Education is the most important tool for transformation of the society through enlightenment and empowerment: Vice President

The Vice President of India, Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu has said that Education is the most important tool for transformation of the society through enlightenment and empowerment. Addressing the gathering at the Dr.B.R. Ambedkar Institute of Technology in Port Blair today, he said that Indian higher education system needs to reinvent itself to respond to the emerging challenges of a rapidly changing knowledge economy.

The Vice President said that the ‘real education’ must foster all-round development of students. It should lay equal emphasis on academic excellence and skills for self-employment or gainful employment, he added.

Talking on the need to reorient teaching methods, syllabi and the learning processes to meet the challenges of the globalized 21st century knowledge society, he called for revamping the education system from KG to PG to make it more rigorous, effective and quality- oriented. Emphasis should be there on developing a holistic personality and not merely producing certificate holders, he added.

Stressing that students coming out of higher educational institutions must have empathy, compassion and respect for elders and teachers, he said that they should not only be tech-savvy and scholarly but more importantly, they should have unshakeable integrity and honesty with strong ethical and moral values.

The Vice President said that there is a need to inculcate scientific temper and cultivate a scientific outlook right from early childhood. Children should be made to learn through hands-on experiments rather than focusing on rote-learning, he added.