Mumbai: Teaching should be a "high paying job" to attract the best possible talent, Bollywood star Aamir Khan declared on Saturday as he, along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the 140-year-old St Xavier's College here for an interactive session with its students and academics.
"Teaching should be a high paying job so that youngsters should aim at becoming teachers. I would like to see that one day in India, teaching is the most highly paid job," the actor, dressed casually in light blue jeans, a white T-shirt and a black jacket said, declaiming at length about "Teaching as a profession".
"We should give so much value to teaching as a profession that every kid that comes out of school and college should feel that he or she wants to be a teacher," Aamir maintained, adding, "We as a country should give importance to teaching as a profession. Unfortunately we don't because there are more lucrative career options like medicine and engineering that parents want theirs kids to opt for."
Hillary couldn't agree more with Aamir, who is the brand ambassador of the Times of India's Teach India initiative that is based on the Teach America model.
"Aamir has come up with some excellent points to tell us what all is required to make education important. We have the best of educational institutes in our country but they are not for everyone. Part of our challenge is to provide education to those who don't get it easily," Hillary said.
"Competition is part of a human's genes. I believe working in collaborations and corporations would help children to do well in life," she explained.
According to Aamir, "most of the people entering teaching today are those who don't get jobs in the professions they want to, so they end up teaching. We have brilliant and talented teachers today who genuinely know how to teach but such people are in a minority."
"Our government should give value to teaching so that others too give it the same value. There are so many people who are interested in teaching but the pressure to become a doctor or an engineer rules out that possibility," he added.
The actor also said that education was the foundation of any society and everyone should take the responsibility to contribute something toward it.
"The most important thing about education is that it should encourage students to think. It should create people with minds to take humanity further. Today, our educational system emphasises more on memorising," Aamir explained.
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