President's Message

President's message for January VISION

January 2010 was very eventful. We had some very interesting speakers. Shashirekha Banerjee, a clinical psychologist, on “Coping with personal crisis”, Advocate Pathak on “Humour in Law” and a very thought provoking lecture by Suhas Tapaswi in which he touched upon an all important topic of Education and suggested significant reforms to transform the present system. After all education is the basic and foremost requirement in nation building. A lot of problems are automatically taken care of once this problem is addressed successfully.

While a good education system can propel quality of the life to a higher level, a bad system can harm the young minds beyond repair… and we are just watching this happening in front of us…thousands of students are committing suicide. An extremely disturbing trend! What makes them take such a drastic step? Is it parental pressure? Treacherous teachers? Peer pressure? Or the extremely competitive environment where students who wants to pursue careers of their dream have a very little chance of getting admission due to paucity of good educational institutes? I think it is a mixture of these factors which is driving students into a state of depression.   It is time to take stock of the situation and bring in radical reforms and most important role has to be played by parents, teachers and the policy makers.

I am quoting some thoughts on what an ideal education means:

    • Education means that process by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, and intellect is sharpened, as a result of which one can stand on one’s own feet

    • What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul

    • The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn

    • Nine tenths of education is encouragement

    • The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of...