The passion of teaching

Sir,
This has reference to the news item’IAS Officer quits job to pursue passion of teaching’ (DE, Jan11, 2016). It is really heartening to tead that Roman Saini,a 24-yr old IAS officer posted as Assistant Collector,has decided to quit his prestigious job in pursuit of his passion for teaching.The young IAS officer,who is a graduate from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, cracked the coveted civil services exam merely at 22.This bears testimony to his high intellectual ability.He, alongwith his school friend,Gaurav Munjal has started an online initiative ‘Unacademy’ which provides free tutorials to civil services aspirants and which has1.1crore lessons delivered benefitting over 5 lakh students. It is his strong passion for teaching which made him take the ‘difficult’ decision of quitting the civil services and pursuing his passion full time.Surely, India is in dire need of such competent and dedicated teachers who have a strong passion and sense of commitment to develop the required skills in their students and  spread the light of  knowledge.The ranking of our universities and other institutes of higher learning is not so encouraging at the global level and even the President of India has emphasised on many occassions the need for committment and hard work to bring our institutions at par with the prestigious institutes at the global level.We also require such dedicated and conscientious teachers at the school level so that our students develop necessary  skills and real knowledge to be able to compete at the national and international level.
We have had in India sages, gurus and teachers such as Dhronacharya,Vasishtha, Valmiki, Chankaya, Dr. Radhakrishanan etc. who are reverred as great teachers not only in India but also across the globe. So the Goverment ought to take measures to make the profession of teaching more attractive so that talented and committed youth having best of intellectual minds such as Roman Saini join this profession and work hard to raise the glory of our schools,colleges universities and other such institutes.We need people who adopt the profession of teaching by ‘choice’ and not by ‘chance’; who have a missionery motive and not mercenary one to teach their students. In fact, a person having only mercenary motive should think twice before joining this noble profession.
Yours etc…..
Ashok Sharma,
Udhampur