Interacting with principals and teachers of the 50 schools that have “volunteered” to become the first model schools under the Delhi Government scheme, former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam advised them to encourage parents to create small libraries in their homes that could start with having ten best books of India.
Dr Kalam said it would help to make their children righteous individuals and added that righteous youth can play a crucial role in ending corruption, which has to start from home.
Stressing teachers have tremendous responsibility to transform a student into a leader, Dr Kalam said, “Every one of us has gone through the various phases of education: a child, a teenager, an adult and a leader. The child asks, ‘What can you give meIJ’ The teenager says, ‘leave me. I want to do it alone’. The experienced person proclaims ‘let us do it together’. The leader offers, ‘What can I give you’. So, the principals and teachers have a tremendous responsibility to transform a child into a leader — the transformation from ‘what you can give meIJ’ to ‘what I can give you’.”
Offering a roadmap to improve the education system in Delhi in just three to four years, Dr Kalam added, “One solution could be map schools with Skill and Training centers nearest to them where the students can be taken and given a short training every week for 1-2 periods in the academic calendar. Another way could be the start of mobile skill development labs across Delhi. If one such van can cover 2 schools in a day, they can easily conduct class for 12 schools in a regular manner. Delhi has 70 MlAs, roughly there are 12-14 Government schools in each constituency. Hence, if each MlA decides, to undertake the mission of setting up one such Skill Development Mobile Van in his or her constituency, we can cover the entire state of Delhi from the first year of operation itself… and significantly improve the state of education in the National Capital region within the next 3-4 years.”
Earlier, thanking Dr Kalam for his guidance, Education Minister Manish Sisodia said, “You had once said that a dream is not what you seen when you sleep, but what doesn’t let you sleep. I met you some 20 days ago and you gave me a dream; a dream to change the education system in Delhi. And ever since then, I haven’t been able to sleep. We will make that dream come true.”