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Current Crisis in Education: The Urgent Need for Value Education

Suyash Saboo, Rajeev Sangal
2 days ago
10 min read

Suyash Saboo, Rajeev Sangal



Abstract


Life today feels full of friction, evident in individual suffering, strained relationships, social distrust, conflicts among nations, and environmental degradation. Despite the remarkable progress made, why are things in such a state?


We must have acquired these ways of living from somewhere. Examining our education systems answers a lot: While providing professional knowledge and skills, education has often neglected the equally important dimensions of understanding self, human relationships and our responsible participation in the world. We assume that individuals will automatically acquire 'values' from society. But what happens when society itself is full of questionable beliefs and practices.


This article presents an approach where values are inculcated through discussions over real-life topics in small mentoring groups together with practical exercises. The groups consist of a faculty member and 15-20 students. It describes experiences of implementing Universal Human Values (UHV) through such a process and offers a way of making values a lived part of life in educational institutions and beyond.



The Present Life of Friction


When people find themselves reminiscing about the past, they feel nostalgic. “Those were the days,” they say, speaking of a time when food tasted better, people were healthier, community connections were merrier, and life appeared more wholesome. Something about the way we live today feels less fulfilling than it used to be. The present life seems to be in a perpetual friction with essentially who we are, what we want, and what we do. This friction occurs in almost all areas of life – education, employment, economics, environment, politics, etc.


The interesting fact is that it is not happening to ‘some’ people, but this phenomenon is happening to almost everyone, everywhere, it doesn’t matter which country or class they belong to. It is deeply personal yet almost universal. At a collective level, friction looks like distrust, conflict, irresponsible professional conduct, social divisions, and the degradation of our natural environment. At an individual level, friction looks like anxiety, depression, social pressure, loneliness and discontent. At its worst, it leads to depression, serious mental illness, and suicide.


This raises questions worth examining: If we have made such remarkable advances in science, technology, medicine, lifestyle and education, why does life feel like a never-ending race, a struggle that is constantly on? What mistakes did we make to reach here? What are we doing that is not right?


The Vicious Loop


Consider how we prepare young people for adulthood: Students spend years studying – memorizing information, getting concepts but rarely applying them in any real life setting. They develop skills that will allow them to pass examinations and gain admission into a professional program of study. They are encouraged to secure good grades, obtain well-paying jobs and build successful careers.


The aspirations regarding professional career, competence, financial security, professional excellence are not inherently problematic.


But what happens when education gives insufficient attention to the questions that should accompany these pursuits – What constitutes a fulfilling life? How do we build trust and respect in our relationships? How should we use our professional knowledge? What responsibilities do we have towards society and the planet? Somehow, our society and our education system assumes that a human being will learn and become responsible automatically or that somebody will put some sense into him at some point.


Education should impart (a) knowledge about the world, (b) knowledge about the self, and help students find (c) their role in the world. Today’s modern education largely aims at (a) and that too at the physical world. Knowledge about the ‘self’ is totally missing from education, and there is hardly any education in helping the student find his/her role in this world (in their context and beyond).


When such central questions remain unexplored, is it any wonder that, today, the students are most confused about what they want to do in life. If asked about their aspirations, the answer is almost always about gaining more wealth, power, fame, and adventure. They see people around them pursuing wealth, recognition, status and entertainment, and begin to assume that perhaps acquiring these things will give us a happy life.


Whereas, the reality is that such a pursuit of happiness alone, highly compromises our quality of life. Our relationships suffer because of this – marriages breaking, friends betraying, families disputing, and societies feuding.


The teacher-student relationship is no exception in this, and the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has added a new twist: students increasingly believe they do not need a teacher, or even a classroom. The lack of respect and trust in the education system was evidently witnessed in the recent protests and demonstrations across the country by students.


So, when economic growth is pursued without sufficient regard for ecosystems, and when professional competence is separated from responsibility, worldly progress can create new and bigger harms even as it tries to solve current problems.


Finally, the loop closes. Life is full of friction, which leaves individuals unfulfilled. Individuals who were never educated in values run after endless wealth. That behaviour strains relationships, and strained relationships make institutions, workplaces and societies distrustful, which brings us back to a frictionful life.


Everything Is Connected


This loop does not stay within human lives, all life on Earth is interconnected. Moreover, most human-made systems are like dominoes: when one falls, the next one follows. If we keep educating in a way that leaves people unfulfilled, we remain in a cycle in which humans destroy other humans’ wellbeing even leading to wars, and also the natural world on which all life depends. As natural systems degrade, our health suffers, resources deplete, and natural calamities become more frequent.


This is not a distant scenario anymore. Which is why education on values cannot be only about getting students to behave and do their jobs well. Values teach us to coexist with humans and other beings in ways that nourish not harm, and to advance technology that is supportive rather than destructive.


Education for a Living


Education has had an important role in the past 200 years in preparing people to earn a livelihood. Today, however, we need to see how professional knowledge and technical competence can systematically be accompanied by practicable and lived values.


A person may be an accomplished engineer without having reflected on the social and environmental consequences of their work. A manager may be highly skilled at achieving targets without knowing how to build a trusting team. A student may excel academically while struggling to understand their own aspirations, manage relationships or cope with uncertainty.


This is where values become central to education. Earlier morals and ethics were taught as subject. Yet much of what we witness in life around us appears at odds with those ideals. If values remain only ideas that we can reproduce in an examination, but cannot practice in our daily lives, we have not achieved anything!


So, the question is not simply whether we should teach values, but how we can create educational experiences through which students understand, examine and practice them.


Experiments in Value-Based Education


India has seen sustained efforts to bring human values into mainstream education, including initiatives in professional and technical institutions. One significant development is Universal Human Values (UHV), an approach that was developed from 2005 onwards at IIIT, Hyderabad in the form of a formal course taught through group discussions and not lectures. It was subsequently incorporated into the All India Council for Technical Education's (AICTE) National Model Curriculum in March 2017 as Student Induction Program (SIP) based on UHV.


UHV emphasises relationships with family members, with peers and faculty, awareness of one's aspirations, and a broader understanding of life.


A pilot of SIP together with UHV was launched in July 2016 in IIT(BHU), IIT Mandi, and IIT Patna. At IIT(BHU), the program was scaled up to an intake batch of 1200 plus students.


An important feature of UHV is its emphasis on self-exploration. Rather than treating values merely as instructions to be followed, it invites students to examine proposals, reflect on them and assess their relevance through their own understanding and experience. At its heart is the proposition that education should help students explore the relationship among their different aspirations, their self-confidence, their understanding of happiness and prosperity, their conduct towards other people, and their participation in society and nature.


This changes the nature of teaching the values. Instead of teachers asking students only to remember what constitutes good behaviour, they create space for them to investigate what trust means in a relationship, what regulates cooperation rather than competition, and more.


Students come from different social backgrounds and different religious beliefs. However, the topics covered in the UHV course do not come into conflict with those. The group discussions take up different topics and address them through what is common among human beings and the innate goodness. As a result, at the thought level, there is no conflict with religious basic thought. UHV does not address practices and rituals unless they come into conflict with human goodness. In any case, UHV does not give prescriptions, it only gives proposals as to what would make life meaningful and happy. As the students are encouraged to verify the proposals through their experience, there is no external pressure on them to conform to some thoughts or beliefs. Good behaviour and character development with such a methodology become outcomes.


From Teaching Values to Facilitating Conditions to Live Them – Mentoring


The teacher-student bonding and the prevailing institutional environment are important for value education.


The solution lies in forming mentoring groups consisting of 15-20 students with a faculty member each, drawn from various departments. The mentoring group would need to meet twice a week and take up the above topics for discussion. There would also be activities and games. To keep the group discussions effective, the size of the group should be no more than 15-20 students.

This method has been tried in several thousand institutions, including in some IITs. This unfortunately got interrupted when Covid struck. But, this approach makes the Institutes take a fresh look at the problems they are having. It will require training the faculty to conduct such group discussions, without any preaching and without being judgemental. A 4-day and a 7-day workshop have been designed to train the faculty.


The growing availability of AI makes this especially relevant. AI can help students access information, but that alone does not guarantee sound judgement or responsible action. The opportunity, therefore, is not to compete with technology in the delivery of information. It is to use technology thoughtfully while strengthening the dimensions of education – critical thinking not limited to a narrow subject but with a holistic view of life.


The larger possibility is that mentoring becomes an integral part of education rather than an activity undertaken only when something goes wrong. Instead of waiting for a student to reach a point of crisis before offering support, institutions can create regular opportunities for students to understand themselves, build relationships, handle challenges that come, and in the process develop the resources needed to navigate life.


From the Mentoring Group to the Institution


If the problems we see in individuals and society are interconnected, then the response cannot be limited to correcting individual behaviour. Implementing such a program in this way improves the overall functioning of an Institute from inside out.


If students are encouraged to practice cooperation in a mentoring session but encounter only hostility and unhealthy competition, or if teachers discuss mutual respect but students routinely experience humiliation, the institution sends contradictory messages.


For this reason, values need to inform and change the wider institutional culture. Faculty development, classroom practices, student activities, grievance mechanisms, academic policies and institutional leadership must reinforce the same commitment to dignity, trust and responsibility. This would result in a positive environment and culture in the institution.


The institution must also examine what it rewards. Does it recognise collaboration alongside individual achievement? Does it create opportunities for students from different backgrounds to participate meaningfully? Can students express disagreement without fear? Are teachers given the time and preparation needed to mentor students well?


These questions turn value education from an isolated course into a shared larger institutional responsibility.


A Different Measure of Educational Success


There is encouraging evidence that implementation of UHV by creating such conducive environments makes a difference. A few studies on these experiments document changes in student behaviour: improved academic sincerity and self-discipline; reduction in stress, tension and bad habits; better awareness of physical needs; adoption of healthier habits; increased empathy and understanding; improved interpersonal relationships with family, peers, and faculty; and greater consciousness regarding environment.


From anecdotes, one student shared how he had stopped approaching conversations with friends as something to win, and instead began seeing them as opportunities to learn. One particularly interesting observation, at IIIT Hyderabad when human values became part of the undergraduate curriculum, was that students became more willing to question institutional policies without becoming hostile towards faculty or administration. They saw a growing sense of trust that allowed students and teachers to engage in a dialogue.


It is important to note a sustained exposure to UHV and deeper studies would reveal more subtleties about how UHV is helpful in transforming lives for all stakeholders at an institute. This also hints at considering initiation of UHV education from the school level itself.


All this will be ineffective, if we try to achieve it through a one-off workshop for teachers, or by adding another examination for students in an already pressurized atmosphere. It requires continuity in training faculty as mentors, institutional commitment and opportunities to practice what is explored through a semester-long engagement twice a week. Most importantly, such an engagement builds a bond between the faculty and students, which nurtures the student and enriches the experience of both. We have found that wherever the head of the institution takes it seriously while pursuing it within the institution, it starts making a tremendous difference in the institution over a period of time.


If education can create such conditions, it can begin to break the vicious loop that we are in and stop us from degrading quality of life. Students learn to collaborate and carry that capacity into workplaces and communities. Teachers build trust, and influences students in how they relate to others. Institutes take responsibility for the environments they create and help shape the world.


Acknowledgement


The development of Universal Human Values courses and material is a collective effort over two decades, in which faculty and students of several institutions participated. It is based on Madhyasth-Darshan propounded by A. Nagraj Sharma.


References




Suyash Saboo is an educator and designer of learning experiences, currently supporting the implementation of programs based on Universal Human Values (UHV) at IIT Indore. He is trained in mindfulness-based counselling. Currently, developing the ‘Fulfilment Curriculum’ – which integrates mindful and experiential learning methods with UHV, he offers individual counselling and coaching support. Suyash can be reached at suyashsaboo12@gmail.com


Prof Rajeev Sangal is Professor Emeritus at IIIT Hyderabad. He is the first Director of IIT(BHU) and founding Director of IIIT Hyderabad. He played a key role in the development of UHV at the above two institutions from where it spread to a few thousand colleges. He was the founding Chairman, National Coordination Committee, Student Induction Program, AICTE (2017-19). He was also the architect and founding Chairman of Mission Bhashini, India’s first AI mission for language translation. He can be reached at sangal@iiit.ac.in








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