Don't blame the child for forgetting lessons; make the lessons unforgettable.
The world needs real-world universities, 'doer' universities. We're going to set up one model of it in Ladakh. And if it is successful, we hope it'll have a ripple effect from New Delhi to New York.
It is important to engage students by focussing at what they wanted to do, rather than forcing them to do something.
When I started my engineering, I had to support my education expenses; I was then studying in what is now the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar.
I believe that education should be about healing the earth and dealing with the crises that we are in.
Yes, though trained as an engineer, I shifted to education as I realized that the system needed to be changed; I saw so many of the bright minds caged.
Education was not about consumption, but about contentment with less and less. This is what Buddha taught and this is what the Vedas say.
We in the Himalayas have the problem of glaciers melting away and we had to make our own glaciers and I don't consider them proud or great achievement. It is only mainly to adapt to the problems that we have caused in this planet; The real solutions lie elsewhere; maybe people in the big cities of India, China and US can solve it.
I always say please live a simple life in the city so that we can lead a simple life in the mountains.
My journey has mainly been driven by empathy towards people who I thought were suffering.
We should choose simple ways of living... to live in harmony with nature by adopting simpler technologies and using natural resources innovatively.
I hope the conduct of Indians can become an example for the rest of the world to follow.
I find it strange that our children, teenagers are kept captive listening in classrooms. Earlier education was for career and livelihood. Now, it has to rise to solve the crisis facing the earth and nations have to pay attention to the education of children to save this planet.
I believe that schools of today with all their answers on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, above everything else, take us back to the industrial revolution in time, when people thought that nature could be conquered and consumption or production could be unlimited.
We need to explore our own deserts and land, which need to be healed and managed on the planet itself. It is not the time to use and throw this planet and we need to explore deep within more than without. Space exploration should be used to quench human thirst.
The Indian government has been taking some lead in several environmental initiatives, like the international solar alliance, many green initiatives in schools, lots of river reservations projects.
Education needs to be linked with life and should take into count the ground situation in different parts of India.
Young people in their twenties spend three-four years doing things that are behind the times. We're capturing such people in a classroom for a lecture. We need to reground ourselves and see how evolution has taught us.
Paper knowledge, paper evaluations, paper degrees all too papery and all too theoretical; it has very little that prepares us for real life in the real world.
Private schools cannot be the answer to nation's needs. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway are leading examples where government schools are world acclaimed.
