New Delhi/ Educationonline Bureau

Delivering the Convocation Speech at the 21st Convocation of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), professor S K Joshi, former Director General, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) exhorted IGNOU authorities to make human values a part of the education of every student.

Joshi emphasized that most of us consider that the purpose of education is to equip us to get better jobs, which provides us wealth and good living. Our education does not prepare a student for dealing with life, merely prepares him for a job. Our education does not teach us how to examine goals we set in life, how to sort our conflicts, how to deal with relationships with family and friends. Today’s children do not have opportunity to learn about value system from grandparents. There is no guidance from any quarter about meaning of life, importance of spirituality, simplicity and modesty.

Because we ignore human values in our educational system we are witnessing rise of crime, erosion of social discipline and atomization of family. The evil of corruption has permeated all sections of our society. Our education should shape our students to become honest, self –confident and responsible citizens. Shri Aurobindo said, “Most vital of all, the spiritual and intellectual divorce from past, which the present schools and universities have affected, has beggared the nation of originality, high aspirations and forceful energy which alone makes a nation great”. IGNOU should therefore deliberate how human values could become a part of the education of a student so that we are able to reconcile modernity and economic prosperity with human values, he added.

In his report vice chancellor of IGNOU, V N Rajasekharan Pillai announced new programmes in Mental Retardation, Visual Impairment, Hearing Impairment as well as M Ed in Special Education and M Sc in Counseling and Family Therapy. The programmes are:

# Postgraduate Professional Diploma in Special Education in the area of Mental Retardation, Visual Impairment, and Hearing Impairment.

# Post Graduate Professional Certificate in Special Education Programme of 6 month duration in the area of Mental Retardation, Visual Impairment, and Hearing Impairment.

# M.Ed. Special Education

# M.Sc. in Counseling and Family Therapy

# Certificate in Early Childhood Special Education Enabling Inclusion (Mental Retardation)

IGNOU has also launched an unprecedented new sign language programme to benefit the professional education of deaf students throughout India. It includes the first-ever BA degree in Applied Sign Linguistics in India and a one-year preparatory course, targeted at deaf signers the one-year preparatory course will lead to the BA Applied Sign Linguistics degree, which is due to start in 2010. This course aims at producing language teachers competent to teach literacy and sign language to children, adults, interpreters, parents of the deaf, and teachers for India’s over 550 deaf schools with a scope for international outreach as well.

At this Convocation, which was telecast Live on Gyan Darshan and held simultaneously at 43 Regional Centres, 66 Gold Medals were awarded.

IGNOU student, Dhondup Dolma, Master of Arts (Sociology) was awarded the Prof. Ram Reddy Memorial Gold Medal for the highest marks in any Master Degree programme in Social Science. Anjali Kumari Singh, Masters in Computer Applications, was awarded the CEMCA cash award of Rs10,000 for the Best Female student in any Degree Programme pertaining to technology. The Dr APJ Abdul Kalam cash award for the Gold Medalist in BSW was awarded to Vijayan M and Naresh Chand, BA (Ord) was awarded the professor Grover cash award for differently abled students.