Students are no robots, they need skills: Lok Sabha Speaker

Students are "no robots" and therefore all efforts must be made to help them develop innovative and investigative skills, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said here on Saturday.

"We should sincerely try to develop innovative and investigative skills among students because we are making students, and not robots. Health and education are two important components of a nation's strategy to develop," she said addressing the annual conference of the Forum of Public Schools.

Quoting Swami Vivekananda, she said: "Education is not the amount of information that we put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life building, man making, character making assimilation of ideas."

Pointing out that country's literacy rate has risen to 74.04 percent in 2011 as compared to 18.33 percent in 1951, she said that there are still 27 crore people who need to be educated.

"As education is the prerequisite for achieving a dignified place as a nation, it is imperative that its content and quality remain high," she said.

The Forum of Public Schools is a non-profitable organisation that seeks to promote excellence in school education and safeguard the interests of private unaided schools in and around Delhi.

--IANS

nd/vd