Regretting that education has totally been considered as a business, Nitte Education Trust Chairman N Vinay Hegde said the type of people who manage educational institutions decide the actual quality of the system.
He was speaking after inaugurating ‘Akhila Bharathiya Abhyasa Varga,’ a national-level refresher camp for teachers from various states, being held under the aegis of Akhila Bharathiya Rashtriya Shaikshika Mahasangha at Sanghaniketan here on Wednesday.
Mr Hegde said there was an urgent need for discussions regarding whether the education system should be in the hands of the government, or with the private people accompanied by certain limitations. “There are people who consider running educational institutions as a service or a duty, but there are also people who have found this as another business of money-making,” he stated.
Stating that teachers in most of the unaided private schools are underpaid, he analysed that those with less salary and less satisfaction could not provide quality education to their students. “Children should be taught basic sciences prominently, particularly Mathematics. Unless brightest of the bright people get into education, the system in this country is not going to improve,” he reiterated.
‘Mother’s nutrition’
Good nutritional level of mothers is the basic requirement for an excellent education, according to MAHE former vice-chancellor Prof B M Hegde. Delivering a special lecture for teachers, he said only healthy mothers can give birth to healthy children thus making them prosperous students.
About 80 per cent children in India are born without proper hippocampus major, protein and iron content. Around 46.6 per cent of children are malnourished. The percentage has come down only by 0.4 pc in the last 10 years, he said.
Apart from management, teachers and students, the fourth element of good education is parents. Parenting should begin from the pre-natal period of the child. They should be careful enough to see that their child should not be made to compete with its peers till 15 years, which primarily leads to hate and inferiority. Before giving formal education, the child should be taught ‘who he is’ which is called ‘aparavidya’ in the traditional terminology of India, Prof Hegde appealed. Shaikshika Mahasangha President K Narahari, General Secretary Mahendra Kumar, Organising Secretary M Mukundrao Kulkarni, educationist Mahendra Kapoor, MLC Capt Ganesh Karnik were present.