Values in Education

Values in Educationtc "Values in Education"

“The growing concern over the erosion of essential values and an increasing cynicism in society has brought to focus the need for readjustment in the curriculum in order to make education a forceful tool for the cultivation of social and moral values. In our culturally plural society education should foster universal and eternal values, oriented towards the unity and integration of our people. Such value education should help eliminate obscurantism, religious fanaticism, violence, superstition and fatalism.”

National Policy on Education 1986

The role of education in social, economic and political development of societies is widely recognised for a long time. Education has been recognised both as an individual and social investment ever since the days of Adam Smith and now particularly since 1960 when the ‘human investment revolution in economic thought’ was initiated by T.W.Schultz. Recently, the human development specialists have reminded us again that education is not only for development, but also more importantly education itself is development. The intrinsic value of education - embedded in the inculcation of values of life in the young minds and in the moulding of the character of the children, in addition to the creation of joy of learning, ability to communicate with others, read, understand and enjoy simple pamphlets on literature and sciences, the joy of acquisition of knowledge etc. - is undoubtedly of prime importance. This is not altogether new. After all, this was considered the traditional aim and function of education. While the traditional value of education could be regarded as the internal or intrinsic value of education, the materialistic development role of education could be regarded as an external one. Both are important and are mutually related. It is not only materialistic aspects of education that lead to human resource development, but also the intrinsic values of education lead to high quality human resource development. But in the changing socio-economic circumstances the latter is dominating the world’s education scene. The latter way of thinking where education is considered as an instrument for development and emphasised the materialistic benefits of education, invaded the thinking on the traditional functions of education, to such an extent that the traditional function is forgotten altogether.

In the context of the recent economic reform policies introduced in many parts of the world, including in India, that include liberalization, privatization and globalization, the danger of forgetting traditional values of education altogether is high. Long in 1960s Phillip Coombs forecast world education crisis. The crisis continued in several forms, which led J. P. Naik to observe it as “the continuing education crisis” in India. Unfortunately, the crisis continues even today and perhaps the nature and intensity of the crisis is more complex and severe today than ever, affecting the basic foundational characteristic features of education.

Education does promote values. The question is: what kind of values education ought to promote? There are various kinds of values that any good education system has to give importance. Some values that education is expected to create and sustain may be changing along with the changes in the socio-economic environment, but some remain unchanged forever and they remain universally true. :

First, the core values. The core values are those, which are universal human values. They are: Satya (truth), Dharma (righteousness), Shanti (peace), Ahimsa (non-violence) and Prema (love). These are also considered as eternal human values. They do not change over time, nor are they context-or location-specific. Most societies value these values. They are widely respected and least controversial. All other values - physical, personal, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, national, and social - spring from these eternal values.

Not only these human values but also certain national, social and political values remain unchanged and they too could be universal in nature. They are: equity, social justice, patriotism, freedom, citizenship, dignity of labour, compassion, respect for women, respect for the aged, concern for poor, etc. These are also widely shared social, cultural and national values.

The values that may be subject to change are context and location-specific and they depend upon socio-political environment. For example, values relating to communism and socialism, social welfare, democracy and authoritarianism etc, may change. Democracy, secularism and social justice have been enshrined in the Indian constitution as the three most important national values. But democracy and secularism may not figure positively in authoritarian societies and in religion-based societies. Similarly, communism or socialism were important national values in the erstwhile Soviet Union, which may not be important in the countries of the common wealth of the Russian Federation, or in the capitalist societies. Thus, some of these values become ‘negotiated’ values for a given time and context. They are not static; they are dynamic in nature, and may mean differently in different contexts.

Above all, there are spiritual values, which are considered more important for the very survival and sustenance of societies. Spiritual values are also believed to be those that lay basic foundation for the development of character of individuals, stressing moral and ethical values such as sincerity, honesty, truthfulness, etc. Spiritual values are considered above religious values. Rather religious values draw their strength from spiritual values. Accordingly, people may find it difficult to impart spiritual values without relating to any religion. Only at higher levels, religious values may completely get sub-merged with spiritual values and loose their individual specific identity. So in practice, imparting of spiritual values in many contexts takes place through religion. This is not necessarily an undesirable method of imparting values, unless certain religious values conflict with human and spiritual values. As the Kothari Commission observed, “a serious defect in the school curriculum is the absence of provision for education in social, moral and spiritual values. In the life of the majority of Indians, religion is a great motivating force and is intimately bound up with the formation of character and the inclusion of ethical values. A national system of education that is related to the life, needs and aspirations of the people cannot afford to ignore this purposeful force.

Most of these values — universal, spiritual, national and social — have emerged from the fundamental classical ethics with accent on respect for humanity and life in all its forms. Most of these values are not mutually exclusive and do not necessarily conflict with each other. Spiritual values lay basic foundations for character building; and social values may promote social harmony and help in building a desirable ‘social order’. National values may help in the national renaissance; and human values stand much above all these and help in creating a better humanity. It is important to note that no values could be neutral, nor could they be imparted through a value neutral education system. As somebody remarked, the value neutral education system, if any, may turn out to value less education system.

It is the basic function of education to promote these values. ‘Education with values’ is regarded as the only solution for all kinds of problems that the societies are nowadays confronted with. It is unfortunate that even universal core values are given a go bye not only in our social, economic and political life but also in our education system in schools.

Almost all education commissions in India have emphasised the importance of value education, and more specifically of imparting of values through education. The commissions include from the Radhakrishnan Commission on higher education (1948-49), The Mudaliar commission on secondary education (1952-53) to the Kothari Commission (1964-66) and the Acharya Ramamurthy Committee (1990). As the Kothari Commission has observed ‘illiteracy and ignorance with goodness may be okay but education without values is dangerous’. Dr Mudaliar commission on secondary education has observed that religious and moral instructions play an important role in the growth of character of the children.

Several committees that were constituted specifically to look into the problem of value education (eg., Sri Prakasa Committee on Religious and Moral Instruction 1959; Kireet Joshi Committee on value education 1981-82) have clearly recommended that value orientation should be the main focus of education; the teaching of moral and spiritual values in educational institutions are desirable; and that value-oriented educational should be provided through out the country.

It may be a misnomer to think that value based education is abstract, teaching only morals, and is bereft of practical use. Value-based education includes knowledge of the humanistic foundations of society, as well as of natural, biological and physical sciences, philosophy and ethics that support the growth of good personality of the students with integrity and responsibility and excellence in knowledge. Sciences are not antithetical to intrinsic values of education. Good education provides a balanced diet of material and spiritual values - a healthy blend of the worldly and spiritual knowledge. After all, academic education is shallow and useless if it has no value orientation.

Educationists tend to believe, probably rightly, that introduction of these programmes at any level of education requires a considerable re-look at the load of curriculum and the nature of curriculum. The Radhakrishnan Commission spelt out the methods of providing value education: at school level stories which illustrate great moral and religious principles may be used; and at college level, ideas, events and leading figures associated with social and religious movements should be studied. All this may be necessary to revise the curriculum so as to make value education an integral part of the education system. It is important that value education is not treated like a separate subject of study. It should be truly integrated into the whole curriculum, the method of instruction, and the whole education process. This may also require training – pre-service and also in-service orientation programmes to the teachers.

Along with many mechanisms of imparting value-based education, educational planners in India had introduced certain specific mechanisms of creating good values among the students. Some important ones include the Bharat Scouts and Guides, the National Social Service (NSS), the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and the Social Useful Productive Work (SUPW). In recent days many governments were to launch special programmes of community services, for example, ‘Janma Bhoomi’ in Andhra Pradesh, as the earlier mechanisms in the schools mentioned above, have not been given serious attention. In fact some of them have become defunct, if not disappeared altogether. It is necessary that some such programmes are revitalised and/or introduced at all levels of education starting from primary to higher, including higher professional education. It is not proper to view that these mechanisms are important only to a given level of education and can be introduced in one specific level of education. Secondly, enrolment in these programmes needs to be made compulsory for all students and teachers. In fact, the participants in such programmes at local levels should cover not only the students and teachers but also the community at large, including the government officials. Thirdly, it is not just instruction of values to the students, but creation of an environment to put them into practice is more important. There are several institutions in India such as the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning (and the campus schools), and the schools run by the Ramakrishna Mission all over India that demonstrate that not only preaching but also practice of the human values is possible. Many valuable lessons can be learnt from such experiments, which are in fact, ceasing to be small micro level experiments and are rather becoming great movements.

*   Note presented in the Seminar on Value Education, organised by the Board of Intermediate Education, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad (28 April 2000). The comments of Shyamala Devi, Vinod K Agrwal, C. Subba Rao, D. Swaminadhan, M. Sree Ramamurthy, I. V. Chalapathi Rao, Malla Reddy, Saraswathi Rao, and other participants of the Seminar are gratefully acknowledged.