basic ethical programming cannot be changed in college. If a student believes that money is the be-all and end-all of life, there is nothing much that you can do. He will run after the proverbial "package", and cut as many corners as possible.

What can you do? Why does an Indian driver who has one hand on the horn and drives a car like an aircraft (lane divider in the middle) become a safe driver outside India? This is because he knows that his license will be taken away if he is caught or even worse, be deported to India. He still remains an unsafe driver at heart but is scared of the laws. The moment he lands in India, his Indianness explodes and he quickly returns back to his older self, unless of course a long time has passed. In the latter case, he lectures other people about the benefits of safe driving and draws his moral superiority from there !!!

Unless, we structure many of our educational offerings in such a transaction-oriented manner and abandon the idea of changing people by whispering in their ears, we are destined to failure. I have never seen any anti-plagiarism workshop where a lot of virtuous gyaan (knowledge) is handed out like VC funding, ever work. We all signed a pledge never to accept dowry in our engg. first year. What happened? Look at the wedding photographs of my friends, notice the luxury cars in the background.

As educators, we tend to overestimate ourselves. We feel that we can convince a student or just talk himself out of his behavior. That's not going to happen, and unless as a system, we realize our limitations, we are not going to succeed. We have to ensure that students are well-behaved even if they are not programmed to do so. This will happen with mostly positive incentives and small negative incentives.

The NEP (New Educational Policy) takes us somewhere. Don't have one kind of degree. Let people work their way up the years. If someone just wants to do a job, let them get out after 2 years. My views: record serious disciplinary cases where the student shows no remorse (drugs, violence, sexual harassment, serial plagiarism) in a file and make this visible to prospective employers. Create different versions of courses: let students who don't want to work hard earn 2 credits, and let students who want to work much harder earn 4 credits. Have serious penalties for plagiarism and make it mandatory for a student to stay at home for a year if he is a repeat offender who is simply not changing his ways after let's say 5 chances. A sincere and honest person cannot and should not get the same degree or benefits as an insincere and dishonest person: make your system that way. Reward sincerity, honesty and law-abiding behavior. Fix the system instead of focusing on individuals.

Based on one's ethical framework, let students choose their operating point, and let us ensure that they are not getting any benefit that is not commensurate with their ethical position. Like traffic rules in developed countries, this system will ensure that unsafe drivers are kept in lanes and they respect red lights also.