Prakash Javadekar: Be passionate about teaching or face replacement

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Teaching is an art and teachers cannot afford to be impassive purveyors of knowledge at the cost of students' interest, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday.

Speaking here at the launch of the "Model curriculum for technology and management courses", the minister said pedagogy was a matter of science and stated that many teachers he came across during his assessment on several platforms -- whether in person or during their rendition of online classes, he found them robotic and impersonal.

"Teachers should have a passion for teaching. He or she must have a dream in his eyes of producing good students," Javadekar said, adding that those who did not do so should be ready to be replaced as "the competition is intense".

The minister said the quality of education in the country was not up to the mark and away from reality -- the reason "a washing machine mechanic manages to earn more than a degree-holding engineer".

He also mentioned that many teachers who would set question papers did not have the requisite training to do so.

Apart from launching the model curriculum for the undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the two fields mentioned above, the ministry also operationalised its "Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) III Action Plan" meant for the educationally backwards states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar.

The minister emphasised that accreditation of the universities should not be "input-based but based on output" from now on.

In the upcoming budget, "people will get to know about the Prime Minister Scholarship" and many other "good things", Javadekar said.

A decision was ratified by the Cabinet last year that 1,000 students would get Rs 75,000 a month scholarship named after the Prime Minister.

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