An opinion piece exploring the relationship between academics and the community by Dr. Gira Bhatt, the project director and principal investigator for Acting Together SSHRC-CURA, and Charan Gill, an Acting Together partner and CEO of Progressive Intercultural Community Service, has been published by The Vancouver Sun.
“Academics and community: Two solitudes” speaks to the value of collaborations as Acting Together continues its community-based research aiming to help prevent youth violence. An excerpt is reprinted below.
The boatman, though not book-smart, was found to possess valuable knowledge of his own.
Academics and community: Two solitudes
There is much to be learned from the Indian story about the boatman and the arrogant mathematician
By Gira Bhatt and Charan Gill, Vancouver Sun
‘Once upon a time, there was a mathematician.” So starts a children’s story in India.
The mathematician was a genius, but he was also very arrogant. Once he needed to cross a river. He found a boatman sitting idly in a weathered boat, who agreed to take the mathematician across the river.
Once the boatman started to row, the mathematician looked around, pondering, and asked the boatman: “Do you know how deep this river is?”
“It’s quite deep, sir” replied the boatman.
“How many feet deep?” asked the mathematician.
The boatman shook his head and said, “I don’t know.”
The mathematician was taken aback by this answer. He rolled his eyes and thought to himself: “Oh, the poor illiterate boatman.” With his arrogance, the mathematician expressed his consternation: “You don’t even know that? And you are a boatman? – tsk tsk … Your life is … wasted!”
Continue reading this article on The Vancouver Sun’s website
Tags: Feature Two
