Students Should Be Trained In Various Fields Of Learning,Say Experts During Discussion At NiE Meet

Value-based education system is the need of the hour,said experts and school principals who discussed trends in secondary and tertiary education sectors at the Times NiE Principals Meet held in the city on Wednesday.Principals and education experts said at the meet that there is not only a need to make education more relevant to present-day requirements of students but also to take it beyond rotelearning.
Exchanging views on new ways of teaching and learning were principals from about 40 city-based schools,and experts Ramakrishna Ramaswamy,vice-chancellor,University of Hyderabad and Santosh Mehra,IG,welfare department.
Addressing the meet,Ramaswamy said the present-day education system offers very few choices to students who have diverse interests.The role of teachers is to encourage and cultivate interests in fields which currently occupy the fringes of modern-day education system,he said.If one were to learn classical Telugu language or mathematics and physics at a higher level there are very few institutions in the country that one can opt for.On the other hand,the number of engineering and management colleges in the country is increasing by the day.This shows that there is great emphasis on certain kinds of knowledge which is associated with money making jobs.As teachers we should be able to train students to opt for a variety of fields of learning, said Ramaswamy.He added that there should also be an emphasis on innovation.There is no point crying a hundred years from now that we lost most of our arts and literature due to negligence of these fields.Perhaps,now is the time to act, said Ramaswamy.
Santosh Mehra,IG,welfare department said that there is a need to unlearn certain ideas to incorporate new value-based systems to fight against casteism and communalism.What we should teach in classrooms is to shed our inhibitions.The purpose of education is not to churn out students with degrees who got their degrees through rote learning, said Mehra.He added that the curse of the modern-day education system is that it churns out students who are literate but unemployable.There is not much emphasis on creative and lateral thinking in the modern-day education system which makes students stand out before potential employers, said Mehra.
In a lively discussion that followed the talks,principals from leading city-based schools said that moral science education and valuebased education is still part of their curriculum but the overpowering run for high paying jobs is undermining their work.We have to be dynamic teachers with new dynamic ways of teaching to help students have a value-based education which focuses on overall development.In this market-driven society,it is difficult to guide students towards varied career choices,but we ought to try, said Gowri Sarkar,teacher,Meridian School,Madhapur.
Teachers said that even parents and the society outside have a role to play in developing the value system for students.There are no role models for children these days.Teachers alone cannot be held responsible for moral development of children as we share a collective responsibility with parents, said Seetha Murthy,principal,Silver Oaks School.
School principals said that children of 21century have different sort of value systems and teachers need to understand this.There is an information overflow from all sides.The schools today are providing a space to understand these children,their needs and values to make the right kind of interventions, said Anjali Razdan,principal,Obul Reddy Public School,Jubilee Hills.