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ShareToday, it is the concern of every parent that their children should grow up to be well-educated human beings with good values, and that they should be happy. But somewhere down the line, the link to happiness appears to be getting severed.
Look at a child, a baby; what a beautiful smile it has. What joy and friendliness it exudes. And see the face of the same child by the time he graduates from college. Does he still have that joy?
This is what we really need to look at and think: is there any way that the innocence of an individual can be retained? If we can achieve that, then we will have attained something.
Even an ignorant person can be innocent, but such innocence does not have much value. And an intelligent person can be crooked, but such intelligence does not have much value either. The best combination is to have an intelligence complemented with innocence.
We should introduce such values in our education system. In schools and colleges, if you ask the children how many friends they have, they'll count on their fingers -- one, two, three, four, five... Not more than that. I have a question for children: if you don't know how to be friendly with the 40-50 children present in your classroom over a period of a year, how will you ever become friendly with the 6 billion people on the planet? As a part of their education, children should be encouraged to make one new friend a day.
Like the protons and neutrons are in the centre of the atom while the negative charged particles are only on the circumference, similarly we should keep the negativities in the periphery. At the core there should be positivity and virtue. And if we are successful in finding the means to nourish this virtue, we will see the youth radiant with human values.
It's painful to hear that there are shootouts in colleges today. I think it's high time that we came together to identify ways and means of restoring the respect, honour and dignity that education has commanded historically.
The need of the day is a broad-minded education, accompanied by a warm heart. So all of us together must ponder a holistic, healthy education system, that will spread the significance of our lost virtues, human values, broadmindedness and warm hearts. That should be our goal while bringing up our children.
