"Ultimate power is the ability to produce results you desire most and create value for others in the process. Power is the ability to change your life, to shape your perceptions, to make things work for you and not against you. Real power is shared and not imposed. It's the ability to define human needs and to fulfill them - both your needs and the needs of the people you care about. It's the ability to direct your own personal kingdom - your own thought process, your own behavior - so you produce the precise results you desire."
What is envisaged is not political power, money power, or muscle power but knowledge power, the most powerful of all the powers. But, "Real knowledge, like everything else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, it must be prayed for.".
To possess the ultimate power is the secret desire of each and everyone, and education is the means to accomplish the ultimate power, for which what is needed is a reorientation to define education. It is possible only through innovation and creativity. The future of education and its effectiveness depend upon taking a different approach to give a new meaning to it and to create a new value and direction for the student and teacher community. It should aim at meeting the needs of those who are directly involved in education, namely the students and the teachers, and also to meet the great expectations of those who also share the benefits of an effective educational system, namely the parents and the state.
So far education has been treated as a teaching preposition to impart a set of standardized knowledge to students to evolve a curriculum based on a common programmed teaching method through a standardized delivery system. But no one has treated education as a system that routinely allows excellent work to result from the ordinary efforts of ordinary people. Changing the system will change what people do. But changing what people do will not change the system. The present approach to education represents not leadership but abdication of leadership. What is needed is to evolve a new approach and find a new way to education. This new way is enormously more effective than the old way, and it is a whole lot more fun. The most important aspect is that education should be made a continuous process enabling the student and teaching community to update their knowledge and skills. The only way to update the knowledge and skills is to undergo a training program conducted by competent, well-experienced professionals. Hence the importance of training should not be overlooked.
"The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. ..." The student and the teacher community should recognize the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications to maintain, upgrade, and update skills throughout working life. This is called "professional development."
"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, and to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past, and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own efforts." And "The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think—to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men." The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student through effective and efficient education and proper training to meet the challenges of the present and to face the uncertainties of the future with true grit.
One of the most important aspects of education is to understand the interests, aspirations, and inherent positive qualities of students from the very primary stages of education for which the teachers and counselors specialized in child behavior and psychology should be engaged to review the family and other connected background of children and the environment in which they live, the company of friends they move with, and the media to which they are exposed. There should be consistent monitoring of the children's behavior. The importance of parents' involvement in the grooming of their children cannot be overlooked or ignored because the first lessons are learned under the tutelage of parents only. There should be regular contact between the school authorities and the parents so as to enable them to understand if any special attentions are needed for the children.
Therefore, it is the imperative need that the educational system should develop and devise creative and innovative methods covering all aspects of developing professional competencies among the student and teacher community by analyzing and understanding the impediments coming in the way of creating a congenial and conducive environment for the veritable realization of the true objectives of the ultimate real power among the present and the next generation. Some of the much-needed curriculum requirements for the students and the teachers, applicable to their respective areas of activities as the case may be, are listed below, which will enable both the student community and the teacher community to understand their respective roles and applicable areas of activities, to coordinate with each other, cultivating respect for each other, and to work unitedly and in unison to create an atmosphere of trust and understanding by giving education a new direction to create a new order for education as envisaged above.
- Stress management.
- Time management.
- How to study? (For students.)
- How to teach? (For teachers)
- Power of positive attitude.
- Power of positive mind management.
- Power of positive communication.
- Work-life-leisure balance.
- Develop the power of a positive personality.
- Develop the power of leadership qualities.
If a well-defined, holistic, integrated, value-based, and stress-free education system is designed and delivered to the students and the teachers, it will fulfill the objectives of the education.
"Success is not a chance but a choice." And the choice is that of the concerned stakeholders. Let the power of knowledge spread among the students and teachers, leading them to success in their lives. The beneficiary will be the society in particular.
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