Swami Vivekananda said, "Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet."

 

Somehow we have misunderstood academics to be education. From parents to teachers to school administration to educational governance, everybody's focus has titled too much towards academics. What will a child do with science, if he doesn't understand the science of life? Even a scientist cannot be completely successful in science unless he understands life equally well. We teach our children to read and memorize history, while we should be teaching them to create history? The very purpose of reading history must be to make history. What will a child do with her first and second and third languages, if her communication skills are not developed? What use is language if it doesn't help one to blossom into an empowering communicator?

 

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not saying academics is nothing, but I am only asserting, academics by itself does not complete education. Academics is one of aspect of a child's development and not the only aspect. Academics will aid life, but academics alone is not life. There is more to life. Every first rank holder does not necessarily come first in life and not all backbenchers have remained backbenchers in life. In fact, we often see a '98% with little understanding of life eventually works for a '72% plus a comprehensive understanding of life.

 

Relationships are the very fabric of life. Communication is the lifeline of relationships. Success is all about leadership – you will either lead or will be led. Where your time goes, there your future comes. So time management skills in essence are life management skills. You can either be dependable or dependent, which depends on whether you have a healthy self-image. If you don't have something to stand for, you will fall for anything and everything. And to be anchored to your values at all times you need spiritual rootedness. So you will have to value the Master and also master the
Values. The sad fact is that none of the above mentioned life-essentials is part of our academic system.

 

So please, parents, teachers and other custodians of our children's future, as we march into a new academic year, let our primary focus be to mentor our children to be '72% plus a comprehensive understanding of life' children, with all their other talents too developed. Of course, if you achieve a '98% plus a comprehensive understanding of life' child – I truly bow down to you. You are then that teacher and that parent who is creating the future citizens of the world.

 

Let us not confine life to a syllabus. There is more to life than just academics. Let us not only count their marks, but more importantly make their life count.