A workshop organised by the Department of Islamic and West Asian Studies (DIWAS), Kerala University, called for undertaking curriculum reform in the fields of social sciences including humanities by factoring in knowledge reflective of place and time.
The five-day workshop on ‘Reframing teaching learning process in Islamic and West Asian studies’ that concluded Friday was inaugurated by Bernard Haykel, a prominent West Asia historian and professor at Princeton University, United States.
He stressed on the need to imbibe interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary concepts while designing curricula. The National Education Policy should ideally ensure skill development in students. Skill development, he said, involved acquiring the ability to present information and data in a systematic manner. Besides, humanities had a significant role in journalism, diplomacy as well as policy formulation, Prof. Haykel said.
M.H. Ilias, an expert in Indo-Arab studies, flayed the failure to include advancements in the field of Indian Ocean studies in the syllabi. However, foreign universities recognised the contributions of Keralite researchers in the field, he said.
A.K. Ramakrishnan, an expert in Western Asian Studies and professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the inability of the academic community to understand the liberal modernist thinking and analytical studies that influenced a large generation in the Arab world and continued to attract many more could be viewed a limitation of the education system.
Kerala University internal quality assurance cell (IQAC) director Simon Thattil, Foreign Affairs Editor of The Hindu Stanly Johny, P.K. Abdul Rahman of Madras University, Abhilash Malayil of the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, and DIWAS head Asharaf A. Kadakkal, were among those who spoke at various sessions of the workshop.
