Value education - the need of the time

by A.M. Ahamed

Moral education is essential to make an individual a good and useful member of society and a good person himself. These values are also essential for sustaining society. The core idea behind value education is to cultivate essential values in the students and the teachers. It begins at home and it is continued in schools. Everyone accepts numerous things in his/her life through various customs of society or community.

Value education is important to help everyone in improving the value system that he holds and put them to use. Once we understand our values in life, we can examine and control the various choices we make in our lives. It's our duty to uphold the various types of values in life such as cultural values, universal values, personal values and social values.

Thus, value education is always essential to shape a student's life and give him an opportunity of performing himself on the global stage. The need for value education among the parents, children and teachers is constantly increasing as we continued to witness increasing violent activities, behavioural disorder and lack of unity in society.

The family system and country has a long tradition of imparting value education right from the ancient practices of the Gurukula system. But with modern development and a fast changing role of the parents, it has not been very easy for the parent to impart relevant values in their wards.

Therefore, many institutes today conduct education programs geared to meet the rising needs of modern society with related to code of conduct and values. These activities concentrate on the development of the children and young adults.

Scholars

Nowadays, the field of value education is widely spoken by scholars and educationist. Value education should be modernised with the modern world.

Religious education makes a distinctive contribution to the school curriculum by developing pupils knowledge and understanding of religious beliefs, practices, language and traditions and their influence on individuals, communities, societies and cultures. It enables pupils consider and respond to a range of important questions related to their spiritual development, the development of values and attitudes and fundamental questions concerning the meaning and purpose of life.

Religious education is concerned with the deep meaning that groups make of their experiences and how this helps them give purpose to their lives. It provides opportunities to explore and respond to the meanings of those experiences in relation to the beliefs and experiences of others as well as to one's own experience.

These religious educational essentials are:

To establish an entitlement
To establish standards
To promote continuity and coherence
To promote public understanding
Purpose of the moral education

Religious education is the process by which the society passes through knowledge from one generation to the next. The ultimate object of the religious education system is to propose the students for the workforce in the field of value education to live in a multicultural society. Through this education we can make the future generation tolerate others’ culture, trust others and treat others as human beings. We can also make them get rid of the racist feeling on others.

Challenges

There is a historical evidence to show that Sri Lanka was a country well known for its peace loving manners. Sri Lanka is facing today many challenges in building a good citizens in the future.

Ethic disharmony, national disintegration and malpractices in various ways have caused innumerable barriers for good citizen development. Although education has a key role to play in nation building, it has not always actively engaged itself in lying the foundation for the elimination of all these ill effects after independence.

Communities have been disturbed by conflict and various ways of evil activities by our students communities. All these malpractices are because of the lack of the knowledge of religious and moral education.

So it is the foremost duty of each and every citizen of Sri Lanka to promote and rebuild the value education, so that this study may help promote and develop the religion and moral education in the school system of Sri Lanka.

In parallel to the ongoing activities aimed at economic and information technology development we have to aim, in improving the moral development through religious education. The concepts of these studies are as follows.

To build up a society devoid of bribery and corruption with higher standard moral capacity building.

To develop a nation that nurtures peace and tranquillity of mind together with balanced intellect and a healthy life-style.

To develop a self-disciplined society with whole-some norms and moral practices.

These concepts underline an important fact that economic and moral and technological growth should go hand in hand with moral development of the society, so that we can expect a healthy and balanced moral society in the country.

With the aim of achieving the above objectives, I have taken this study to promote positive attitudes and wholesome conduct of the students through religious and moral education in the schools.

This is the first attempt taken towards fulfilling this ambition. This study may improve positive attitudes towards creating a noble and righteous society together with economics and technological development in the country.

This study may transform the Sri Lankan society into an intelligent-minded and a moral nation.

This study will infuse into the minds of the students that improvement of religious and moral education. It may take precedence to overcome the present issues on moral behaviour and ethical problems.

The writer is Zonal Director of Education, Batticaloa Central Education Zone.