Nagpur: Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Sunday underscored the crucial role of teachers in nation-building, saying mistakes made by teachers have far-reaching consequences that can affect entire generations.He was speaking at a students’ felicitation programme organised by Nagpur branch of Maharashtra Rajya Shikshak Parishad.Quoting former President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Gadkari said, “If a lawyer makes a mistake, it is buried in a file. If a doctor makes a mistake, it is buried in a graveyard. If an engineer makes a mistake, it is buried within the walls of a building. But if a teacher makes a mistake, it damages generations.”Gadkari said this is why a teacher’s role is the most important in shaping the citizens of the future, since it is through teachers that children receive their values and outlook.Drawing a distinction between being sushikshit (well-educated) and susanskrit (well-cultured), Gadkari said education is incomplete without values. He stressed that academic knowledge alone is not enough if students do not learn to respect their parents, teachers and society, adding that education must be accompanied by values that contribute positively to society.Gadkari also said money should be treated as a means, not the goal, of life, and that a society’s ambition should shift from children wanting to become officers, engineers or doctors to wanting to become teachers, since it is teachers who make those other successes possible in the first place.He narrated an anecdote of a man jailed for theft who, when allowed to meet his mother, bit her ear and blamed her for not stopping him when he stole for the first time as a child, to illustrate how early upbringing shapes a person’s conduct later.Gadkari said the country’s future depends on building what he called a “teacher-oriented society” in the years ahead.
