bangalore he created quite a stir when his report was made public in june this year the yash pal committee report was highly ambitious in its recommendations like scrapping a plethora of regulatory bodies including the aicte ncte and ugc though yash pal himself chaired it from 198691 it proposed that they be replaced by a national commission for higher education and research ncheron saturday at a seminar organized by the the centre for educational and social studies cess the former isro scientist said the way education is imparted in our country can be detrimental we have a tendency to break up knowledge into noninteractive bits the result is we dont deal with knowledge but bits of itlisten to childrenspeaking about a childs innate capability to grasp knowledge pal cited an example of a class ii student from jharkhand who wrote to him in hindi asking why we cant see air he painstakingly replied to the child explaining why air cant be seen he also went on to say that if the child had asked the same question in class he would have been hushed up by the teacher dont train the child listen to them children can be the real teachers of adults a child experiments all the time and we adults dont take advantage of that he saiddisciplines should interacttalking about his pet subject pal said universities should be a place where people should be thinking we dont know it all and learn instead the tragedy in this world is that there is no interaction or connection between disciplines why dont engineers talk to doctors this is a malaise affecting the world and because of it we cant be as productive as we want to be he said pal was also much in favour of interdisciplinary methods of higher education saying one ought to be able to have a degree in arts and physics or gardening and computer science universities and teachers are in the business of teaching let them decide what to teach all in the ambit of the constitution of course said palthe mind meandersthe reason pal was all for liberal education is because he said the human mind does not work in linearity but rather thrives on multidimensional thinking the mind works like a river it meanders we need to have it in our education system as well what this report means is that we ought to remove the obstructions that impede our education system said palhe is so convinced of the report that he said the prime minister has read the report in full and carefully i feel it in my bones that manmohan singh wants it tooeducation is straitjacketedsupporting the yash pal committee report m r srinivasan chairman taskforce for higher education karnataka said he was all praises for it and hoped it gets what it deserves education in india is straitjacketed we need to remove such obstructions he said talking of the karnataka scenario srinivasan said it is quite grim