“Five Minds for the Future”

“Five Minds for the Future”

“All that we are, is the result of, What we have thought.

The mind is everything., What we think, we become.”

-Lord Buddha

This mind conceptualizes how youth can serve a purpose beyond self interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the quality of life of all. The ethical mind then acts on the basis of these analyses. In the present scenario, the need for respecting mind and ethical mind are very important, because many of the societal problems today are arising out of lack of consideration for others and overwhelming selfishness of the individual. The higher education system has to cultivate these minds among the youth, so that they learn to respect others, are tolerant and perseverant for realizing their goals in life. The five minds are-

1. Disciplinary mind: Disciplinary minds require the mastery of major schools of thought that may include science, mathematics, history and religion. Apart from this the disciplinary mind has to be enriched with expertise in at least one professional field. Research confirms that it takes number of years to master a discipline depending upon the subject. This mind also knows how to work steadily overtime to improve skill and understand.

2. Synthesizing mind: What is needed is the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into an integrated system and communicate the synthesized thoughts. With the increasing volume of information in the present day world, capacity to synthesize assumes great importance.

3. Creating mind: It is essential to build capacity to uncover and create solutions to new problems, questions and phenomena. For example; on creativity in general we look for leaders, rather than managers. It puts forth new ideas, poses familiar questions and arrives at unprecedented answers. The creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots.

4. Respectful mind: It is a uniquely developed mind, a mature mind that has awareness and appreciation for differences among human beings. The capacity built in the respectful mind, leads to understand other persons on their own terms with mutual trust. In the world where we are, all are interlinked and need to maintain working relationship, intolerance is no longer a viable option.

5. Ethical mind: It is indeed a built-in-capacity for fulfilling once responsibility as a worker and as a citizen simultaneously, it will essentially lead to “work with integrity and succeed with integrity”.

(with inputs from the convocation address given by Dr, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Ajad )