Values And Education A Perspective

PREFACE

The National Policy on Education (1986) expressed concern over “the erosion of essential values and an increasing cynicism in society”. It advocated turning education into a “forceful tool for the cultivation of social and moral values.” Education should “foster universal and eternal values, oriented towards the unity and integration of our people”. The Programme of Action of 1992 tried to integrate the various components of value education into the curriculum at all stages of school education, including the secondary stage. The National Curriculum Framework for School Education (2000), echoing the National Policy on Education (1986), lamented the “erosion of the essential, social, moral and spiritual values and an increase in cynicism at all levels.”

The whole aim of education is to enable children to experience dignity, confidence to learn, development of self-esteem and ethics. It needs to cultivate children’s creativity, making children sensitive to the environment and fostering the principles of democracy in them. Education should also promote the independence of thought and action, the capacity of value-based decision-making, sensitivity to others’ well-being and feelings, which should form the basis of rationale commitment to values.

Working with values is an essential part of teaching and are interwoven in all aspects of teacher Education i.e. in the curriculum, activities and training program.. Educating students to become teachers requires them to learn how values are embedded in education, how they themselves, as reflective practitioners, can consciously create moral-based practices in education and what different philosophical, pedagogical and political theories and religious and cultural traditions say about moral development and the role of education.