I have a strong feeling that mere graduation or post graduation degree does not make a man or woman educated. There is something beyond that which makes them educated.
The other day, I was in my college..National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana for reunion. I usually stay in the scientist’s hostel, as I enjoy the environment and facility to go for a long uninterrupted walk early morning. As well as the main temptation is the delicious Aloo Parathas accompanied with butter and curd for breakfast? This time it was a Sunday and there was a group of professors and assistant professors from various colleges attending a training programme on Dairy Engineering. It is always interesting to over hear some ones conversation especially if it is of any relevant to your taste and liking. As the group was a highly educated one and they were heatedly debating about admission criteria for post graduation in food and dairy engineering, I volunteered to remain stay put and to eat one more parataha to enjoy the conversation.
There was a professor from Andhra Pradesh who was vehemently denying the fact that someone with Dairy Technology graduation is ill-equipped to do a post graduation in Food engineering. There was another one from Tamil Nadu stating that graduates in Bio Technology do very badly in Post Graduation in Food Engineering. There was another one from Gujarat who was stating that the students did not fare well in GATE Scores and therefore they were not admitted in IIT Kharakhpur.
Then the discussion veered around the training programme and its relevance to their teaching. There was a professor who was stating that all the power point presentations looked very old and never revised. Another interesting person commented that none of the dairy process had changed all these years and therefore there was no change in the power point presentation.
By then my stomach was full and despite my best efforts I could no longer take any more parathas though they were now coming out more crispy and the aroma was filling the room. The discussion on education was becoming more tempting and reaching a climax. I could ill afford to leave the same half-way.
As a person, I firmly believe that education be it college or school is just to open a student’s intellectual curiosity. Education tries to kindle the flame of thirst for further knowledge. There the role of education ends. It is the interest of the educated to pursue the journey for further knowledge in any chosen filed be it science, arts, music, engineering, dairying, bio-technology, food technology and what not.
There are many highly educated and intelligent persons with a mile long list of degrees behind their names with little curiosity. They hardly apply any of their degrees or knowledge gained from such degrees. Great achievers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs were dropouts from famous universities.
My old grandma who stopped going to school on attaining puberty as per tradition of that generation was versatile in almost all the verses of some of the complicated religious texts and could count & predict the number of bags of paddy in a vehicle by just looking at it once. She had her own system of tally marks when the carts were unloaded. None could hoodwink her in those aspects.
She used to say though she stopped going to school she never stopped learning. Whereas now we have graduates who stopped brushing their brains on attaining a single degree!
I politely moved to the group of professors, who were debating on basic graduation for post graduation and higher admissions. I asked them the basic qualification of Late Dr V Kurien who ushered in “white- revolution” in India.
I politely moved to the group of professors, who were debating on basic graduation for post graduation and higher admissions. I asked them the basic qualification of Late Dr V Kurien who ushered in “white- revolution” in India.
He was a Metallurgist. He had a basic PASSION for uplifting the lives of common dairy men and women in India. He used dairying as a tool to do the needful using co-operatives as catalyst. Therefore relevance of basic qualification is little importance. What is needed is PASSION and will to excel!
The group became silent after a few seconds, later there was clap from the one from Gujarat, which was copied by everyone present in the mess hall!
The group became silent after a few seconds, later there was clap from the one from Gujarat, which was copied by everyone present in the mess hall!
No comments:
Post a Comment