Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today called upon the universities and educators to re-evaluate our education system to make it more value-based, holistic and complete.

Addressing the 13th e-convocation of ICFAI University, Sikkim, through video-conferencing today, the Vice President asked the educators to take inspiration from our holistic Vedic education and understand the vision behind New Education Policy.

Quoting Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the Vice President said that education without values is no education at all. “Educational institutions and universities are expected to produce well-rounded and compassionate human beings and not mere degree holders”, he said and rued that often, this aspect gets ignored in the race for paychecks.

Giving the example of climate change, Naidu said the holistic solution to combat this challenge should include a value-based education that respects nature. He stressed the need to equip our engineers and technologists to create new defences and come up with innovative out-of-box solutions to meet the challenges posed by extreme weather events. No human intervention can totally withstand nature’s fury but we have to minimize its impact, he warned.

Highlighting that values had always been emphasized in our ancient systems, the Vice President said that our Vedas and Upanishads mandate our duties towards self, family, society and nature. We were taught to live in harmony with nature, he emphasized.

Stressing the importance of nature and culture in one’s life,  the Vice President asked the students to learn from nature and follow the values enshrined in our ancient culture.

Appreciating the Gurukul system, Naidu said that education was complete in all respects in our ancient times and this is what gave us our title of Vishwa Guru at that time.

He said the New Education Policy also envisages these ideals and aims at making India a “Vishwa guru” once again.

Underlining the paradigm shift envisaged in the New Education Policy (NEP), the Vice President said it tries to do away with a segregated approach to education and replaces it with an integrated approach.