Figure1. Guidelines for Value Education
Universal Human Values (UHV) play a significant role in the whole life of a human being. These values in the education system are necessary to create brilliant students who will bring the nation to greater heights. However, the present education system just focuses on acquiring large amounts of information, passing examinations and procuring many higher degrees for the job. Thus, the people after getting the job only focus on earning more money, while giving less importance to relationship and right understanding. This results in a number of problems at individual levels like depression, anxiety, stress, suicides, etc., breaking up of joint families, divorce, dowry, deaths etc. at the family level and growing incidences of terrorism, violence, communism, racial and ethnic struggle, wars and sex crimes etc. at the social level. Hence, this paper recommends the basis of human values and the issues that the students face before learning the value based education and the positive changes that happen after the understanding of value based education. This results in technically skilled and morally strong professionals and even helps in generating more opportunities in their life.
Human values are very important in people's life for dealing with the day to day problems of life. So it is very essential to teach the students about value based education during their courses. In every walk of our life, human values are the foundation for a viable society; they build space for a drive, a movement towards relationships which leads to peace. Value-based education is a tool which not only provides us a profession which we can pursue but also a purpose in life. The purpose of life is undoubtedly knowing oneself. The objective of education in a country like India, which has a glorious heritage, diverse geography culture, values and beliefs, very rarely seen in this wide world, should be to induce in the educational system to educate a student of the value system which is indispensable to live a successful life (Sekhar & Emmaniel, 2012). However, the role of value education in the contemporary society is also very significant. 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 research, economics, infrastructure etc. its value system has declined. Therefore, value education occupies a prestigious place in the modern context of contemporary society. The problems raised from the lack of value education in youngsters has assumed increasing prominence in the educational discussion during recent times. Parents, teachers and the society are largely concerned about values and value education of the children. We are witnessing tremendous value crises all around the world today. A lackadaisical attitude towards values and their institutions is pervasive in the world today. The reappearance of the barbaric qualities of selfishness, greed 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. Human values are universal, they are shared by all human beings, whatever their religion, nationality, culture, or personal history. By nature, they induce consideration for others (Kaliannan & Chandran, 2010). Human Values play an important role in the better understanding and visualization of our goals. It helps us to make appropriate choices and choose the correct path, enabling us to turn our dreams into reality. This provides us with a proper vision to achieve our goals by rightly utilizing the technological innovations. However, the current educational trends greatly focus on the quantitative aspects rather than the qualitative aspects as compared to the old education system like Gurukul in India, which lays more emphasis on the qualitative aspects including universal human values and ethics. The importance of human values in education gets lost in globalization, because it only stimulates the educational system from the economic point of view and there is no other reference. The educational relationships are guided only by the major power of insensible and irrational use and abuse of human kind. The critic of the actual education system is located, principally, in the social unconcern, in the ignorance of the social function as a generator, guidance and formatter of the human values. True education must be able to confront the misery, poverty and inequity problems with success, but on the whole it has necessarily made a deep impression on human values, where it recognizes a person as an individual and gains the harmonic and respectful integration of the basics of justice, solidarity and subsidiary. In this way, education will be oriented towards an upright human thought, which will be for the benefit of all (Banad & Talawar, 2011; Kaliannan & Chandran, 2010; Schwartz, 2012).
We need to know “what to do”? and we need to learn “how to do it”? Understanding “what to do” = Value Education and learning “how to do” = Skill Development, What would be the priority b/w these two? The priority is: Value Education (1st Understanding 'what to do') Skill Development (Learning 'how to do') (Fleischmann, 2013).
The major guidelines for value education are divided into four categories as shown in Figure 1.
Figure1. Guidelines for Value Education
No matter what is studied, “Value Education” must be universally relevant or applicable to every human being and true irrespective of times. It should not rely upon caste, creed, position, race, gender etc.
It has to be amenable to logical reasoning and not depend upon blind beliefs. It has to appeal to human reasoning (Bronowski, 1956).
The scholar, sought be eligible to verify the values by checking or examining with one's own expertise, and it must be experimentally verifiable instead of being asked to simply believe because it is expressed in the course.
The value education ultimately/ eventually is targeted to promote harmony among human beings, within the individual and with nature. The role of education is to facilitate the development of the competence to live with definite human conduct. The basic human aspirations are depicted in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Basic Human Aspirations
From the ancient world to modern times, education is considered as one of the most important aspects in the overall development of humans. But in recent times, it is highly noticed that the current education system lacks universal human values and ethics and they should be included in the current education system. The following literature review includes a detailed and descriptive summary of various eminent thinkers' thoughts and views on the importance of human values in education.
Indrani (2012) explains the need of value education for students in harmonizing physical, mental and emotional aspects so as to develop their personalities in a holistic and proper manner. Value education plays an important role in the complete development of an individual whether physical or mental. Values are ideals on which our relations, actions and behavior are based. Value based education helps in building strong character and arousing the feeling of national integrity among students and the society. The main objective of the author is to inculcate moral values in the education system of schools and colleges, and to strengthen the student's attitude towards it. Lakshimi (2009) highlights that the present world is undergoing rapid change due to economic depression and global slowdown which reflects the importance of inclusion of value education in the current education system, to train and develop technically strong individuals in their lives. This will enable them to easily face the personal and professional challenges in their lives. Educators should aspire to strengthen students’ minds and thoughts to help them make better informed decisions in their lives. She also emphasized on the need for promoting moral values and ethics in society and imparting value education in the current Indian education system. Patil (2013) focus on how the society is constantly lagging in moral values day by day and thereby increasing the necessity of imbibing universal human values among the youth. She has tried to elaborately describe the role of value based education in the society and the ways to develop it. Educational institutions play a significant role in imparting value based spiritual knowledge among the youth by imbibing qualities like self-confidence, good-conduct etc. The youth must understand the need of developing the character along with career building. Through proper and efficient teaching only moral values can be inculcated easily to the new generation. Lastly, she has also made an attempt to teach the students about the need of value education to achieve success and progress in their lives by creating the “Sanskar Sarjan Blog” for her college students. Lakshmi (2014) explains that the way to inculcate value based education is to include value oriented curriculum in the media and the society. The values include respect for others, self-respect, honesty empathy and justice. Values can be inculcated directly or indirectly. Through systematic teaching and following proper instructions and guidelines, human values can be sensibly inculcated among students. Indirectly we can impart values among students through teaching regular subjects of the curriculum efficiently. Prakash (2014) investigated that Value education can change a diseased mind into healthy, young, attentive and diligent. This conversion will help to attain evolutionary introduction in the human life. Bhatia and Dash(2011) examined the desire of value oriented educational for the higher level education institutions in India. They suggest in regard to educational transformation in Indian universities. Patil et al. (2016) point out the fact that human values play an important role at different stages of human lives in terms of their education and career. An individual passes through different stages in his/her life which enhances their overall personality and determines the overall behavioral conduct in his/her life. The home culture which predominantly determines the individual's behavior Later in higher secondary school life, their behavior is majorly affected by their peer group which is known as school circle. Then on entering the professional area, the social circle starts to dominantly impact their human and moral capabilities. The whole argument elucidates the necessity of universal human values to efficiently and effectively nourish the moral values and ethics in one's life.
Stevenson and Harper (2006) present a theory that identifies ten motivationally distinct values and signifies the dynamic relation among these values. His theory acts as a unifying theory by collectively linking different needs, motives and goals of several other theories. It concerns about the basic values that the individual must have irrespective of the cultural norms and traditions. The ten basic values which the theory defines are: Self-Direction, Stimulation, Hedonism, Achievement, Power, Security, Conformity, Tradition, Benevolence and Universalism. Koivula (2008) points to two major goals throughout the paper. Firstly, to study and examine Schwartz's postulates among employees and workers and secondly, how the associated values with attitude affects the organization both at individual and workplace level. Dhunnoo and Adiapen (2013) laid emphasis on the need of teacher education programme where teachers deliver value based education to the students in a proper manner. A proper qualitative study was made to discuss the need of value based education in making the society stable and strong in terms of moral values and ethics. To achieve this, the teachers as leaders and role models of students must be properly analyzed and worked upon. Kaliannan and Chandran (2010) through his paper tried to highlight the importance and need of human values the education system and to implement a holistic education program called “Education in Human Values” which will help in inculcating both hard and soft skills as well as human values among students. The basic motive of the program is to improve teaching-learning process by emphasizing more stress on character building through effective teaching and incorporation of human values among students. The major problems currently prevailing in our society and educational institutes are drug abuse, bullying, theft etc. which are due to lack of universal human values and ethics among the youth. To overcome such barriers, this newly adopted education programme focusing mainly on all the basic moral values should to be taught to the students properly by teachers and parents which is called a “Triple Partnership of Education” between parents, teachers and students. From the extensive literature survey, it is concluded that human values are very important for every individual for their continuous happiness and prosperity.
In the current scenario, education system all over the world is lacking in subject of moral and ethical values in its curriculum, particularly in high schools, higher secondary schools and colleges, which ends up in the decline of the students' moral and humanitarian values. All nations within the world focus on their material wealth which is the hallmark of their success and the concurrently Indian economy is also towards globalization, thanks to all the three sectors i.e. agriculture sector, manufacturing sector and service sector. However, some national economies in the past years collapsed because of the mal practices happening in the corporate Industries or governance which reflects the fact that value based education for youngsters is incredibly important for development and prosperity in every field, whether it is politics, human resources or economy. The reason behind this collapse of the many national economies is not only due to the desired knowledge in the respective field, but also due to the absence of value based education such as honesty, integrity, sense of duty, dignity of labour, goodwill, punctuality, team cooperation, social adaptability, dynamism, responsibility, accountability etc. These are some of the human values which are essential to every aspect of life (Debbarma, 2014). Students must be more stressed on the moral and ethical education at school level and also at the college level, especially in the professional courses where students focus more on their core subjects where very less importance is attributed to value based education. Filling the mind of the student with the academic knowledge is the first task of the universities and colleges, but it is believed that their character must be improved or developed at the individual level. If we consider the case of technical education in India where students are trained to become technical experts at engineering institutions which are in great demand all over the world. Because of their strong technical knowledge and their strong dedication and commitments to their job, The students are fashioned to become analytical in thoughts, scientific in temper, and useful to the society. Colleges and universities focus more on student's placements by providing communication skills training for securing good placements (Patil, 2015; Lakshimi, 2009). Radhakrishnan (1990) an eminent thinker, scholar and statesman from India clearly puts forward this idea in the following points; In the debating society and class room, the hostel and playground through the play of mind on mind, through freedom of speech and thought, these graduates of Indian universities must be educated to tolerantly and lovingly, think honestly, to neglect the bad and choose the best. It is the university that transforms students as a corporate leader and to develop/evolve the free mind, to cultivate charity of outlook, and develop other good qualities like team cooperation, dynamism, social adaptability etc.
Two principles characterize most attempts to define quality in education: the first identifies learners' cognitive development as the major explicit objective of all the education systems. Accordingly, the success with which the systems achieve this is one indicator of their quality. The second emphasizes education's role in promoting values and attitudes of responsible citizenship and in nurturing creative and emotional development. The dual challenge of improving quality and expanding access in an equitable way requires a level of sustained investment that is currently beyond the reach of countries. The achievement of these objectives is more difficult to assess and compared across countries. In low-income countries the positive impact on quality education is increased by spending for the provision of more text books, reduce class size, improved teacher education and infrastructure facilities on learner's cognitive achievement. In rich countries, the standards are much higher than lowincome countries. Improvements in quality can be increased at a very modest cost and are within reach even in the poorest countries (Bhatia & Dash, 2011). The comparison of education with value based education is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Comparison B/W Output of Education and Value Education (Patil, 2015).
The most common factors influencing the human values as well as ethics are classified in the distinct form as depicted in Figure 3 (Lodi & Mishra, 2016).
Figure 3. Distinct Factors that Influence the Human Value and Ethics
The upbringing of a child and his/her surroundings are the first and foremost thing to impact his/her behavior and develop his/her overall personality.
Human beings perform deeds that bring them name, recognition and fame in the society. A universal human value helps individuals to attain their aspirations.
Culture and traditions play an important role in framing the human values and ethics of a person. For e.g.- Indian tradition teaches us to respect our elders, value our environment and to live in harmony.
An individuals' degree of liking or disliking themselves and the degree to which they think they are worthy or unworthy greatly affects their moral values, traits and ethics.
One's attitude manifests itself in strong beliefs and these beliefs direct attitudes.
The society, including the schools, institutions, friends and relatives, also greatly impacts the ethical behavior of an individual.
The personality trait captures dissimilarity in the extent to which humans control the image they present to others in social situations. An individual high in self-monitoring easily adjusts to external, situational factors and behaves differently in different situations.
The human interests channelize their actions, gestures and inculcate corresponding moral values that help them follow their lines of interest.
It plays an important role in the enhancement of ethical behavior and helps to inculcate human values. since the organizations demand the employees behavior as well.
The positive feeling never fails to extricate a person from the deepest mires of sorrows and troubles.
The degree to which people believe they are masters of their own fate, called locus of control, can control themselves or be controlled by outside forces.
A specific deed, action tinged with the right shade of perseverance, dedication and enthusiasm has always yielded the fruits of success.
The problems that one faces in life, strengthens, resolves and encourages him/her to fortify his/her challenges and achieve success.
Teachers are the most essential part of the education system, and imparting human values into their students is the most precious task of the teachers. By creating more awareness of human values to students who are listless & apathetic, should become purposeful, moulding them as more responsible and self-directed after being trained in value based education. Every faculty must inspire their students to achieve their goals and be happy in their life; they should motivate their them and help students clarify their values so that they can take he right decisions when faced with confusing options. In recent years, a number of reforms have been made in the education sector and these changes have affected the chain of supply and demand and even the quality of education. This is one of the greatest concerns that the present educational institutions face, i.e., the students are not able to satisfy the initial prerequisites of industries. This is not the fault of teachers and management only, but of the students also. The majority of students are not aware of their goals in life. This can be improved by imparting he value based education in the mind of students through teachers in educational institutions and parents at home. They teach their children about human values framework for a sound moral philosophy which will enhance personal growth and will be helpful in providing more opportunities for their success, happiness and prosperity (Jumsai, 2003).
Considering co-curricular activities, a teacher has to make adjustment in the time table to provide for those activities, encourage students participation and also provide guidance while participating, as an integral part of the curriculum. Then these activities will have a wholesome effect and have great educational values too. All the co-curricular activities should be organized with a spirit of devotion. Thus by planning a coherent program on different activities, rich in stimuli will also be heightening their abilities of self-expression, preparation for vocation, sentiment of loyalty, organizing ability, creativity, constructiveness and maintain good relation between school and community. Without these activities the school will be no more than a teaching shop and the children no more than bookworms (Jumsai, 2003). According to Deepak Chopra spiritual laws for every type of success are the Law of Pure Potentiality, Law of Karma, Law of Giving, and Law of purpose in life (Chopra, 2012).
Value education is very much essential to help individuals in developing the value system that he/she holds and puts it to use. Once, one has known his/her values in life, then he/she can investigate and control the distinct choices he/she makes in his/her life. Several reports represent that the main aim of educational colleges should not only be to teach education alone, but should also be to inculcate values and developing skills of teens and children. For example, children are linked to a society that exerts a high impact on their moral growth. In school the teachers serve as role models to students. They provide an important aspect/role in inculcating their ethical performance (Pantić&Wubbels, 2012; Carr, 2003; Campbell, 2004). The distinct aspect of educational institutions in inculcating values is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Aspects of Educational Institutions in Inculcating Values
There are distinct types of values, but the most commonly ones are the social, moral intellectual and mentality (Suzuki & Knudtson, 1989). They are further classified into the following categories as shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Types of Values and Their Contribution
However, few things that parents should observe for their children are listed below (Figure 6).
Figure 6. List of Observations from Parents to Childern
The basic requirements and values of a human being is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Needs and Values of Human Being
Some major problems that students suffer at different levels in their lives are given below (Pedrelli et al., 2015).
At the individuals level: In recent times, some of the problems that individuals face are mentioned below,
Table 2. Issues Which Provides evidences of importance of Human Values in Education System
At Family Level
At Society Level
Human values are the basis of the human beings. The students are the back bone and future of the country. Thus the colleges and other institutions are required to provide value education. The aspiration or mere desire to progress in life is not enough; success should be based on values. Value based education must be imparted in today's institutions. That way the students could emerge as better citizens in their chosen sectors. Overall human value and value education helps the individual to solve day to day problems and leads to continuous happiness and prosperity. According to Swami Chinmayananda "All our success mainly depends upon ourselves. Let us never look outside ourselves for help. Let us not fall into the delusion that the impact of others would enable us to do better or accomplish more".
The author would like to thank his guide Er. Santosh Kumar and Er. Rakesh Kumar (Assistant Professor, CGC Landran) for contributing and providing valuable knowledge regarding research.