NATIONAL CONVENTION ON PROMOTION OF VALUE EDUCATION

Summary of Recommendations

A National Convention on Promotion of Value Education was organized by the Sri Sathya Sai International Centre for Human Values on 12 – 13 December, 2009, at its Auditorium. Over 400 delegates attended the Convention on both days.

The Convention was inaugurated by Dr. Karan Singh, M. P. (Rajya Sabha) and Chairman, ICCR. Justice J. S. Verma, retired Chief Justice of India, presided over the Inaugural Function. The Valedictory address was delivered by Shri Ashok Thakur, IAS, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India. More than 40 papers were presented by educationists, experts, administrators and social activists.

Two books, Value Education: The Sri Sathya Sai Perspective and Value Education: The Paradigm Shift were released on this occasion.

The Convention took note of the fact that the traditional system of Gurukul Education in India was centred in the inculcation of Values. During the freedom movement, most of the outstanding national leaders and educationists decried the system imposed by the British, who only wanted India to be a nation of clerks.

The Convention spent quite some time examining the various experiments that had been conducted by the great thinkers, and discerned many common and outstanding features in them. Most of these models were rooted in the Indian ethos, and considered education to be a liberating process. The systems they promoted were based on integration of the physical, vital, emotional, intellectual and spiritual elements of the students’ personalities, with the primary objective of creating men and women of character.

Several speakers dilated upon the recommendations made by committees and commissions over the last 60 years. These culminated in the Chavan Committee’s recommendations, in 1999, that education in human values was a must. This All-party Parliamentary Committee had unanimously recommended that the five basic values of Truth, Righteous Conduct, Love, Non-violence and Peace should be taught in the schools.

The Convention took note of the fact that the Supreme Court of India had very clearly held that the teaching of Human Values in schools did not, in any way, infringe the concept of secularism enshrined in the Constitution.

Several speakers bemoaned the fact that, despite clear directions from the Parliament and the Judiciary, there was a persistent mind-set, which considered secularism to be a negation of spirituality and values. The convention strongly urged that this mind-set be consciously transcended. The ancient Indian tradition of Sarva Dharma Sambhava (equal respect for all religions) was a much better approach than the outright negation of religion. Not only should human values be consciously inculcated among the students, but all students should also be taught the basic tenets of major world religions. Such knowledge would be the biggest insurance against communal disharmony.

It was noted that the Ministry of Human Resource Development and its allied organizations had taken several steps to incorporate value education in their functioning. The Ministry established a National Coordination Committee headed by the Secretary (HRD). National Resource Centres were set up at the NCERT, IIT Delhi and IIM Lucknow. Seven regional Resource Centres were recognized in voluntary agencies like Sri Sathya Sai Organisation, Ramakrishna Mission, Brahmakumaris Ishwariya Vishwavidyalaya, the Baha’i National Assembly of India, and so on. A journal of value education was started by the NCERT. The NUEPA had organised a conference of Vice-Chancellors to examine whether a compulsory 6-month course on life coping skills should be started for college students. The MHRD had held a National Conference on merging the best of the east and west in management education. The UGC had started departments of Yoga and Consciousness in twenty universities across the country. Schemes for funding of NGOs, which were taking steps to promote values and culture, had been started by the MHRD and UGC.

At the same time, the convention felt that the steps taken thus far did not go far enough. There were many obstacles to value education. The forces of commercialization and globalization were rampant across the globe. The press and the media had also played a rather negative role. The system itself had not internalized value education as its primary objective. The methodology used for assessing the performance of the teachers looked only at the scholastic achievements. There was no way of assessing the value orientation of students and teachers. The received wisdom still was that education was to promote a livelihood and not to fashion men and women of character.

Taking all aspects into consideration, the convention strongly recommended the following steps:

-     Ministry of Human Resource Development should take a lead role as far as value education is concerned. For this purpose, a national steering committee be established, in which ministries of Health, Agriculture, Law, etc, which have educational institutions, should also be co-opted.

-     An independent, autonomous national council for value education should be established by the MHRD as the overall think-tank for the nation.

-     Several national conferences should be held on school education, university education, technical education, management education, teacher education, distance education, etc., so that value education comes to the centre stage of the educational system.

-     A national policy on value education should be formulated and announced. It should clearly state that the primary objective of education is to produce men and women of character, who will selflessly serve society and the country.

-     All mechanisms in the educational system should be so modified as to make it clear to the teachers, students, educational administrators, and others, that their efficiency will be mainly judged by the extent to which they themselves live human values in their daily lives, and inculcate values among the student population.

-     National resource centres should be opened/ reinforced in all important  organizations like the NCERT (for school education), UGC (for college and university education), AICTE (for technical and management education), NIOS (for distance education at school level), IGNOU (for distance education at college level), the NCTE (for teacher education), etc. These should conduct and finance research, training, extension and publicity in the field of value education.

-     More regional resource centres should be recognized by the MHRD, so that the Govt. and NGOs work hand-in-hand, especially for training of the teachers and students.

-     The “Journal of Value Education” should be a journal for value education in all its aspects, and might be suitably located by the MHRD, so that it could serve all levels and types of education.

-     A huge national effort should be initiated to develop materials for citizens, professionals and other functionaries to highlight the significance of morals, ethics and values in human life.

-     Research should be conducted on how a modern, scientific, universal and nondenominational language of discourse can be invented to convey the eternal and universal human values in a way that does not antagonize any section of society.

-     Departments of Yoga and Consciousness should be set up in all universities. It should also be examined if a compulsory 6-month course in life coping skills could be prescribed for all under-graduate students in the country.

-     The MHRD and UGC should take a firm decision that their schemes for strengthening of culture and values in schools and colleges would not only be continued indefinitely but their scope and financial limits would also be widened and expanded so that worthwhile activity can be undertaken by NGOs, on a long term basis, in the fields of research, training and extension.

I am happy to inform all of you that the representatives of the NGOs who participated in the Convention have agreed to form an “Action Group for Value Education” to ensure that value education receives its due place within the government and civil society. It is hoped that this action group would be consulted by the MHRD from time to time, so as to create a symbiotic relationship between the Government and civil society on the critical issues of value inculcation.