Our higher education system needs to be re-engineered: Venkaiah
The Vice President, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu addressing the gathering, at the 55th Annual Prize Distribution Function of Shyam Lal College, in Delhi on April 29, 2019.
Our higher education system needs to be re-engineered: Venkaiah
Bengaluru, June 09 (HS): Calling for a pragmatic language policy in which mother tongue and other languages are given due importance in order to help youth excel in a multilingual world, Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu opined that our school system must be more child friendly and geared towards a holistic development of each child’s innate faculties and that our higher education system needs to be re-engineered to bring in greater emphasis on excellence in research and teaching.
Highlighting India’s improving literacy rate, the Vice President said that in the next few years, we must ensure that our population can read, write, compute, articulate and participate with greater self-confidence in the developmental processes.
He emphasized that the crucial responsibility of moulding the future rests upon us collectively and asserted that we must not fail. He spoke of the need to draw inspiration from our country’s great heritage and blend it with the best elements of thought and action from around the globe.
Stating that India is today a knowledge-based economy, the Vice President said that we cannot afford to have a mediocre or qualitatively sub-optimal system of education, if we are to thrive in this rapidly changing world. He called for a much larger number of educational institutions that focus on all round development of an individual’s personality. ‘The head, hand and heart must develop simultaneously’, he added.
Opining that good quality education gave us the ability to sift the chaff from the grain, Naidu said that it would also liberate us from ignorance, superstition, bigotry, prejudices and narrow tunnel vision.
The Vice President also said that intellectual brilliance must be combined with good deeds and compassionate behavior. Quoting Sri Satya Sai Baba’s words: “Education is for life not merely for living”, he said that education must be as ‘transformational’ and not merely ‘transactional’. He applauded the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Learning for continually striving for excellence in education.
