Narayana Murthy's Teachers' Day advice to young adults: Ask questions, train yourself

September 5th marks teacher’s day on our calendars. And at a recent Leadership Summit at St Xavier’s College in Mumbai, Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, discusses the place of education in the life of a young Indian – and the importance of having good teachers. Murthy says of his time in school, “We had good teachers – they were role models. They were kind, they were generous but they were also extremely strict. Very, very strict. They just did not put up with any minor nuisance caused by the students. They had a lot of good values.”

When it comes to higher education, Murthy says it’s up to an individual’s attitude and the desire to constantly educate oneself and more importantly, train yourself to think by asking questions. “From the perspective of higher education, the first thing I learnt was that education is all about learning to learn. While in the classroom you learn subjects but in the process you are also learning critical thinking, curiosity, you learn to questions etc. As you go into the real world, the most important lesson that higher education teaches you is learning to learn,” he says.

Murthy adds that learning and expanding our minds also helps us with our softer skills. “Higher education teaches you to be pluralistic and to be tolerant of other views. Higher education is all about opinions – your opinion vs my opinion. I would as much respect your opinion as my own, but I may not follow yours.”