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“Value education in higher education”
Mr. Ankit Kumar*
*Department of Chemical Engineering & Tech, Indian Institute of Technology (B.H.U.), Varanasi, Varanasi- 221005 (UP), India
Email:- ankit.rs.che14@iitbhu.ac.in
State of the society today and the role of education:
We are facing many kinds of problems today - corruption, exploitation, and violence in society,
strife in family, destruction in nature and lack of satisfaction in the self. We all are having
problems at all the level (individual, family, society, nature). So a considerable question comes in
the mind. What is the main cause behind all these current problems while science has enabled us
to improve our understanding of physical reality around us and technology continues to offer
conveniences in increasingly newer ways? The source of current problems seems to be an
emphasis on physical facilities, glamour, consumerist lifestyle, and a false sense of satisfaction in
competition and one-upmanship ('neighbours envy - owner’s pride'). The focus on the external
things leads to ignorance about the concerns of the self. It leads to a blind race for wealth,
position and jobs. Many times, in spite of achieving ones goals, the individual remains
dissatisfied - jobs and positions that are intellectually and mentally unfulfilling, and wealth that
leads to chaos in family, problems in society, and imbalance in nature. Physical facilities are
needed to lead a proper life; however, there is a need to examine how many physical facilities are
needed and what is its role? It is also important to ask the question - besides physical facilities,
what else is important in human life? The lack of attention to relationships leads to strife in the
family, in spite of all the worldly successes. It is the human relationships and human values that
are a source of our perennial happiness. So in the present day context human beings are able to
see the need for a value oriented education system and also have to identify the role of education
in our education system.
Vision about educationValue:
Education may seem vague term to many of us even though we may be hearing about it
frequently. While starting about value education, let us understand what we are talking about and
what its need is, particularly in present context of education. In this paper, we are going to clarify
certain fundamental issues which are important to all of us in our life- issues which are directly
relate to our happiness, our welfare, our aspirations, goals and success in life. In a sense, value
education deals with what is universally valuable to all of us, what is conductive to our
individual and collective happiness and prosperity in a sustainable way. It enables us to be in
harmony within ourselves, with other human beings and with rest of nature at large. Such an
understanding will be vital for the successful conduct of our profession as well.
In our present scenario education system concentrates on providing to its students the
skills to do things (which are of economic value). In other words, it concentrates on providing
“How to do” rather than “What to do” or “Why something should be done”. A result of this is
the production of graduates who are neither aware of their surroundings nor of their own self,
and face life with difficulty. The education system does not prepare students for dealing with life.
It prepares them only for profession or jobs. They have to learn by themselves to deal with life,
which includes examining ones goals, identifying and sorting out conflicts, dealing with
relationships in family and friends, understanding society and a mutually enriching relationship
with nature. This requires ability to think critically about everyday matters of life. Education
does not address issues of commitment either. Thus, the education system is failing to develop
critical thought which leads to clarity and commitment among its students. On looking into this
issue, it becomes evident that we are stilled faced with serious problems at various levels. At the
human level, we can see that there continue to be issues in individual with respect to clarity on
life-goals, contradictions and stress, while at the level of human relationships in the family, we
see problems in mutual understanding, increasing mistrust, insecurity and generation gap.
Further, at the level of relationships in society we see increasing communal conflict, exploitation
and strife, terrorism and violence in various forms. The increasing corruption and other unethical
practices in various professions are also causing serious concern. At the level of nature, we have
increasing problems of environmental degradation in various forms as well as resource depletion
threatening the very survival of the human race. In fact, all these problems are a direct outcome
of the ‘well planned’ human activity carried out in the name of progress and in spite of all the
advancements of science and technology. Where then, lays the solutions? What exactly amiss?
This is an important question intriguing the human mind today.
Purpose of present education system-:
In present day context we observe that excelling in competitive examinations, making a career,
getting a job has become the primary focus for most of us, thus we summaries the total purpose
of all our education so far! Is this why we have been studying? Is this the purpose of all one gets
at school and college? What do we believe as our goal, our purpose of education we have had
and the education that we will be going through spending more than 20 years process?
Need for value education in higher education:-
At the same time, besides spending a lot of time in school, college, studying and preparation for
examinations- we have been living a big part of our lives at our home in relationship with our
family and our friends. This network of relationship- with our parents, our siblings and our
friends is an important aspect of our lives and brings to us a lot of support and joy but many a
time, these relationships turn unpleasant and we find ourselves in conflict with the other person.
At that point we become unsure and begin to blame, criticize the other and sometimes even
ourselves. In the process both of us suffer. Sometimes, we are intrigued, baffled and even
frustrated at the behavior of other human beings and even our own behavior with others. Many a
time, we are at a loss to know how to handle these relationship issues properly and it ends up
disturbing us. Some of us even look at our relationships with family and friends as a burden and
avoid them and our present day education does not give even little guidance to help us identify
and resolve these conflicts. At school or college- we get only little guidance about relationships
and how properly live in them-since it is not a part of our syllabus.
The education system must try to develop not just skills but also an understanding of what
should be done, and commitment to choose and do what one considers as right. Goal of
education is to develop not just skills (or questions of how) but also ability to decide on
questions of what and why. The latter questions are extremely important, and they have been left
out of modern education system - not just in India but throughout the world. As a result, we find
that students are ill-prepared to think about and face such questions in real-life. Such a lacuna is
increasingly being noticed in education throughout the world. In fact, this lacuna is said to be the
reason behind increasing violence in family and society, and exploitation of nature, Pollution
(e.g. global warming). The overall purpose of education is to enable a human being to live a
fulfilling life, in harmony with oneself and with family, society and nature. In light of this, it
becomes essential to find out what is of value, or what is really valuable to a human being?
While technology is an important human endeavor, it is only a means to achieve what is
considered ‘valuable’ for human beings in an effective and efficient manner. It is thus not within
the scope of technology to decide ‘what is valuable’ to a human being. The subject that deals
with ‘what is of value’ or ‘what is valuable to a human being’ is called value education. Values
thus provide the basis for all our actions and there is an essential complementarity between
values and skills which needs to be ensured in my education system. All of us consider
something or the other to be valuable. We set our goals, our aims on this basis, and then set out to
work towards achieving them. While the need for determining what is valuable to us may seem
evident, let us investigate into this a little more to understand the need for Value education. Let
us look at the more aspects to appreciate the need for value education
Correct identification of our aspirations: All humans being have aspirations. Everyone must
have made various plans for future, be it immediate or long term. The planning may include our
personal life, our family, our profession, our participation in the society and other such domains.
But before we invest our energies to actualize our plans, it is important that we find out what we
basically aspire for. Thus we need to identify our basic aspiration. Based on the correct
identification of the basic aspiration, we can frame our goals and sub-goals appropriately and
working for these, we may hope to fulfill our basic aspiration.
Understanding universal values to fulfill our aspirations in continuity: Just identifying one’s
aspiration is not enough. We need to know how to fulfill our aspirations, how to go about
actualizing our goals. Generally we tend to pursue goals in variety of ways as per our appraisal
and beliefs. We keep on making experiments, learning from these and accordingly improving our
understanding. Complete understanding of human values gives us a definite way to fulfill our
aspirations.
Basically all of us aspiring to be happy and whatever appears conducive to our happiness
becomes valuable to us. Values form the basis for all our thoughts, behaviors and actions. Once
we have known what is valuable to us, these values become the basis, the anchor of our actions.
We know what we are doing is right and will lead to the fulfillment of our basics aspirations.
Values thus become the source for our happiness, our success, our fulfillment. Without an
appropriate value framework, we will not able to decide whether a chosen action is desirable or
undesirable, right or wrong. Hence there is a prime need for correct understanding of the value
domain. - Value education is the input necessary to fulfill this need. When we live with the
correct understanding of values, we are happy in continuity otherwise we feel deprived frustrated
and unhappy.
Complementarity of values and skills: In the endeavor to fulfill our aspirations two things are
essential:
(a) First and foremost one has to know what really is conducive to human happiness i.e.
happiness for one for all, and happiness at all times. This is what becomes universally
valuable to human beings. This is the ‘value’ domain, the domain of wisdom. This helps
us to identify and set the right goals and to proceed in right direction.
(b) Secondly, it becomes essential to learn methods and practices to actualize this goal, to
develop the techniques to make this happen in real life, in various dimension of human
endeavor. This is the domain of ‘skills’.
Thus values and skills have to go hand in hand. There is an essential complementarity between
values and skills for the success of endeavor.
Evaluation of Beliefs:
In absence of a correct understanding of human values, we are driven by our ‘ad-hoc’ values and
beliefs. If we look deep into ourselves we find that each one of us believes in certain things and
we base our ‘values’ on these beliefs, be they false or true which may or may not be true in
reality. These beliefs come to us from what we read, see, hear, what our parents tell us, our
friends talk about, what the magazine talk of, what we see on the TV etc. i.e. there whole body of
belief system that we live with at any given time and these together constitute our worldview.
These beliefs spread out far and wide in all our realms of living. The interesting thing about
beliefs is that they usually change with time and we can trace examples of these by looking at
our life in the past. Another thing about beliefs is that they are usually not the same for
everybody. Beliefs could be held by a small group or a large group of people but they are not
universal. The beliefs keep changing from person to person. What I may believe to be of ‘value’
to me may not be of ‘value’ to your belief-system so when we interact, it may lead to conflicts
unhappiness. We face this problem today because the conditioned beliefs and values we hold
today are usually contradictory, conflicting and unstable and not based upon the right
understanding of values we are not vary sure of their correctness.
Technology and Human Values:
Technology is only a means to achieve what is considered ‘valuable’ for human beings in an
effective and efficient manner. It is not within the scope of technology to decide what is valuable.
This decision lies outside its scope. It thus becomes primarily important to know correctly what
is ‘valuable’. Without this decision technology can be aimless, directionless and can therefore be
put to any use, either constructive or destructive.
It is thus with the understanding of values that we can decide on the appropriateness of
technology and its application. Both the structure and use of technology is are decided by values
Conclusion-:
Value education is required to correctly identify our basic aspirations, understands the value that
enables us to fulfill our basics aspiration, ensure the complementarity of values and skills, and to
properly evaluate our beliefs. It also facilitates the development of appropriate technology and its
right utilization for human welfare. Thus there is a need to supplement education with value
education in higher education as well. This will enable a human being to decide and pursue what
is really ‘valuable’ i.e. conducive to human happiness, human welfare what is ‘value’ to him. At
the end ‘value education’ enables us to understand our needs and visualize our goals correctly
and also indicate the direction for their fulfillment. It also helps remove our confusions and
contradictions and enables us to rightly utilize the technological innovations.
References:-
1. Value education website,http://www.universalhumanvalues.info
2. UPTU website,http://www.uptu.ac.in
3. A.N. Tripathy, 2003 Human values, New age International publishers.
4. B.L Bajpai, 2004 Indian ethos and Modern Management, New Royal Book Co.,
Lucknow.Reprinted 2008.
5. B.P. Banerjee, 2005 Foundation of Ethics and management,Excell Books
6. A.Nagraj,1998, Jeevan Vidya ek parichay, Jivana Vidya prakashana, Amarkantak.
7. R.R.Gaur,R. Sangal, G.P. Bagaria, A foundation course in human values and professional
ethics.Excell Books
