‘Love Quotient Should Be Embraced In Schools’: Latya Vaidyanathan

It is often said highbrows are people who have a very high IQ or intelligence quotient and if they are good leaders, they also need to have a superior EQ or emotional quotient. But in the words of Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, you also need something he calls ‘LQ’ or ‘Love Quotient’, which was reiterated by Dr. Lata Vaidyanathan, Director, TERI Prakriti School, New Delhi. She affirmed this at the School Leaders Conclave organized by BW Education on February 19th, 2020.

Speaking at a session on ‘Creating a Global edge on creating for the Indian school education’ Making Indian Schools Future Ready’, Vaidyanathan maintained, “There is something which people call IQ, EQ, SQ. But Jack Ma has focussed on LQs. In saying so, he says while all the others will be taken care of, the softer side of who a person is has to be made relevant. You can’t do that unless you invest in the child’s belongness, sense of security, safety, trust, and such areas of skills which make him socially safe and wanting to do something and also embrace change. So that has to be done in areas where love and trust are not compromised.”

She also maintained, “Schools will never lose its relevance and will have to be there whatever be the challenges except that we have to move away from kind of standardisation and testing to making education more relevant. In doing that, who is the key person? The leadership and the teacher. So please invest in teachers. If you Change them, they will influence the lives per teacher. In that way, you will make sure that you will influence a lot of lives because the current generation is not dependent on information for schools and teachers. They are Uber, Ola, Netflix, generation. The kind of jobs that they will get in the future is very unpredictable. If that is the case, the preparation has to begin now in your nursery classes. So, without compromising on the quality of what a transaction must take place, be a change which is relevant.”

At the same session, Vinesh Menon, CEO, Education, Skilling & Consulting, Government Services, VIBGYOR group opined that the India’s education system should create its own benchmarks internalised and not built it alongside Finland or other country’s models. He also stated, “If you really want to make a change in the way India progresses, somewhere these 5 elements need to be focused upon. Firstly, we need to focus on early childcare because 85% of the brain develops between 3-7 years of age. Secondly, teaching has to be a wanted profession. Thirdly, the parents’ outlook towards the child should be in term of marks but in terms of what he or she wants to do in life. I think the children of India should first understand our own country’s states inside out before going out. And finally, I think (in having) vocational education in schools. So, if you package all those, the whole theme is creating a global as an Indian education should really change.”

In the same session, Arjun Kumar, Director, IT, Bihar School Examination Board, Patna, revealed, “The education system in Bihar was revamped under our Chief Minister 5 years back. In corporate terminology, I was the developer of codes (around that time). Putting the pieces together was a challenge. We are using technological revolution over the last few years. From no computers, we have brought in modern technologies in our education system like setting up data centre, IT infrastructure, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc.”

Avishek Banerjee

BW Reporters The author is a Principal Correspondent at BW Businessworld.