Guruvani: ‘Nowadays people set their sights higher’

Reena Rajpal, principal, DLDAV Model School, Shalimar Bagh, talks to HT Students’ Edition about a range of educational issues. Excerpts:

What is the biggest professional challenge that you face in your role as a principal?

A school cannot run in isolation. It demands contribution from all its stakeholders, that is, parents, teachers, students, administrators, and staff members. The biggest challenge as the head of a school is to make sure that all the stakeholders are on the same page and headed in the same direction. This is imperative to deliver quality education which is the underlying principle of any such institution.

Once a teacher always a teacher. Do you agree?

Teaching is a profession that straddles both the public and the private domains. It cannot be confined to the institution itself; in brief, it becomes a way of life. For me, everything that I do, be it in the school or outside of it becomes an extension of my pedagogy.

Success has become an obsession with people of all ages nowadays. Comment

With every passing second the world is becoming more and more competitive. The journey to success is no longer a ladder but a nexus of accomplishments. While the older generation aimed at having a stable life, people nowadays have set their sights higher, given the plethora of opportunities now available.

What in your view is GenNext’s biggest strength? Which are the key areas of improvement?

As I mentioned before, this generation displays remarkable signs of ambition and resourcefulness. They are willing to take risks and venture into unchartered territories. This I believe set them apart. Yet, in my opinion this also comes with a downside. The number of options often makes a person distracted, so that focused work and conviction seem to be traits that this generation lacks.

Given the diverse need of today’s youngsters, what emphasis do you put on teacher’s training?

I think it’s important for teachers today to be updated in terms of knowledge. I do not speak merely of general knowledge, current affairs et al but also other forms of information on the Internet and WhatsApp. Social media has intertwined itself with our daily lives in such a way that an orthodox outlook that rejects these developments might often result in a myopic tutelage.

With their vast experience and wisdom how can the elderly contribute to the students’ all round development and growth?

There is no questioning the fact that the elderly, that is, the people of experience have vast storehouses of knowledge that can be useful to the youth. The essential difference, even with disparate worldviews, is that the former has already negotiated with the fundamental experiences of life and can advise with retrospective wisdom. This should be considered an asset and should be used by the youth as a tool to better face the challenges in front of them.

What according to you is the role of media in education?

To claim that the media has an unprecedented role to play in our daily lives might be an understatement. All the forms of dissemination of knowledge are connected to media be it conventional media or social media. Most of us depend on it for our ideas, principles and judgments regarding matters of the world. Thus, our education system cannot isolate itself from the same and has to make use of these channels to constantly keep itself updated and in tune with every little development happening around the world.