About Human Values
Today’s technical education, in its widely prevalent form, is not able to adequately empower students to think independently. Consequently, being driven by peer pressure, it is leading to a blind race for jobs that are intellectually and mentally unfulfilling, and wealth that breeds chaos in family and in society. However, education is not just about learning skills (how to) but also about developing the ability to decide on what (what to do?) and why (why to do?). It should lead to the development of critical ability in students towards distinguishing between essence and form, or between what is of value and what is supertcial, in life. It should develop their understanding which is a prerequisite for a movement from rule based society to a relationship based society. In this paper, we discuss our experiment of introducing a compulsory course on Human Values in the undergraduate core curriculum in a technical university. Rather than aiming at ’teaching’ values, the course is structured to encourage students to discover what are of value for them and for the society. Thus the aim of the course is to enable students to discriminate between the valuable and the superticial in real situations in their life.
Background
Background
When one studies the situation we are in today, we arrive at the following:
1. At the level of Individual: We see today that humans on the one hand have unhappiness, dissatisfaction, lack of hope, and a sense of futility about them, and on the other are faced with domination and other problems. The health of the body is steadily declining in spite of improved levels of material and medical facilities. A majority of people find themselves engulfed in the problems of some type, and some people have even come to believe that no solutions are possible.
2. At the level of Family: One sees complaints, fights inter-personal tensions, in-justice, hatred and numerous attempts to solve these, ultimately leading to disin-tegration and a feeling of being deprived of material facilities.
3. At the level of Society: Problems are visble in the form of tendency to snatch from one another, opposition, exploitation, struggle, war, poverty and unemployment. There is talk of working in harmony with each other, but never en up being successful.
4. At the level of Nature/environment: Problems manifest in the form of imbalance, pollution, scarcity of physical and ecological disturbances. poisonous material are on the increase in the air, water, soil and food while the fertility of the soil is decreasing.
Topics:
Self confidence. Relative and absolute confidence, being self-determined, swatantrata (loosely equivalent to freedom).
1. Peer pressure. Examples of external pressure, relating to swatantrata (freedom), making one’s own choices.
2. Relationship with family and friends. Major cause of unhappiness today.
3. Anger. Investigation of reasons, watching ones own anger. Is anger a sign of power or helplessness, distinction between response and reaction.
4. Right utilization of physical facilities. Determining one needs, needs of the self and of the body, cycle of nature.
5. Relationship with teachers. Inside the class, and outside the class interacting with teachers.
6. Time Management. Issues of planning, as well as concentration (and aligning with self goals).
7. Respect. Do you respect yourself? Do you respect others? Feeling of respect is different from expression of that feeling.
8. Expectations from your self. Excellence and competition, coping with stress, Identifying one’ interests as well as strengths.
9. Complimentarity of skills and values. Distinction between information & knowledge
10. Goals. Short term goals and long term goals (discussing one’s goals). How do we set our goal? How to handle responsibilities which have to be fulfilled while working for goals.
Mode of Conduct
During every class the faculty mentor introduces a topic and initiates the discussion. While analysing and discussing the topic, the faculty mentor’s role is in pointing to essential elements to help in sorting them out from the surface elements. In other words, help the students focus on the important or critical elements.
While discussing different topics, the mentor encourages the student to connect with one’s own self and do self observation. The student is encouraged to take up ”ordinary” situations rather than ”extra-ordinary” situations. Such observations and their analyses are shared and discussed with other students and faculty mentor, in a group sitting.
Experiments or practicals are important. The difference is that the laboratory is everyday life, and practicals are how you behave and work in real life.
The group discussions would also provide support to a student in performing actions commensurate to his/her beliefs. Hopefully, this would lead to development of commitment, namely behaving and working based on one’s beliefs (or values).
There would be no formal lectures in the course (other than in the Jeevan Vidya shivir which is a co-requisite). For the above topics, scenarios may be used to initiate discussion. Depending on the nature of topics, worksheets, home assignment and/or activity may be included.
Doc- Materials:
(Source of files obtained from humanvalues.iiit.ac.in)
Understanding Human Being
Understanding Relationship
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