Opinion
Values in education matter more than most other things today
UNESCO lists down 4 points to be the goal of education. A careful evaluation shows that the current schooling system is falling short on all counts. When the 4 points are successfully integrated in the curriculum we can hope to see responsible, mature and contributing individuals.
Too many times we are enamoured by all the new and innovative things that our schools are teaching our children. But have we for a second paused to grasp whether the curriculum is going beyond paying lip service to morals and values? Are the children really learning to become better individuals or is it all bookish knowledge that our future generation is getting at schools?
According to UNESCO, the goals of learning should be: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live in harmony and learning to be. A balanced value education embraces all of these.
Let’s evaluate each of these 4 parameters of learning against what our children are picking up at school today. Learning to know, as against popular perception, is quite different from learning to pass examinations. ‘How to think’ takes center stage in learning to know rather than ‘what to think’. The problem with current schooling practices— even in the best of schools — is that students are not taught the art and science of thinking.
Students are dutifully told by teachers what to think, consigning them to rote-learning, which completely turns the otherwise joyful process of learning into a burdensome imposition.
Bridging the gulf
Learning to do is the bridge between knowing and doing. It is in the domain of doing that a person’s values are exemplified and tested. When individualistic goals —maximising one’s material gains to the exclusion of societal good— drive learning, education becomes the hunting ground for personal power and profit. This reduces the scope of ‘doing’.
While the blind pursuit of individualistic goals may also seem like ‘doing’; it is doing of a socially disruptive kind. Education is a social investment and so it follows that its beneficiaries should develop a social conscience. Plato famously wrote in The Republic, that the mark of an educated person is his ability to use his knowledge and skills in solving the problems of society. Viewed from this lens, it is doubtful if we are educating children or merely training them to be glorious entrants into the rat-race.
The ability to live in harmony, the third goal of education, is the key to developing a productive and proactive personality. That this goal hasn’t been fulfilled in students can be verified through 2 factors. First, the inability to relate to their life-world. Second, the promotion, via cut-throat competition, of a negative and conflictual personality-orientation. This degrades education, albeit by default, into a socially disruptive enterprise.
Shaping goal
Learning to be, is the shaping goal of education. This is the most important goal, given the reigning acquisitive culture. To be is the very opposite of to have. Currently learning revolves around having. Assessments in schools are designed to test how much knowledge a student has and whether or not a child is able to manipulate this knowledge in tune with the system.
Learning thus revolves around mastering techniques that play the system. It fails to enable students to be. In the having mode, what is important, for example, is how much knowledge a student musters. In the being mode the emphasis is on how sensitively, creatively, thoughtfully the student is able to relate to, and use, the knowledge gained.
The more you have, said Gandhiji, the poorer you are. In saying this, he was underlining the need to shift our foundation from the having mode to the being mode. The problem with the former is that a person is only what he owns. He ceases to have any intrinsic worth, which is a state that is inimical to human dignity. This aggravates the thirst for more and validates a disposition to acquire at the expense of the values and ideals that undergird social wholeness and personal fulfilment.
Finally! Character-building
Character-building happens when all the 4 dimensions outlined above are addressed in the learning process. Character, according to Immanuel Kant, is the ability to deal with situations according to “maxims”. Maxims are universal principles, or values. The practice of values implies the ability to transcend expediency. Your genius, Albert Einstein said, may take you to heights; but whether you stay there depends on your character.
Neglected aspect
It is not that our educationists or policy makers are oblivious to the need of integrating character building in our curriculum. In fact, every policy document on educational policy since Independence, including the latest T.S.R Subramanian Committee Report, emphasises on the importance of, and need for, value education or peace education in schools. Yet this still remains easily the most neglected aspect of education.
It is possible, through appropriate education, to empower what is good and bridle what is evil. Humane discipline, as against regimentation, by means of value formation is the process of transforming a social good into an inner drive of individuals.
Education is the only means for addressing this foundational task today. Given the alarming signs of social degradation and individual drift, the need to put adequate emphasis on value education as a shaping concern in school education is obvious and compelling. It is gratifying that the Subramanian Committee Report advocates and underscores it with due gravity.
*The above article originally appeared in www.thehindu.com written by Valson Thampu.