Research

Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am one of those old fashioned type who still reads books. I read for fun. I read to earn a living. I read to pass time. I read because I enjoy reading......AND I mean ordinary paper books. The kind you can hold and fold and smell and tell (when on a shelf).

I am also one of those old-fogies who actually go to the Library to read and research. Yes, I do have a laptop. I have desktops at work and home. I read on the Internet a fair bit.I write on the Internet. At the same time I spend long hours in the library. I browse. I read. I reflect. I look out of the tall windows and dream a bit. My mind painstakingly analyses every bit of information.....even what I learnt 30 years back. I reject some, accept some, evaluate some and come to my own conclusions. These thoughts are mine and I suppose (at least I do hope) there is some sort of intellectual property rights protection. At the end of the day I write what I feel has to be written . I teach what I know and endevour to learn. I quench my thirst be it World Food Shortage or the makings of a Rachals. How else would I survive if I did not read?

The students I teach are averse to what I call reading. The sense of research and individual fact finding is lacking. A laptop connects them to Google and that is the beginning of the end. They rarely ever see the inside of a Library. Google is their weapon and Wikipedia their Holy Grail......the fount of all their wisdom. Google has become a part of everyday language....like Xerox, or Hoover. Academicians are weighed and judged by the number of strikes on the Google search engine !!!!!

Any material, any name, any product can be Googled. Nevermind the fact that information regurgitated by Google is suspect at best and utterly wrong at worst. Most students do not know (or think its best to be ignorant about it) that Wikipedia entries can be edited, and are edited. They are written, then re-written and then re-re-written by people who are not necessarily the best minds in the business. E reading gives little scope for reflection, simply because the links are too many, too frequent and most important most certainly not the scholars own views. At the end of the exercise the scholar, the student, the researcher comes out with an undigested opinion, quite half-baked. A little reading of the old fashioned kind (from a book.....in the Library) brings forward a questioning mind........not an accepting mind. In our times our minds were trained to question the question.....not merely to answer it. In fact I still practice it.

This new breed of scholars and their research submissions have been dubbed as Pap Scholars and Pap Submissions. The word coming from German or Dutch origin meaning baby food. Soft, mushy, gruel to be used as a supplement for normal healthy diet for infants. This is what the students now depend on. Not the hard core concepts, not good philosophies, not stand-alone journals, but Googled pap from Wikipedia. It's tantamount to intellectual or academic pap for the soft-in-the-head.

This same generation is termed as White Bread Generation in University circles. The coinage came from a Professor (Tara Brabazon) in the UK who declared that this methodology of research is like white bread.......filling , but without any nutritional content. Empty calories for the empty minds. White Bread seems particularly apt for the generation that is not interested in the meat of the matter.

How inordinately indolent can ones intellect be to read and then cut-copy-paste.....ready for submission. Does not the brain take in the matter and come to an individualistic conclusion? Has the scholar come to the University level after 15 years of training to have no opinion of his own?Should Google be the only source of information? Unfortunately, it very often is.

Google has become nearly synonymous with research. Once Wikipedia puts the matter or information on the Internet, it stays there, to be edited and re-edited and eventually stray far from the truth. Something akin to the old Nazi saying.....' if you repeat a lie often enough it begins to seem like truth'.

Oh, I am not forbidding the Wiki search. Who am I to forbid such liberties? The Wiki or the Google search engine can be the first port-of-call. Do go on to the more hard core material. Read books, read journals (even JStore will do), reflect, discern, discuss and above all analyse. Do not accept anything at face value. Learn to read. Learn to think. Learn to write.

I guess, a large part of the problem is because of us Professors. We do not motivate. Do not inspire. At times, maybe do not teach. To my huge student community .......I hope I did instill some sense into you. Apologies if I did not and have not.