Speech of Mrs. Anu Aga
Chairperson, Thermax Industries Ltd.

them. Education is viewed as a means to express the human potential rather than a competitive jungle where you have to constantly impress. An environment whereby students can succeed through teamwork and collaboration. A class which co-operates to support the weak and encourage the strong.  

Education needs to move away from a teacher-centred learning to a student-centred learning approach. In teacher-centred learning, the teacher is the expert and the students are sponges that passively absorb whatever is doled out. Students are more comfortable with this traditional model of teacher-centred learning because it is easier to be passive listeners and play helpless rather than take.

Responsibility for one’s learning. However research has shown that when lecturing is the dominant mode of teaching, students forget 50% of the course material within a few months. Retention increases when learning is anchored in the experience and interests of students. If we teach about trees but never let a child plant and observe a tree growing, if we teach numbers without a visit to the market or the bank where he realises the importance of counting. We are progressively isolating education from their real lives. To make education student-centred would require a lot of creative preparation by the teacher and a high degree of emotional involvement with the students.

I would like to end of my favourite stories. It stresses that in the name of education we can clutter up our minds with inconsequential data and forget that education, in the final analysis, is teaching the art of successful living. This is about a young professor who goes on a long sea voyage and takes along with him many books. On the ship was an old uneducated sailor who was very impressed with the young professor. The old sailor requests him to educate him and the young professor. The old sailor requests him to educate him and the young professor readily agrees. The first day the old man is asked if he knew what “Geology” was, and he said he did not know. The professor said that the old man had wasted a quarter of his life because he had not learned such fundamentals like the science of earth! The next evening the young professor asked the old man if he knew what “Oceanography” was, and again he did not know. The professor said that he had wasted half his life because he did not know the science of sea. The third evening the old man was asked what “ Meteorology” was and he said that he had never heard of it. The professor was aghast and said that 75% of his life was wasted because he lived on the ship and did not know the science of weather. On the fourth day the old man came running to the young professor and asked if he knew “Swimology” and he said he did not and the sailor told him “Professor sir, you have wasted 100% of your life! Because the ship is sinking and those who cannot swim will drown”.