PM Modi addressed the gathering at the Akhil Bhartiya Shiksha Sangh Adhiveshan, which is the 29th Biennial Conference of the All India Primary Teacher’ Federation. In his address, he acknowledged the importance of education and how the National Education Policy (NEP) will transform and foster learning for the 21st century in India.
PM Modi said that the NEP addressed the special needs of the 21st Century by promoting a systemic transformation from rote learning to practical learning. A system where more emphasis is laid on learning rather than teaching for the overall personality development of a student and to innovate learning methods from time to time.
Elaborating on the same, PM Modi suggested that to understand or study about soils in India, a teacher could facilitate a visit of students to a potter’s house. Here, the student would get to explore the world of pottery thereby also getting a first-hand practical experience of understanding soils in India. How a potter works extremely hard could serve as an experience for inculcating values of perseverance, persistence, empathy and courage among others.
On the practical experience of learning PM Modi narrated an instance from his childhood where his teacher would ask students to get ten grains among others from their respective house. The teacher would then mix all of them up and would ask students to identify them along with providing them a numerical figure to hand-pick, providing an extremely practical experience of learning. A similar experiment would be again carried out in the next class but with blindfolds on to teach the ‘sense of perception’, encouraging a great way of learning.
PM Modi stated another key aspect of the NEP is to promote learning in the vernacular language which is the embodiment of India’s societal identity. The British Rule that promoted the English language as a means of education protected the interests of only a small section of the Indian population which persisted until recently. It's only through this NEP that we have sought to promote the dignity of vernacular languages and teachers so that their imminent as well as distant future is secured, he said.
