Prof. Yash Pal
Renowned Indian scientist and statesman, Padma Bhushan Prof.Yash Pal delivered the 27th T.A. Pai Memorial Lecture on “Education for the Future”, on the 15th of March in Manipal. The event was organized by the T. A. Pai Management Institute (TAPMI). Expressing concerns about the current state of school education in India currently, he stated that the existing education system did not help detect the innate abilities and potentials of young school-going students today, and this needs to be changed. Prof. Yash Pal pointed out that students learn lessons more from their unique life experiences. Therefore children can be made to learn science much more effectively by relating bookish lessons to their daily lives. But in India, teachers and educationists fail to recognize this fact and these connections aren’t made very often during the course of mechanistic teaching. He said that every teacher and university/institution should develop the capability to design their course content.
Prof.Yash Pal also shared his concern that though IITs, although marvellous institutes, were now turning to be just undergraduate factories. IITs should, in fact, train large number of post-graduate teachers and professors and also researchers who would then educate the engineering students across the nation. He stressed that interdisciplinary approach to education is needed where students should be allowed to choose the subjects or disciplines they like, which can be possible only if AICTE and UGC do not impede the growth of multidisciplinary experts. He concluded by saying that young people should be given the freedom to invent new areas of knowledge and this would take the country to greater heights.
Dr. Saji Gopinath, Director of TAPMI, Dr. H. S. Ballal, Pro-Chancellor of Manipal University and other members of the TAPMI fraternity were among the guests present on the occasion.