The Vice President of India, Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu has said that we need a scientific renaissance in our country and the excellence and quest for the best should be the goal posts of the new India. He was addressing the 9th Indian Youth Science Congress at Career Point University in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh today. The Governor of Himachal Pradesh, Shri Acharya Dev Vrat, the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, Shri Jai Ram Thakur, the Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare, Shri J.P. Nadda and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
The Vice President said that the spirit of enquiry and the spirit of enhancing public well being should be the guiding principles. He called on young minds to creatively engage with issues like poverty, illiteracy, ill health, poor returns from agriculture and others. He further said that we need governments that focus on science for development. We need a transformation in the way we run our educational and scientific institutions, he added.
The Vice President said that the young India has the ability to see beyond the obvious and ask the relevant questions that a scientist will ask and we need more young people to develop these abilities. The new India that we collectively dreaming of will be possible only if the children and youth of our country develop the scientific attitude, he added.
The Vice President said that new India can only be built with new ideas and new ways of making them real through effective implementation. He further said that the new India will be a scientific India and it will be a technological India. It will be an India that will be sustained by knowledge and science, what is called as ‘Gyana’ and ‘Vigyana’ in Indian parlance, he added.
The Vice President said that country needs total revamp of school education as well as higher education adding that science should be an integral component of the curriculum. Scientific approach that relies on evidence and raising relevant questions and seeking answers should be internalized, he added.
The Vice President said that students should be encouraged to ‘discover’ rather than be ‘told’ the answers and rote memorization should be discouraged. He further said that we have to bring back the fun into the learning process and the joy of knowing, the joy of discovering, and the joy of innovating lies at the core of scientific temper. This should be the heart of the schooling and educational processes at various levels, he added.
Quoting Confucius, the Vice President said that teaching, learning process should be reoriented keeping in view the basic principles encapsulated in his famous saying “I learn and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand”. He asked higher education institutions must focus on research and problem solving and children should be given ample opportunities to ‘do’ experiments not merely read about them from a book. We need more laboratories and project-based, problem-based teaching approaches, he added.
