New Delhi: The Indian education establishment must delve into the country's past to solve present day problems, AICTE chief Professor Anil Sahasrabudhe said at the EduFuture Excellence Awards Season 2. He said the country's Gurukul system was the best at that time and lessons can be learned from it. He also said that in ancient times India had the world's best universities.
Talking about the changing face of Indian education, the professor said the coronavirus pandemic forced people to adopt technology for education and work.
"The pandemic changed the mode of learning to online education. Online education existed before the pandemic as well but the quantum of online education had to be increased by leaps and bounds and everyone was touched by it" he said.
The AICTE chief said even internships and research had to be conducted online and the people had no choice but to rely on technology.
"Everyone had to work from home. Therefore we have learned the use of technology in a great way," he added.
Dwelling on the new National Education Policy, the professor said it aims to transform all universities into multidisciplinary universities.
He said lessons must be drawn from our illustrious past as the basis of education began in India.
He said the new policy also aims to bridge the language gap. He said people from the villages study in local languages in schools. In colleges they have difficulty understanding instructions in English. To solve this problem AICTE has been working to translate engineering books into 12 local languages.
He said the new education policy aims to do away with the one-size-fits-all approach.
"In Gurukuls, education used to be different for every student. Gurus used to identify individual abilities. Holistic education is important but specialising in certain domains depend on the attributes the individual has been born with or has interest in, and that has to be respected. Hence the teacher has a great role in identifying that talent, honing that talent, mentoring that talent," he said.
He said 50 percent of engineering graduates are not employable straight out of college. He said hackathons have helped the companies and the government identify problem-solving talents.
"In hackathons, second-third year students give out of the box solutions. Some come out with solutions in less than 72 hours. Many organisations have implemented these solutions. ISRO, DRDO, railways have adopted these solutions. Some students have opened their startups... There is a huge potential in India, we were not using it. Some students know better than their teachers. Hence national education policy lays huge emphasis on the training of teachers," he added.
