Nelson Mandela rightly said, “Education is the most powerful weapon through which you can change the world.”” He talks about both academic as well as moral value education.
What are values
Values are principles, fundamental convictions and ideal standards of life which act as a General guide to behaviour in decision making. values are beliefs about what is right and what is wrong and what is important in life it is a set of principles which guide the standard of behaviour values are desirable and held in high esteem they give strength to a person’s character which reflects through their attitude, choices, decisions, judgements, relationships, dreams and vision.
Need and importance of values
In today’s era of competition and survival we observe laxity in moral values, liberalization, industrialisation, globalisation and rapid changes have led to the emergence of high lifestyle and raise the standard of living of the people. It has made man rich in materialistic sense but deteriorated the ethical fibre in the society. Parents are busy pursuing their careers and children are taken care of by day care centres or by the steward if the families are nuclear. Due to this values are not being inculcated among the children from their childhood.
Every parent wants to give the best education to children which is not just confined to the books but it goes much beyond that the parents look at the holistic development of the children as it is essential to edge in the global scenario. That is why schools and parents now focus on extra curricular activities and value education with the academic performance of their children as education today is not confined to books or knowledge of content only.
Role of school & teachers in providing value education to students
Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam in his book “India 2020 : A Vision of the New Millennium”, has rightly remarked that “If you are a teacher in whatever capacity, you have a very special role to play because more than anybody else, it is you who are shaping the future generations”.
In today’s time when there is a huge crisis of moral values in society, value education or value based education proves to be a tremendous solution to combat this issue. Through value based education in school we can develop the children into people with strong character and high values who know how to utilise their knowledge for the advantage of mankind.
- Here comes the role of the school in educating the children the values from the foundation classes or at a certain level of their grades Teachers are a role model for students. Their actions can convey more than their words. Students learn values from what the teachers are rather than from what they say. Teaching values in the classroom such as helping others appreciating each others showing gratitude for good things sharing experience with positive attitude etc principle target of providing value education is to incorporate the fundamental values among the children it can be portrayed as character building along with academic progress, developing sense of responsibility, tolerance, regard for one another, to become an ideal human being and an asset to the society as well as to the nation.
- Need based curriculum should develop values which are most important and urgent should be given priority. flexibility in curriculum to collaborate teaching of values by providing theory and practical knowledge to link values in real life situations.
- Educational activities like debates, poem recitation , poster making, sports and cultural activities to be organised on the of themes of sincerity ,honesty, empathy, helpfulness ,team work, problem solving, critical thinking etc to be organised. This will strengthen the expression of feelings of the students in words or in actions and also develop an understanding about the importance of such values in practical life. This will also enable them to disagree respectfully and to accept victory or defeat with composed mind.
- Special counselling sessions, workshops, training by elite personalities for the students can be organised time to time by the school authorities to provide them knowledge about great personalities having high values in their lives to motivate the students to follow their footprints.
- Organising community services programs such as visiting old age homes and orphanage, NGO, providing NSS services, volunteers for house duties in school, organising camps, cleanliness drives, organising rallies to create awareness among the people about environment or some other social issues for the students to enable them to develop ethics, empathy and sense of responsibility and life skills in their routine life.
Today’ s youngsters are in a dilemma. Children and Youth are the most important and dynamic segment of the population of any country. It is believed that the developing countries with large youth populations could see tremendous growth provided Undoubtedly to say that today’s young children are tomorrow’s innovators, creators, builders and leaders.
We as educationists can take charge of the situation ,and can add meaning to what is taught in schools. Small change in focus and approach collaborating normal teaching of curriculum with values can create wonders. Let’s all work towards helping creating noble human beings exhibiting high values in order to foster more peaceful and democratic communities and countries.
The words by Swami Vivekanandawords should not be forgotten by the teachers, “Arise, Awake and Stop not till the goal is achieved”.
