'In post-Covid world, it is predicted that education will be more research-driven'

‘It’s time to think, evaluate and most importantly prepare a roadmap...’ 

MP | 20 Nov 2022 | Kolkata: Satyam Roychowdhury, Chancellor of Sister Nivedita University, co-founder & Managing Director of Techno India Group, and chairperson for the education committee at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCC&I), believes that in the post-Covid world, teachers have become more like analysts. 

Speaking at The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry's 5th Annual Education Conclave 2022 at a city hotel on Saturday, he said: ''We all know how Covid disrupted education for almost two years. 

And how the entire ecosystem went topsy-turvy. Certainly, these are challenging and exciting times. It's time to think, evaluate and most importantly prepare a roadmap. The teacher is known today to map a student's talent and shape his/her skill set with technology such as AI, VR, blockchain, and many more. It is predicted that education will be more research-driven.'' After a gap of two years, 

The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry is organising its Annual Education Conclave in a physical format. This year the theme is 'Converging Educational Horizon', and Roy Chowdhury said post-Covid, 'converging educational horizon' is the need of the hour. 

Talking about the digital divide, he said: ''The stakeholders, government, civil society, intellectuals, community at large and industries should work together to create opportunities for all.'' 

Subir Chakraborty, President of Bengal Chamber and Managing Director & CEO of Exide Industries Ltd, felt the National Education Policy (NEP 2020) replaces a 34-year policy to become a more inclusive, holistic, comprehensive, and far-sighted policy to make India a knowledge hub. 

''The NEP aims to recognise the need to evaluate skills like creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, visualisation and idea generation. Today, we are assaulted by information. Unless education is the enabler for the creation of wisdom, it is superficial and does not help a person. 

This is increasingly important because today we live in a VUCA-World– volatility, uncertainty, complexity ambiguity,'' he said. Shekhar Mehta, President of Rotary International 21-22 is on a mission to literate the country by 2030. Praising the NEP and its universal access to quality education, he said they have developed a programme called 'teach'. 

He also spoke at length about how they went to around 30,000 schools across 10 states in India and put projection systems to stream the best audio-visual content to the students. Padma Shri professor Dr. Ajoy Kumar Ray, who is the director at JIS Institute of Advanced Studies and Research, spoke about how Finland has revolutionised its education system making novel changes, and now is considered the best in the world. 

Meanwhile, Padma Bhushan scientist Dr. Bikash Sinha, who was the director of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, didn't sound quite pleased with the present-day education system. 

''Today, the education system is creating copycat robots suitable for stereotypical jobs where originality and creativity are not in demand. We have to teach our children how to be creative, think outside the box, and write new ideas. In our education system, the syllabus hardly changes,'' he said. 

http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/in-post-covid-world-it-is-predicted-that-education-will-be-more-research-driven-499697