VALUE-BASED EDUCATION

From Sampath’s Desk:

VALUE-BASED EDUCATION

 

Education confers enlightenment and empowerment. However, the real power is being able to make the choice - good or evil, righteous or wicked, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, soft or hard/harsh, optimistic or pessimistic, disciplined or undisciplined, amiable or cranky, civilized or savagery, serious or casual/trivial – to mention a few. A right-thinking person would obviously settle for the former and it is here begins the foundation for value-based education to launch our children into a perfect life pitch and moulding them as dutiful future citizens. Education is too often considered as the exit route rather than the beginning path of one’s life journey. Schools and colleges are considered by students as a challenge ground rather than a training ground. Many students spend their time trying to convince others that they are more knowledgeable and can win over others. For them, admitting ignorance is a shameful act. This need not be necessarily so. To be frank, the first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant. Even for an erudite scholar, whatever he has learned throughout his/her life may only be the tip of the iceberg. What now chips in is the inevitable need for value-based education! The aim of value-based education is to make the students morally and ethically strong and dutiful citizens when they come out of the corridors of schools/colleges. Of course, this is not in any way to undermine the healthy competition among students. Robust competition helps in knowledge expansion which in turn gives a search engine for greener pastures.

 

Good practices and traits, pleasing manners, noble characteristics, humble dispensations, humane attitude and approach, sincerity, honesty, sympathy, empathy, etc. – most of these qualities may be instinctively present in students. If not, teachers can play a role to make the students imbibe these and other values as part of academic lessons and pedagogy. Teaching of values should be an inseparable, integral, and indivisible part of the curriculum. Writers, scholars, and eminent persons in the society also have a role to play in this regard. Of course, experience is also a good teacher. There is no exclusive list. Values are all-inclusive. Schools and colleges are supposed to produce not only academically intelligent and excellent but also morally strong and ethically righteous flock.

 

Bounties of nature are there for all of us to share, benefit from, and enjoy. Some tales carrying moral lessons relevant and germane to the subject(s) dealt with can be related to students even in the normal course of classroom lecturing, which can be made interesting by interspersing here and there small anecdotes or tidbits (or even relevant short stories wherever necessary) so that the children can not only be kept in good humour but also can absorb valuable values. Teachers can play a crucial role in this regard because next to parents, students are supposedly under the watchful scanner and care of teachers. Since children take cues and clues, closely follow, and more often imitate their teachers influenced as they are due to their close interactions with them, teachers become their role-models for most of the characteristics, they imbibe from time to time. It is thus important that teachers themselves must nurse pristine qualities for the children to emulate and excel. Respect for elders, fellow-citizens, laws of the land, rules of the road, etc. are to be instilled in them.

 

As rightly pointed out by Mahakavi Subramania Bharathi, even the animals, birds, etc. are part and parcel of the human race. Such an assertive perception should strengthen the love of the children towards all living-beings. Tell students not to pity the differently-abled and physically/psychologically challenged, but recognize their different abilities and treat them as their normal mainstream brethren/peers. Let us also encourage, recognize and appreciate their creative works and rejoice at the special persons scaling new heights in their lives.

 

Creativity, innovation, and inquisitiveness - latent or dormant - can be brought out of the children at school/college by entrusting suitable assignments to them either individually or collectively as a group or team. That will encourage and promote team-building, team-spirit, team actions, team sports, etc. with common objectives and goals. Joint study, group discussions and concerted activities will help forge an enduring bond, relationship and harmony for mutual co-existence. Remember, without values, education is only a paper rose with no fragrance.

 

'Ashoka The Great' abdicated war-path after seeing for himself, during his expansionist war against the Kalinga kingdom, what a trail of mass destruction of lives and property an armed conflict was fraught with? Recall America’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which took a heavy death toll besides maiming and/or crippling lakhs of people and the ill-effects that do linger on even today in that country in the form of birth of children with infirmities, apart from entailing a colossal damage and mass destruction of property! These two historical events should be eye-opener underscoring the path of non-violence. 

         

Helen Keller, the inventor of ‘Braille’ for the visually challenged and the discovery of radium by Madame Marie Curie must inspire the students to do something good for society. Encourage children to celebrate the diversities instead of merely tolerating them. There is nothing like either inferiority or superiority. Everybody is born with the same abilities and skills. Everybody’s blood is only red in colour. For a black crow, its offspring is a golden one. Never slight anyone or anything. Some people are brilliant outside but hollow within if the right values are missing in them. Along with higher learning, our minds should also broaden as high as the sky.

 

Sayings of Swami Vivekananda, Confucius, Lord Buddha, Shri Mahavir, Lord Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed, Mahatma Gandhi, etc., if taken forward in the right spirit, will certainly inspire children into a virtuous path when they grow up.

         

It is worth recalling the golden quotes of Swami Vivekananda, “Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making and assimilation of ideas,” He further adds, “Well, you consider a man as educated if only he can pass some examinations and deliver good lectures. The education, which does not help the common mass of people to equip themselves for the struggle for life, which does not bring out strength of character, a spirit of philanthropy and the courage of a lion – is it worth the name? The education that you are receiving now in schools and colleges is only making you a race of dyspeptics, you are working like machines merely, and living a jelly-fish existence.”

 

 

(R.SAMPATH)