Need for value oriented education
Material wealth, money, success and fame do sometimes bring comforts and security in life. But they do not always bring happiness, peace, satisfaction or a sense of worth in life of an individual. An individual’s life becomes happy and peaceful only when his material wealth and achievements are accompanied by good values in life. Education becomes meaningless unless accompanied by knowledge of values. Educated and intelligent people with poor values in life not only make their own life miserable but also bring more harm to the society than good. The goals of education are not just to produce individuals with knowledge and memory but also to produce people with values. We can see that societies, where a considerable section neglects values and morals, collapse due to internal disturbances, civil wars or such other factors.
Even well-educated persons, occupying powerful positions in the society, can be seen indulging in corruption, anti-social activities or behaving arrogantly, abusing power and position. Brilliant scholars, scientists, managers, writers ,engineers doctors and other professionals are seem competing among one another with selfish motives for power and money. Educated people, who ought to become nation builders and role models, are presenting themselves in very poor image before the people. Some of the people who occupy responsible positions in the government turn a blind eye to many grave injustices that are committed against the weak in the society. Fear, luck of moral courage and other values in those occupying positions of power, results in flourishing of illegal activities. Many People do not mind taking shortcuts to get things advantageous to them, without caring of the negative effects of such acts on fellow beings. Superstitions, ignorance, intolerance and narrow perceptions lead to fights, riots and war, making life miserable to everyone. The consumerist and commercial ethos of our times have made primary goal of education to be to acquire material success and power in this competitive world. As a result the basic values like honesty and tolerance are neglected in personal and public life of people, resulting in rise of crime, violence, cruelty, greed and apathy to human suffering. Pursuit of material wealth and to achieve things at any cost has become the way of life of many. There is need to overcome the narrow casteism, communalism, linguistic and regional divides among the people and to promote unity, social and national outlook. Values of idealism, altruism, selflessness and service to fellow humans are vanishing from our life. There is also a need to develop sensitivity to the beauty of art, literature, craft and nature. A number of modern values such as democracy, equality, liberty, fraternity, global perception, international cooperation, environmental protection and protection of human rights have developed in recent decades. These values are to be inculcated in the children right from their childhood. Children inherit their values from their parents, school teachers and those around them. The information on values they get from these sources has to be supplemented or corrected through value education in the schools. They should be made aware of the importance of leading value based lives. Values should be deliberately inculcated, directly or indirectly, so that along with mainstream curriculum, they also acquire necessary knowledge and skills that prepare them to be responsible citizens.
UNIVERSAL VALUES
Values which are universally accepted are known as universal values. By building up true values of life among our students education equip them with the mechanism to lead a complex life
Truth: truth is one of the philosophical trios. It is an ideational value. Pursuit of truth is considered by idealists as the chief goal of life. Great men of the past believed in truth and sacrificed everything for the sake of truth. Truth alone triumphs (sathyameva jayate) have been the main slogan of our culture
Righteous conduct: righteous conduct was upheld in ancient India. The Bhagavad-gita is concrete evidence for the importance given to this value
Non-violence: non-violence forms an integral part of our culture. Ancient Vedic culture as well as other ancient philosophical schools such as Jainism and Buddhism believed in universal love and thus propagated the concept of non-violence either directly or indirectly. It is from this noble value that Gandhiji got inspiration and developed the concept into a way of life. Really the spiritual force of non-violence has won the struggle for independence.
Love: from ancient time onwards Indians consider love and affection as precious human values. Service to mankind was considered as service to god
Peace: ancient Indian believed in peace. They propounded this belief in the slogan “loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu”. Now as a nation we believe in panchashila. We strive for international understanding and peace.
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