| |9 NOVEMBER 2019HIGHERReviewschool and were given one square meal which their families could not afford or guarantee.The teaching aids and facilities are improving, we need to add a lot more of the sports facilities in schools. Sports authority of India has adopted a number of schools, we need to make this compulsory and invest in it.Our secondary school and college education are better than our primary school system. Overall at every level, we need to maintain the 30:1 student teacher ratio. Many schools and colleges are already there in terms of this ratio. We need to do two things with the teachers in secondary schools and college teachers. First, we need to move them away from a prescriptive way of teaching to a more exploratory way of teaching where they excite the imagination of students rather than ask them and reward them to memorize things. We should get our teachers to visit leading edge schools and universities in other countries. We should encourage short term assignments of international teachers to Indian schools and colleges.At post graduate level, professors tend to associate themselves to the discipline first and the institute next. They believe in research and new knowledge and they believe that being part of the discipline system has more benefits than showing allegiance to the Institute. Teachers at every level are being challenged by more aware students, more aware parents and more aware society. Today students can research a topic and know more about the topic than the teacher who has been teaching the topic for years. So, the know -how which differentiated the teacher is no longer an advantage. So, the teacher has to be insightful and innovate in teaching methods to make the topic inspiring for the students. Charisma will be crucial for future teachers as a basic capability.Great teachers will have even more platforms to be rock star thanks to digital technology. Teachers can hold on line sessions with people who care and have a view of what they teach. This will produce super star teachers this decade and will hopefully attract more people to volunteer for the noble profession.I have been shaped by a number of excellent teachers. When I was in school, one of my English teachers encouraged me to write after she gave me the highest marks on an essay I write on the Radio! Her encouragement when I was 9 years old is possibly the most significant encouragement I got outside of the family. Teachers can play a dramatic role in our lives and we must do everything to invest in teachers if we want to be a society that sees education as a continuous priority.Shiv Shivakumar, Group Executive PresidentD. Shivakumar is a Bangalore born leader and a management thinker. After graduating from IIT, Madras in 1982 and from IIM, Calcutta in 1984, he went on to study at The Wharton School in 2005. Shiv has been associated with Hindustan Unilever Limited where he spent 19 years in sales, marketing and general management positions. Shiv has also worked as the Managing Director- Nokia, Chairperson & CEO of PepsiCo Holdings Private Limited (india). Currently he is working in Aditya Birla Group as the Group Executive President, Corporate Strategy.
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