World Teacher’s Day is celebrated on 5th October since UNESCO’s recognition of the contribution of teachers. However, as you may be aware, every year in India, 5th September is celebrated as Teachers’ Day and is the birthday of the second President of India, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, who was a renowned scholar, philosopher and a distinguished teacher. He held a chair professorship at the Department of Comparative Religions at the University of Oxford where he lectured on religion and ethics, in addition to many distinguished positions in India. His life is an example of hard work, passionate commitment and dedication to the cause of humanity and indeed good citizenship.
The first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru who was one of his closest friends, said about Dr. Radhakrishnan:
“He has served his country in many capacities. But above all, he is a great Teacher from whom all of us have learnt much and will continue to learn. It is India’s peculiar privilege to have a great philosopher, a great educationist and a great humanist as her President…”
This day is an occasion for celebration, thanksgiving and remembrance of the contribution of teachers. I take this opportunity to congratulate and thank all the teachers of our University and elsewhere, and the important contributions they are making for creating and imparting knowledge and building a society that is based on human values and promotion of responsible citizenship.
Dr. Radhakrishnan chaired the First University Education Commission and in his report prophetically observed:
“A life of strenuous endeavour for human betterment is not possible, if we are not persuaded that life has a meaning. Many of our popular writers today seem to be possessed by the one desire to escape from the world of meaning and teach us the essential purposelessness of life. They make us believe, with a good deal of cleverness and sophistry, that life is infinitely complicated and totally inexplicable. Many of our students are taught to assume that free-will and personal responsibility are illusions, that human beings are conditioned almost wholly by their physical make-up and the society in which they live, and that the only sense that the religious statements make is emotional and subjective. This is a generation which knows how to doubt but not how to admire, much less to believe. This aimlessness, this indifference to basic issues, is to no small extent, responsible for the decline of standards, for the fading of ideals, for the defeat of human endeavor.”
I believe that as educators and students of this university, we need to deeply reflect upon these issues which are at the heart of the approaches to imparting knowledge and sharing experiences. There is no better time than the Teachers’ Day when we should ponder over these issues in a manner that will help us to redefine and reexamine our roles and responsibilities as educators and students.
On this august occasion of the Teachers’ Day, I am particularly delighted to thank all the teachers of O.P. Jindal Global University for their outstanding contribution to teaching and research and their commitment and dedication to inspire the young minds of the world. The role of a teacher in shaping the destiny of humanity has always been underestimated. All of us owe it to the teachers in our lives, not only in schools, colleges and universities where we have studied, but also individuals in our professional and personal lives who had assumed the role of a teacher or a mentor.
There is a deeper sense of personal conviction to seek social transformation that drives most people to become a teacher. Teaching is more than just a professional commitment for imparting knowledge or sharing perspectives; it is a personal commitment to engage in a lifelong learning, seeking and giving inspiration, believing in the possibility of social change and contributing to it, and participating in a transformative experience that makes the world a better place through the sheer joy of teaching, learning and sharing.
The indelible impression that great teachers leave with the students are understood and appreciated long after the teachers have left the lives of the students. As faculty members, we know that it is the experience that our teachers gave in our classrooms when we were students and the conversations that we had with them in more informal settings that have shaped our own lives and has kept us in good stead all these years. And our students will also carry forward those experiences in the years to come.
I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and appreciate the work of the teachers of JGU. They have worked in an exemplary manner with a view to giving the best to the students of JGU. They have kept the interests of the students as paramount and have gone beyond the call of duty to do everything possible that will educate and empower our students. These are acts of generosity and magnanimity that defines the character of good teachers and great mentors. But it is also these great individuals as faculty members and teachers who shape the character of institutions. Institution building is nothing but a nation building agenda and that is why the role of teachers is central to this agenda.
I am sharing these reflections with you as we celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of JGU this year. JGU was born with a vision to transform higher education in India and beyond. This transformation that JGU seeks to achieve is not only important for India, but for the world at large. For many of us at JGU, being a faculty member is not a job, but a calling in life. This is the calling that has motivated us to be teachers at JGU and not do something else. But this calling in life and its impact will depend upon how we can be inspired by the students and our colleagues and can in turn inspire them to think about various issues in ways that they had not thought about it before. Teaching and learning is about opening one’s minds towards new ideas and perspectives.
Universities are knowledge creating institutions and we emphasize a lot on the importance of research and publications at JGU. But the capability of universities to be able to create that knowledge will depend upon the role of teachers who are the true institution builders.
The role of teachers is crucial in achieving human development, social progress and economic advancement in a society. One of the biggest challenges that faces contemporary society is the deterioration of values and degradation of character among people. Academic institutions including schools, colleges and universities play a central role in the larger project of nation building, to foster good citizenship, and to relentlessly adhere to the universal values of honesty, integrity and rectitude.
I sincerely hope that we as teachers are able to inspire our students in ways that our own teachers have inspired us.
I would like to use this occasion to reflect on a few ideas that could be meaningful for us to better understand what we do, who we are and what type of an institution we want to create at JGU. This is an occasion for us to reflect on our work as teachers, and our contributions to our students and larger society. In particular, it gives us the opportunity to examine how we go about practicing teaching as a calling, and how to place our students at the centre of all that we do as teachers.
There is a larger conversation around the world on whether educational institutions are cultivating the right kind of orientation for life, both within and outside academia, given broader developments in technology, society, law, economy and other central spheres of life. Amidst this, there are concerns that current models of education are far too focused on reinforcing existing structures, paradigms and inequities, and largely do not serve as enablers of creativity and ethical practices.
In this context, what could we do to address these concerns in our daily teaching practices? How do we create a paradigm that provides better chances of enabling teaching practices that could unleash and enhance students’ potential for creative expression, ethical practice and committed participation in larger social processes?
I would like to highlight below a set of skills that our students are expected to develop through educational processes and that are seen as most suited for the impermanent and uncertain world of the 21st century.
1. Building Character and Courage
In a world that is uncertain and where our existing knowledge is inadequate for the tasks we are required to perform, character and courage drive our ability to cope creatively and ethically. If our education system has to fully realise its vision of developing fuller and holistic capacities to thrive in a changing world, it is necessary that our educational processes not only invest in intellectual development, but also the development of character, courage and personal orientations. This is perhaps what Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had in mind when he wrote:
“Genius is not ‘talent plus character’, but character manifesting itself in the form of a special talent … One might say: ‘Genius is talent exercised with courage.’ … Courage is always original”
At JGU, we want to ensure that such an orientation towards building character and courage is emphasised in the opportunities we provide for academic development, non-curricular engagements, and most importantly, how teachers imbibe and embody this spirit. Of particular importance is the manner in which we provide safe spaces for our students to learn from their own mistakes, experiment, undertake imaginative projects and express themselves creatively without fear of failure.
2. The Ability to Live with Uncertainty
Our contemporary times are marked by complexity, uncertainty and volatility. It is widely recognised that traditional paradigms of knowledge production and dissemination have been found to be inadequate for the purposes of effective professional practice and democratic conduct. Our students are expected to acquire a range of skills that will allow them to navigate the social, political, organisational, technological and economic complexities that they will invariably encounter in their careers. It is also important that we emphasise the skills of learning as much as providing substantive knowledge in specialised areas. These skills should not be restricted to how best to complete their academic programmes but also to enable them to make learning a lifelong endeavour.
3. Interdisciplinary Orientation
In order to navigate the complexities of life in the 21st century world, our students need to develop deep interest in not simply the substantive aspects of their profession, but also wider aspects of their practices. Our students would in one way or other go into a practice of some kind. This means that they will deal with problems that are by definition interdisciplinary – problems that cannot be solved by knowledge from one discipline alone. Thus, students need to know how to synthesise from a range of perspectives, reduce ambiguities without necessarily oversimplifying, and hold meaningful and respectful conversations with individuals and groups from other disciplines. All of this would require reasonable facility for key disciplinary vocabularies and the particular orientations of those disciplines and practices.
At JGU we have been investing, encouraging and enlarging the possibilities for interdisciplinary conversations through cross-listed courses, enabling cross-disciplinary interactions through adaptations in processes and infrastructure, and institutionalising interdisciplinary engagement. Further, in the JGU schools that are focused on particular practices, there has been a focus on designing courses that draw from multiple disciplines, while not necessarily diluting core disciplinary requirements. We should view interdisciplinary engagement as not merely an exercise in doing what is most fashionable for today’s times, but as a compelling and necessary element to distinguish ourselves as an institution that prepares our students to become creative, entrepreneurial and ethical members of the organisations and groups that they will be members of when they graduate from JGU.
4. Respectful Dialogue
In order to achieve our pedagogical objectives, it is very important that we create an environment – both across the University and within our classrooms – that exemplifies an ethos of dialogue. Dialogue is a substantially important skill for our students to learn and embody, given that they would experience a range of novelties, differences and diversities in their everyday life. Respectful dialogue is the means through which they could negotiate the social, economic and technological complexities that they would encounter in their daily lives. In more ways than one, our classrooms should become safe havens of dialogical forms of engagement where everyone feels that they are active and equal participants in an exchange of ideas, knowledge and perspectives. Respectful dialogue should be one of our key modes of functioning and engaging with one another at JGU. That alone will enable us to create an environment where our students, faculty, staff and other stakeholders feel that they are part of a project that is worthy of their support and commitment.
5. Ethics
In recent years, there has been a growing concern that values imbibed through educational processes have tended to focus on technocratic, managerial and instrumental purposes, thus undermining our capacity to lead fuller and more meaningful lives. An ethical imagination is increasingly being seen as central to educating the mind for self-actualisation, both through career advancement as well as participation in larger societal processes. We have to see ethics as an integral part of all our programmes, courses and activities, and not as a distinct or specialised field. We have to view and undergird the ethical imagination in our classrooms and larger institutional practices. This is not merely a vision for an idealistic life, but also has practical consequences for building trust, cooperation and mutual respect amongst us.
I hope that as educators and teachers, we strive to imbibe some of these skills, values and practices in our own lives and conduct in order that we serve as exemplary models for our students.
I would like to recollect the words of Dr. Radhakrishnan, former President of India as to what is a University:
“A University is expected to be a place of higher learning where an individual is helped to acquire more knowledge, refine his or her culture and master philosophy. One should give up greed and selfishness and work hard with devotion. He or she, as a seeker of higher knowledge, sets aside his or her personal desires, and indulges in higher thinking and absorbs in nobler endeavours. A university is not a mere information shop, it is a place where one’s intellect, will and emotions are disciplined. The university is a sanctuary of the intellectual life of the country, and pursuit of knowledge is the soul of the university”.
I would like to end by sharing with you the poignant words of Paulo Freire, the respected Brazilian educator and philosopher, from his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
“The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach”
I would like to thank all our teachers for the dedication and commitment they demonstrate towards their students and this institution. I look forward to continuing to work with all of you to create a university that is student-centred and where learning, dialogue and respectful engagement take centre stage, both within the classroom and in our everyday institutional life.
As teachers make their inspiring contributions for developing the intellectual life of our society, we take this opportunity to celebrate their life!
On behalf of our founding Chancellor and benefactor, Mr. Naveen Jindal and myself, I have great pleasure in wishing all of you a very Happy Teachers’ Day.