Value crisis is a global phenomenon of our times. Rapid scientific growth and technological advancements resulting in industrialization have threatened our ageold moral standards. This atmosphere of value lessness is leading to disintegration, though we notice at the same time best of progress in certain other fields. Nietzsche rightly remarked, “When a tree grows up to heaven, its roots reach down to hell”. We must realize that this process of value deterioration will prove disastrous and lead to disintegration of the society. It is the right time therefore for us to rise to action and make conscious efforts to reverse the trend and lead to the right direction. Since time immemorial it has been recognized that education is necessarily a process of inculcating values to help the learner to lead a good life that is satisfying to the individual in accordance with the cherished values and ideals of the society. Philosophers, spiritual leaders and educationists have emphasized the role of education for character development, bringing out the latent potentialities and inherent qualities and developing integrated personality for the well-being of the individual and the society at large, highlighting the need for value orientation of education. A society to be stable to lead a life of joy, peace and serenity needs a firm foundation of morality. It needs its members to exhibit behaviors and possess conduct of universal law of harmony. But in today’s technological world the values and morality of individuals are being swept away to gain the worldly pleasures. Individuals achievement and position is preferred even if a sacrifice of values, ethics and morals is demanded for it. But for the universal harmony of our society it is essential to inculcate values and develop morals in children from their early years. One of the challenges before a modern teacher is how to make value education effective and interesting to the modern youth. The present-day youth with all its potential and goodwill to learn, seems to concentrate on all other academic subjects except value education. Every Country develops its own system of education to express and promote its unique Socio-Cultural identity and also to meet the challenges of the times. Although the country has made rapid progress in various areas like scientific technology, economic infrastructure etc. but its value system has been declined. Therefore, Education in general and value education in particular occupies a prestigious place in modern context of contemporary society. The problem of value education of the young has assumed increasing prominence in educational discussion during recent times. Parents, teachers and society at large are concerned about values and value education of children. We are witnessing tremendous value crisis throughout the world today. A lackadaisical attitude towards value and its institutions is pervasive in the world today. The reappearance of barbaric qualities of selfishness, clashes and conflagration give clear indication of the process of degeneration of human society. There is an urgent need for a great effort to revive and reform the values of human life and to rejuvenate the foundation of civilization. Values are goals set for achievements and they motivate, define and colour all our activities cognitive, affective and co-native. They are described as the socially defined desires and goals that are internalized through the process of conditioning, learning and socialization. The present education needs moral, spiritual and aesthetic values to be included in it. The culture and traditions can be preserved and transferred to the next generation by the help of value education only. Value education is much concerned with striving for personal wholeness as well as generating a responsible attitude towards others and an understanding of wrong and right behaviour. The most constructive factor in value education is its purpose which encourages the child to explore the powers while offering living guidance and setting appropriate limits to behaviour. Value education helps in building and strengthening of positive sentiments for people and ideals. It should prepare individuals for active participation in social life and acceptance of social rules. Value education has to be included in various aspects of education. Attention needs to be pay by higher authorities to spread the importance of value education in society. The first step in the direction of changing the world is to take the needed steps for radical change in the human consciousness. One of the most important means to achieve this end is value orientation of education. This will help human beings to conduct themselves in the more desirable directions, and to shape their life patterns by strengthening their beliefs and by integrating facts, ideas, attitudes and actions. This will also help to clarify their aims in life as well as the process to achieve them. In the modern context of our commitment to secularism and other such related Constitutional provisions, value education is considered much wider so as to transcend the boundaries of religions and encompass ethical, social, aesthetic, cultural and spiritual values. This broadened concept has many implications for value education programs at the school stage. With a view to equipping children of today, who will be the citizens of tomorrow, education has to be reoriented and revamped altogether. What a sculptor is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. The philosopher, the saint, the hero, the wise and the good or the great, very often lie hidden and concealed in the sand of anonymity, which a proper education might have brought to life.
Education has to be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights. It should promote values like understanding, tolerance and friendship. Continuous and constant attempts have to be made at all levels for universalizing and reinforcing education. The youth have to be given opportunities to develop individual excellence through values and contribute to the progress of the society. Education has to be an effective means to achieve this goal. Education with this aim in view is essential in order to be a better man, to have a richer life and to have a more integrated personality. Education is the manifestation of divine perfection already existing in man. It is the realization of the self. We must never ignore what one could call the self-discovering and the self-fulfilling aspect of education. This would relate to the enrichment of personality. Thus, education has a great cultural value, which cannot be overestimated in terms of anything. It may be regarded as the panacea on way to a social, economic and moral change. Then only it would achieve its purpose fully. A famous story of a glass being half full (positive attitude) viewed by many as half empty (a negative attitude) is known to all. Two men look out of the bars; one sees the mud; the other sees the stars. Communicating knowledge and skills is important, but teaching is not simply a process of passing on information. It is communication between minds. The important thing is to create the right attitudes in the students, so that they gain interest and involvement. Teaching is a cognitive process and has to be an effective one. It is essential that teachers pass on positive attitude to their students and help the students to reach their ‘full potential’, by understanding their strengths as well as weaknesses. Here it is important to remember that all students cannot be A+; however, all are A+ on some parameter or the other. Values and vision involve doing the right thing for the right reason. One may have sight but one must have vision. The ‘learning teachers’ are better placed than the learned ones. The indifferent teachers fail to go upstream—a dead fish only swims down. He who walks in another’s tracks leaves no footprints. Education is the apprenticeship in life. A teacher affects eternity. His work never stops. “A great oak is only a little nut that held its ground”. A teacher is not only a facilitator but a guide, a philosopher and a mentor. The students look up to him. Let us give them what they deserve, the very best of us. Let us live up to their expectations. There has to be an all-round effort to combine academic excellence with the inner enfoldment of the students personality. It is imperative to work for the total fulfillment of a vision of perfect and ideal education. Children are our future. If we sit down and analyse how the future could be remolded and recast, it is certainly through the children of today, the leaders of tomorrow, to face, lead and guide the world of future. It is to be born in mind that this education needs to be practical and realistically achievable, in consonance with the academic framework of the school. A judicious combination of academics, culture and value education (transformation) will be an ideal approach. This would indeed give the child’s personality an added dimension, both in his inner values of life and also in outer objective success, making him proficient to meet the challenges of life, and the values inculcated would mould him to become a better person in the society. Later within this two-fold impress, he reaches and revels in his vision to evolve into a person of standing, lasting character and achievement. The parents and the teachers have to work in close contact and coordination, the school has to be an extension of the home The fact that all good education is, in essence a process of developing the human personality in all its dimensions, is undisputed and universally accepted. Good education is inconceivable if it fails to inculcate values which are essential to good life and social wellbeing. Great thinkers of recorded history have devoted much attention to understand the significance of character and values in life and the role of various agencies of education in promoting these values. If moral or value education is to be effectively undertaken, it must be firmly based on the principles of value development. Value development denotes different things to different people. The main task of the teacher is to develop in children proper social attitudes, that is, a desirable attitude towards the society and the other people and to check and modify undesirable attitudes by applying suitable stimuli. The teacher can achieve these two objectives through the introduction of prestige, expert influence, major opinion, evidence of rationality etc. He should provide the pupils with proper environment and should himself behave in the line of desirable attitudes. He should be free from undesirable attitudes. If a teacher has undesirable attitudes, they are bound to be caught by the pupils. If education succeeds in the inculcation of good social and moral attitudes in children, they will become strong motive forces of their behaviour in later life.
(The author is a freelancer. Views are his own)
[email protected].