Man­ag­er of the Raj and Sati Jadoo El Do­ra­do North Hin­du School Raj Jadoo says ed­u­ca­tion is the birthright of every child. This, he said, cou­pled with hu­man val­ues in to­day's mod­ern so­ci­ety is es­sen­tial for mak­ing it through life's jour­ney.

He was speak­ing at the school's SEA grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny on June 30.

Ad­dress­ing the stu­dents, Jadoo said "Grad­u­a­tion is on­ly a con­cept. In re­al life, every day you grad­u­ate. Grad­u­a­tion is a process that goes on un­til the last day of your life. If you can grasp that, you'll make a dif­fer­ence."

He said ed­u­ca­tion was learn­ing how to think, ex­er­cis­ing some de­gree of con­trol over one's thoughts so the in­di­vid­ual can de­cide what they want to fo­cus their en­er­gies on.

Jadoo, a mem­ber of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, said at the El Do­ra­do North Hin­du School "mem­bers of the school have con­stant­ly been striv­ing to pro­vide qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion for all and sundry in spite of all hur­dles and im­ped­i­ments that came in the way." He said the school was com­mit­ted to the pro­mo­tion of ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man val­ues.

Jadoo urged the stu­dents to re­main fo­cused and con­cen­trate on their stud­ies as they move on to a high­er lev­el.

Jadoo said "do not be dis­tract­ed by neg­a­tive forces, think pos­i­tive, and be a mod­el stu­dent. The end of ed­u­ca­tion is char­ac­ter."

He ap­pealed to stu­dents to re­turn to their school to give back ser­vice to the younger ones.

"We would great­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that you come and vis­it us ever so of­ten and as­sist with our de­vel­op­ment, to help in the ed­u­ca­tion of oth­ers. Our new gen­er­a­tions will face a much faster chang­ing world than we did decades ago. Glob­al­iza­tion, the ad­vent of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and the de­vel­op­ment of a knowl­edge-based econ­o­my are lead­ing to changes at an un­prece­dent­ed rate and scale.

"The knowl­edge chil­dren gained at schools will soon lag be­hind the de­vel­op­ment of the so­ci­ety. In the face of the chal­lenges ahead, we need to equip our new gen­er­a­tion to be life­long learn­ers, so that they can keep abreast of changes and be­come ac­tive and valu­able mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty.

"To pre­pare our chil­dren for the fu­ture, we need to pro­vide them with the op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op the gener­ic skills that are need­ed for them to be­come life­long learn­ers. Apart from knowl­edge, our chil­dren need to de­vel­op their skills to ac­quire, con­struct, and com­mu­ni­cate. They should al­so be able to col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers, be ready to lis­ten, and be cre­ative in their think­ing. Most of all, at this ear­ly stage of de­vel­op­ment, a pos­i­tive view of them­selves as learn­ers is the most im­por­tant ben­e­fit we can in­cul­cate in our chil­dren."

While the school is an im­por­tant place for chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion, Jadoo said fam­i­lies play an equal­ly crit­i­cal role in the de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren. "In par­tic­u­lar, par­ents are in­stru­men­tal in their per­son­al growth and at­ti­tudes to­wards life." The part­ner­ship formed with par­ents at the school, he said, has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to mak­ing learn­ing more in­ter­est­ing and ef­fec­tive for stu­dents.

"To par­ents, I wish to ex­press my ap­pre­ci­a­tion for your ac­tive con­tri­bu­tions to­wards your child's ed­u­ca­tion. A big chal­lenge for us, as par­ents or ed­u­ca­tors, is to equip our chil­dren with the knowl­edge, skills and val­ues for all-round and whole-per­son de­vel­op­ment. Our vi­sion for the 21st cen­tu­ry is to en­able all our chil­dren to de­vel­op their po­ten­tial to the fullest ex­tent. It will be the con­cert­ed ef­forts by the SDMS, the Gov­ern­ment, front line ed­u­ca­tors, and the com­mu­ni­ty as a whole which will trans­late our vi­sion in­to re­al­i­ty."