Emotions, learning, and democracy: Reviving the spirit of education

When a father becomes a gambler and his obligation to his family takes the secondary place in his mind, he is no longer a man, but an automaton led by the power of greed.
(Tagore, Nationalism, 2018)
(Excerpts of the keynote address at Annual Sessions at the Faculty of Education, The Open University of Sri Lanka––Empowering Minds: Education for New Era.)

As I am coming from the Humanities and Social Sciences and Performance Studies disciplines, I have a close affinity with education and education philosophy. I have also been engaged in the current debate on higher education, writing and presenting my ideas with the academia and the public domains. I have been motivated by the like-minded scholars (Senanayake, 2021; Amarakeerthi, 2013; Uyangoda, 2017 & 2023; Rambukwella, 2024; Jayasinghe & Fernando 2023; & Jayasinghe 2024) who have been continually discussing problems related to our education and the role of humanities and aesthetics within this sphere. Some of the recurrent themes I have raised in these writings are burning issues in our current education scenario.

Among them, the indoctrination, decline of the arts and aesthetic education in our education sector, and the importance of creative arts in human development were prominent. Hence, in today’s speech, I will continue this discussion and try to broaden the scope of it. The theme of today’s speech can be categorized in three areas of studies: emotions, education, and democracy. What I am going to present today is the role of emotion in education and how this new paradigm of education could lead to the democratic establishments in society. In this speech, I try to build a connection between these key areas of arts and aesthetic education, its vital ingredient of empathy, and how this empathic education supports democracy in the society. This argument will be further elaborated in the course of my talk.

We, as a nation, are on the verge of a transition. This transition has been gradually taking place in our society through the influences of neo liberal economic and political changes happening throughout the region. The glory of our free education system and the heritage we envisioned have also been challenged by the new developments of private educational institutions. These new trends have distorted the true meanings while diminishing the philosophical and moral values of education.

It is the skill acquisition that has come to the fore of the educational discourse. Skills that can be used in the social milieu, and can support the economic growth of the country have been commissioned for our curricula. This mantra has been circulated and supported by the governments which ruled this country for decades. We, as academics, have also adopted strategies to cater these policies to indoctrinate our children to become future entrepreneurs. All the philosophical and moral values of education have been reduced to produce mere labourers. Education is interpreted as a commodity, which is being sold in the market based on supply and demand. We are advised that if we cannot compete in the market, our survival is at stake.

Now, who are we? And, where are we? Where is our society heading? These simple but vital questions are important for us to rethink how we educate our children and what we gain out of it. What kind of society we have created today, as a whole after implementing those educational policies imposed by the authorities? Over the past few years, the world has gone through a myriad obstacles and difficulties facing a worldwide pandemic and devastating wars. After many centuries, we faced the Covid-19 pandemic which challenged us on how we live as a community. Over two years, we were locked down and were isolated from the world. We were locked down in our own houses and the social distancing was imposed reframing ourselves to be connected with each other.

Pandemic, Aragalaya and emotions

Pandemic introduced different ways of learning and teaching in our education sector. The traditional ways of teaching and learning were replaced by the online modes of learning. We started conducting seminars and lectures through online zoom technology and other modes to connect with our students. Students, somehow or other, connected with us through their mobile phones and other devices. The conception behind all these technological advancements implied that the education can be successfully delivered via online mode, and the cost can also be reduced drastically allowing the government to reduce the cost of education and infrastructure.

However, the vital concepts in the educational business, such as corporeality, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, temporality, and spatiality have been redefined and challenged. The learning and teaching were redefined in the virtual reality, reducing the values of interpersonal and corporeal connections between learners. We tend to believe that it is not important for the learner to be present in front of other learners but is enough for her or his virtual avatar to be present.

Soon after the taming of the pandemic situation, our society was shattered with the economic bankruptcy and social upheavals. The financial hardship experienced by the people of the country, resulted in demand for basic needs, cooking gas, petrol, and other important rations. Vigil and silent protests, followed by the mass movements and occupation, ignited the country’s largest non-party people’s struggle, Aragalaya.

Youth of the country encamped the Galle Face Green, and established alternative communal spaces. Cinema, school, community kitchen and even an alternative people’s university were established. Within a few days, many GotaGoGama encampments were established in major cities of the country demanding the President and the Parliament to resign. The new people’s democracy was established by people, for people. This mass movement not only showed us new ways of governing the country but also new ways of living as a community. Human connection and communal living were established until the military actions uprooted the GotaGoGama encampment.

You must be wondering why I am trying to recall this unpleasant past of our social memory. Why is it important for us to go back and see how we passed this phase of time and have come to this point today? As my key ideas are related to emotional education, empathy, arts, and democracy, it is important for us to revisit such a brutal past and learn lessons from it. The pandemic situation taught us how it is important for us, as human beings, to be connected and live with each other as a society.

The pandemic taught us the importance of revisiting communal life, which has sustained and enriched our lives for centuries. Aragalaya further emphasised the importance of communal struggle and co-living in order for us to establish a democratic society. Democracy cannot be sustained without human engagement. It is not something that the ruling government or an alien authority donates to us. It is something that is generated through human connections and collective will. If we clearly scrutinise those two phenomena we experienced in the recent past, it is evident that in the first phenomenon, the pandemic challenged our emotional engagement with others. In the second phenomenon, Aragalaya, we witnessed how important emotions are to reconnect with people and demand for democracy.

Anxiety of our time

Today, as educators, we are on the verge of resolving complex issues related to education. Information technology and AI have invaded the traditional teaching and leaning approaches. The role of the teacher is being challenged and also being shifted by artificial intelligence. The question arises, whether we have a key role to play in the lecture theatre or in the classroom when AI invades our positions. With technological advancement and artificial intelligence, our role as teachers and also what we teach are being challenged. Now, the question is what educational philosophy or theory is suitable for us to guide our next generation of learners’ what methods are appropriate for this new generation to learn and become valuable citizens for the country.

The argument that I want to bring forward is that in our education, we lost the key ingredient, which is the affective development in learning. In other words, we have not focused on how our learners should be equipped with emotional educational principles. Affective components of our education were marginalised or forgotten in favour of promoting skill development or manual learning. One of the reasons behind this lack is the way we conceptualised our educational policies, defining education in dichotomous ways.

For instance, as philosopher john Dewey says, ‘theory and practice, individual and group, public and private, method and subject matter, mind and behaviour, means and ends, and culture and vocation’ (Palmer et al., 2002, p. 197) are the ways that we defined our educational principles. Dewey’s educational philosophy is based on the key principle that the children should learn in the classroom where they learn the society through ‘miniature community and or embryonic society’ (Palmer et al., 2002, p. 196). It is vital for the students to learn this communal living, because in the larger canvas, they learn to live in the democratic society as elders. Communal empathy is thus a vital component in developing a healthy, democratic and caring society where each person has a place and respect.

Today, we focus on education, but the truth is we are living in a paradoxical era. Bruzzone (2024) argues that with this pandemic situation, the ongoing conflict between developed nations, and also the advancement of television and online technology, our young generation is in a conundrum. Living in these complex social terrains, our young generation is experiencing complex inner upheavals. He argues that,

The rhetoric of happiness and the entertainment industry keep children and adolescents in a state of intermittent distraction that prevents them from exploring their inner self, including its less appealing, grey areas. Cinema, TV, and video games elicit strong emotions, helping the young to evade the desert of boredom and apathy (Bruzzone, 2024, p.2).

Even though our young people are equipped with devices throughout their livelihood, more or less they are isolated. The media always exaggerates that with mobile technology and other online devices, we are connected to the world and are not isolated.

We also tend to think that we are a part of global citizenship. However, the truth is that most of us are becoming isolated though we are connected with others through technology. Hence, Bruzzone argues that in order to overcome such isolation, existential vacuum and indifference, people tend to experience adrenaline rushes through various risk behaviours, speeding, loud music, and psychotropic substances (Bruzzone, 2024).

Affective life

What I argue here is not to give up our engagements with the new technology or devices but to find ways of reawakening our emotional life within us. This affective life is still hidden in our life that our learners do not know how to find it; or rather, we have not taught them to unlock this emotional life within. Our education, as I argued earlier, does not have such intention or components where the learners can be equipped with emotional intelligence.

We have thrown away all the important aspects of such components in our educational system in favour of developing manual learners. These manual learners do not have such empathic life, affection, or emotional intelligence to deal with their own emotional lives, or they do not have knowledge to deal with others in the society. The result is what we have today: the merciless society where people are competing with each other to accumulate material wealth. Citing Galimberti (2007), Bruzzone further argues how this can create a societal issue when the individual cannot cope with his/her emotional life:

This inability to express and share emotions can sometimes explode, taking the form of uncontrolled aggression and impulsive and maladaptive ways of acting out: when this occurs, unacknowledged emotional experiences (of anger, frustration, a sense of inadequacy, fear, and so on) turn into words or acts of hatred and violence—usually towards vulnerable individuals–,flagging a growing dis-connect between acting, reasoning, and feeling: the heart is not in tune with thought nor thought with action (Bruzzone, 2024, p. 2).

Thus, our education has created this person who is struggling to connect with the heart; heart with the thought and thought with action. This dislocation of the heart with thought and action has resulted in developing antipathy towards the society. This antipathy also destabilizes the democratic social value systems. If we really need to re-establish a democratic society, we should first focus on our existing education system.

It is not all about how we integrate new technology and equipment to facilitate our learners but it is about how we allow our learners to first unlock their emotional life, and secondly think how they reconnect with the society. A new educational approach should be tailored to facilitate this vital objective. Hence, let me briefly discuss how creative arts and aesthetics can be useful for developing such individuals who will be empathic as well as critical towards the social changes taking place in this millennium.

At this juncture, it is important to revisit one of the key thinkers and an educational philosopher, Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore is one of the few philosophers who have been thinking and developing an alternative learning approach through his Vishva Bharathi concept. He established Shanti Niketan where this new approach was primarily being tested. Encapsulating his philosophy of learning, he argued,

For us, the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing ourselves through expansion of sympathy and not dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union (Bhattacharya, 2014, p. 60).

As this statement clearly indicates, Tagore’s vision of education is developed for cultivating sympathy towards other humans and the environment alike. This education does not persuade the learner to think about his/her environment as something that can be commodified and utilized as material. The environment where the individual is living is also a living entity that is intertwined with human beings. Therefore, the individual should think in a different way to converge with the environment and find a place for co-living. In order to establish such an empathic educational approach, we need a different mode of educating young people. This Tagorean approach to education clearly emphasizes the value of the affective nature of education. It is the emotional life of the individual which is focused and cultivated through various means of teaching and learning.

Emotion and democracy

As of today, we lack this vital emotional component in our education. One of the fallacies behind this situation is that we tend to believe that emotions reside within ourselves, and they are private and personal. This is a misconception that is being sustained through our existing systems of education. However, on the contrary, emotions do not only provide richness to our own personal lives but they are also the primal tool that connects us with the outer world. In other words, we connect with other human beings in the society through our emotional arc. If the individual disconnects the communal engagement, this can result in destructive mannerism.

‘This disintegration of reciprocity, which weakens the social fabric, effectively leaves the individual isolated in a state of loneliness and uncertainty’ (Bruzzone, 2024, p. 13). This isolation and uncertainties of individuals can also have a negative impact on the healthy relationship with communities and, largely, on the democratic institutions. As scholars argue, this can be resulted in sustaining endogamous, xenophobic and violent neo-tribal grouping that have mushroomed in our society. This is what we have seen in the form of various nationalist upheavals in our society for the last few decades.

This tendency, therefore, leads us to further think about the value of emotional education and also its role in communal living. Further, emotions and emotional competency lead us to engage with other subjects, and also emphasizes that it is a bridge that is built between you and me and the world. When this bridge is broken, our connections between myself, you, and the world could be destabilized and shattered.

That is why scholars such as Bruzzone argue that ‘affectivity is also an ethical and political issue’ (Bruzzone, 2024, p. 12). It is ethical in the sense that my engagement or disengagement with the social beings are formed and developed through the emotional desires that I have inherited. Further, it is political, because, when the individual assumes that his/her existence relies on the communal existence, this assumption leads to political action of individuals. Hence, emotional education is vital for the healthy existence of a society. Cusinato, therefore, states that ‘emotional education is at the core of democracy’ (Cusinato Cited by Bruzzone, 2024, p, 13).

Finally, I would like to highlight one of the brilliant minds of our time, Prof Martha C. Nussbaum and her ideas on why arts education is vital for a continuation of democracy, and also how emotional education is important to achieve this (Helsinki Collegium, 2024). Today, as a civilization, we are confronting various and complex issues threatening the continuation of the human race. These key issues are not limited to countries or nations. They are applicable to all human beings currently living in the world.

Environmental crisis, global warming, food security, poverty, and war are some of the recurrent issues we face today. In order to focus on these larger humanitarian crises, how could we equip our students to think in broader ways to tackle these complex issues? Nussbaum provides us some important points to think on how we could design our education system where the individual can be more empathetic and passionately engage with worldly phenomena. According to her, we need citizens who have the capacity to think and see the world as other people see the world; need to develop the capacity for genuine concern of others, near and distant; teach real things about other groups in the society and learn to reject stereotypes; and promote accountability and critical thinking, ‘the skill and courage it requires to raise a dissenting voice’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p. 45-46).

Conclusion

Nussbaum’s recent works largely focus on how human emotions are connected to the establishment of democratic societies in the world. Arts, culture, and humanities play significant role in promoting positive emotions amongst participants. It also promotes wellbeing and happiness which are vital for a healthy society. Today, we have a new government. This government often emphasizes the importance of investing in education, from primary levels to higher education. They have shown the commitment to change the existing stale education systems which need drastic and constructive criticisms to change for a better system. Thus, we, as educators, thoroughly believe that it is time for us to revisit what we have taught and how we have taught our younger generation for decades. It is time for us to rethink new ways of tailoring our education system where we could promote empathy and develop empathetic citizens who care about others and the environment we live in.

Thank you.

References

Bhattacharya, Kumkum. 2014. Rabindranath Tagore: Adventure of Ideas and Innovative Practices in Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Bruzzone, Daniele. 2024. Emotional Life: Phenomenology, Education and Care. Springer Nature.

Harshana Rambukwella. 2024. “The Cultural Life of Democracy: Notes on Popular Sovereignty, Culture and Arts in Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya.” South Asian Review, July, 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2024.2380179 .

Helsinki Collegium. 2024. “Democracy and Emotions– a Dialogue with Philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum.” YouTube. June 6, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3xdcfbE3KA.

Jayasinghe, Saroj. 2024. “Arts and Humanities in Medical Education: Current and Future.” Jaffna Medical Journal 36 (1): 3–6. https://doi.org/10.4038/jmj.v36i1.202.

Jayasinghe, Saroj, and Santhushya Fernando. 2023. “Developments in Medical Humanities in Sri Lanka: A Call for Regional and Global Action.” The Asia Pacific Scholar 8 (4): 1–4.https://doi.org/10.29060/taps.2023-8-4/gp2878.

Karunanayake, Panduka. 2021. Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education: Genesis, Present Status and Reflections. Nugegoda: Sarasavi Publishers.

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2016. Not for Profit Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton University Press.

Palmer, Joy, David Cooper, and Liora Bresler, eds. 2002. Fifty Major Thinkers on Education. Routledge.

Uyangoda, Jayadeva, ed. 2023. Democracy and Democratisation in Sri Lanka: Paths, Trends and Imaginations. 1st ed. Vol. 1 and 2. Colombo: Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.

Short bio of the speaker

Saumya Liyanage (PhD) is an actor both in theatre and film and also working as a professor in Drama and Theatre at the Department of Theatre Ballet and Modern Dance, Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of the Visual and Performing Arts (UVPA), Colombo, Sri Lanka. Professor Liyanage was the former Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, UVPA Colombo and currently holds the position of the Director of the Social Reconciliation Centre, UVPA Colombo.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Himansi Dehigama for proofreading the final manuscript of this keynote speech.

This keynote is delivered at the annual sessions of the Faculty of Education, Open University of Sri Lanka on the 6^th of February 2025.

by Professor Saumya Liyanage
(BA Kelaniya, MCA Flinders, Australia, PhD La Trobe, Australia)
Department of Theatre Ballet and Modern Dance
Faculty of Dance and Drama
University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka