Prime Minister Narendra Modi pays tribute before the statue of Madan Mohan Malaviya.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has again underscored the importance of having good teachers and gearing education towards the overall personality development of a student. "Our education apparatus can't be one that produces robots," he said today during his address at the Banaras Hindu University.
"In this land of the Ganga, there was education of culture. But, more importantly, there was a culture of education," the Prime Minister said. "Good education is linked with good teachers. We need to think how we can have good teachers. We need to think about how we can create an environment where children want to become good teachers."
The importance of education and having good teachers in the country has been a recurrent concern for the Prime Minister. During his interaction with the students on the occasion of the Teachers' Day, he said there was a need to find out why the profession has lost its sheen and why students do not wish to be teachers when they grow up.
Today, he said a student who wants to become a teacher will not study just for exams but will closely observe the teachers and get inspired. "If we can train such people, we can give good teachers to the world," he said.
The Prime Minister was in Varanasi to mark the Good Governance Day, which the government had announced to celebrate the birthday of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. While in the city, he also attended the function at the university, which had been founded by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya in 1916.
Yesterday, the government announced that the nation's highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna, will be conferred on both Mr Vajpayee and Pandit Malaviya.