DISCOURSE ON HUMAN VIRTUES(DHV) - SHORT NOTES

CHAPTER I: Understanding Value Education

HUMAN VALUES AND PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

LECTURE NOTES

UNIT – I : CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I:  Understanding Value Education

Meaning of Value Education:

Value Education is the education which enables to understand ‘what is valuable’ for human happiness. It is all about enabling a transformation in the human beings to help them move from Animal Consciousness to Human Consciousness.

Need for Value Education: 

·                     Correct identification of our aspirations: The subject which enables us to understand ‘what is valuable’ for human happiness is called ‘value education’ (VE). Thus, VE enables us to understand our needs and visualize our goals correctly and also indicate the direction for their fulfilment. It also helps to remove our confusions and contradictions and bring harmony at all levels.

·                     Understanding universal human values to fulfill our aspirations in continuity: Values form the basis for all our thoughts, behaviours and actions. Once we know what is valuable to us, these values becomes the basis, the anchor for our actions. We also need to understand the universality of various human values, because only then we can have a definite and common program for value education. Then only we can be assured of a happy and harmonious human society.

·         Complementarity of values and skills: To fulfill our aspirations both values and skills are necessary. When we identify and set the right goals and produced in right direction. This is known as value domain, the domain of wisdom, and when we learn and practices to actualize this goal to develop the techniques to make this happen in real life, in various dimensions of human endeavor (struggle). This is known as domain of skills.

                   Hence, there is an essential complementarity between values and skills for the success of any human endeavor. For example, I want to lead a healthy life. Only wishing for good health will not help me keep my body fit and healthy and without having understood the meaning of health, I will not be able to choose things correctly to keep my body fit and healthy.

·         Evaluation of our beliefs: Each one of us believes in certain things and we base our values on these beliefs, be they false or true which may or may not be true in reality. These believes come to us from what we read, see, hear, what our parents tells us, our friends talk about, what the magazines talk of, what we see from TV etc. Value Education helps us to evaluate our beliefs and assumed values.

·         Technology and human values: The present education system has become largely skill-based. The prime emphasis is on science and technology. However, science and technology can only help to provide the means to achieve what is considered valuable. It is not within the scope of science and technology to provide the competence of deciding what really is valuable. Value Education is a crucial missing link in the present education system. Because of this deficiency, most of our efforts may prove to be counterproductive and serious crises at the individual, societal and environmental level are manifesting.

Basic Guidelines for Value Education:

Universal: It needs to be applicable to all the human beings irrespective of cast, creed, nationalities, religion, etc., for all times and regions.

·               Rational: It has to appeal to human reasoning. It has to be amenable to reasoning and not based on dogmas or blind beliefs.

           Natural and Verifiable: It has to be naturally acceptable to the human being who goes through the course and when we live on the basis of such values it leads to our happiness. It needs to be experientially verifiable, and not based on dogmas, beliefs or assumptions. 

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                  All Encompassing: Value education is aimed at transforming our consciousness and living. Hence, it needs to cover all the dimensions (thought, behaviour, work and realization) and levels (individual, family, society, nature and existence) of human life and profession.

·               Leading to Harmony: The value education ultimately is targeted to promote harmony within the individual, among human beings and with nature.

Scope of Value Education:

·         It should include all dimensions of thought, behaviour, work and realization

·         It should include all the four levels of human living namely – individual, family, society and nature.

Content of Value Education:

·         To understand myself, my aspirations, my happiness

·         To understand the goal of human life

·         To understand the other entities in nature, their inter- connectedness and co-existence and role of human being in nature

·         To understand harmony at the four levels of human living

Process of Value Education:

Value Education begins with Self-Exploration i.e. looking inside yourself.

                           What am I   vs    What I really want to be

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