Sevaks of Chinmaya Prerana personally invited school and college principals and teachers in Navi Mumbai for the talk and received a very positive response. Over a hundred educationists, including principals of ten colleges, ten schools, 85 teachers from about 55 educational institutions, attended the program. The program commenced with an invocatory prayer and Swamiji was invited to address the audience. His talk was insightful, interspersed with interesting examples, impressing upon educationists the need to take responsibility, to bring a change in the field of Education, to make a difference.
* Explaining today’s Education system, Swamiji said the youth coming out of schools and colleges are confused about their personal purpose and goals in life, as the focus of education is confined to syllabus completion and securing marks.
* The same type of education system is followed across the country including villages, not preparing the youth for diverse job opportunities. A society cannot work with one type of job. The question then comes, “Who will gain the knowledge to till the land?” Swamiji believed that if we have the right vision of Education, there would be no unemployment in the country.
* Today’s youth can easily be triggered to follow a trend, as they are not trained to think independently. Social media can create riots overnight.
* Giving interesting examples, Swamiji talked about the need for ‘Disruptive Thinking’. Teachers have to innovate and follow a methodology to generate disruptive thinkers, without losing the main vision of Education.
* Today’s education does not completely enable the furthering of knowledge to bring about discoveries, innovations, entrepreneurship. It is only passing information. Swamiji said there is a need to bring about change in the methods and approaches in the education system and in communication, to make it more effective and relevant to present day.
* Swamiji then talked about the need for Value-Based Education. Citing relevant examples, he explained the need to integrate the teaching of values into the subject of study in an innovative way.
* Highlighting the need for preserving our Indian culture and languages, Swamiji said when we lose a language, we lose a culture, the sources of its knowledge, certain type of thinking and mindset.
* Swamiji also highlighted the richness of our Indian medicinal herbs, through Ayurveda and other sciences. He suggested that we can get knowledge from the past and fit into the present mindset, just the way haldi doodh is sold by the West as the ‘Golden Latte’.
* He stated that we have lost national pride, as history books are distorted. We were invaded by foreigners. Evidence still exists in our archeological structures of our glorious past.
* Swamiji suggested that like-minded educationists form a forum, meet regularly, come up with ideas and start doing things to bring about change, to make a difference.
* He said, “Children are imaginative and innovative. A teacher has to be the catalyst for the crystallization of their ideas.”
* Swamiji explained Gurudev’s vision on Value-Based Learning, based on which Chinmaya Vision Program has been started. Swamiji invited the schools to become vision schools and get affiliated to Chinmaya Vision Programme (CVP), to get training.
* Chinmaya Vishwa Vidyapeeth was started in 2016 with a vision to blend our Indian Knowledge Traditions into our present mindset.
* Swamiji urged the academicians to come together as agents of change, start brainstorming to design a new curriculum, to make education more relevant and knowledge-oriented.