By Hu Wo (Cuckoo’s Song)
Education in Human Values (EHV) adopts a holistic approach, encompassing five universally recognized values: love, peace, truth, right conduct, and non-violence.
There is no doubt that today’s education has placed special emphasis on human dignity and values with the vision that conceives human beings as creators who are not limited to watching the established order only. In the historical years, human dignity has occupied a preponderant place, but in fact, a deplorable decadency and crisis in fundamental human values are observed. Hence, the course of our own humanity’s existence has to be recovered before this is forgotten in the history route. Nowadays, we meet a society in which the only practices are profits, earnings, commerce, and great shares, where human beings are just objects, not subjects, so disposable as the same products made for single use. Education development must, therefore, essentially contribute to the knowledge and significance of man as a person by no way allowing its mutilation or, at worst, its own reduction as a thing of learning. As regards this education development, EHV (Education in Human Values) and IP (Integrated Personality) go hand in hand very often. All about EHV will herein be presented intricately.
Education in Human Values (EHV) takes a holistic approach to educating the student. It covers five values as an integral part of the human being that is recognized by all major religions, adopts a multifaith approach, allows and encourages each student to follow his faith and is simply conducive to the application in diverse cultural conditions. These values are love, peace, truth, right conduct, and non-violence, which also defines the human personality as five aspects: the emotional, the psyche, the intellect, the physical, and the spiritual. Love corresponds to the emotional, peace to the psyche, truth to the intellect, right conduct to the physical, and non-violence to the spiritual. These human values can be related to the three levels of consciousness – the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the super-conscious mind. If the conscious mind is raised towards the super-conscious mind, then knowledge and wisdom will be drawn out from within. The human values integrated with a learning concept also start with interacting with the environment. This is, in essence, education.
The development of empathy and love is usually taught through a set of respective values such as caring, friendship, generosity, kindness, and sharing. Education must be directed towards a broadening heart, which encompasses an expansion of love, consciousness, and universal compassion. When love in this broad sense combines with the capacity of discernment, it is referred to as truth. Relative truth can take many forms, although when it comes from within oneself as the dictate of the inner self, it becomes the right conduct. Peace means an awareness of emotions, their acceptance and skilful handling, resulting in calmness and balance. Of course, intrapersonal peace stems from the practice of love, truth, and right conduct. After all four values are practised, non-violence emerges as the culmination of all human values. The process of holding and practising these values is the essence of character building as well.
The basic principles of human values integrated instruction are as follows: -
• Human values are integral to all subjects and activities in school, at home, and even in our lives.
• The five human values of love, peace, truth, right conduct, and non-violence are one and cannot be separated because if one value disappears, the other values will then disappear.
• Human values cannot be taught, so they have to be brought out from within the student.
• In real life, everything is interrelated; that is, we do not just have one value throughout the day.
• Human values integrated instruction lets the student know the ability to solve problems from various perspectives by giving varied correlative experiences.
• Also, this instruction opens up a broader worldview for both teachers and students, making the learning process much more interesting than ever.
By promoting positive relationships and a climate of human values, EHV creates powerful learning dynamics that encourage students to attain their full potential. Those values offer constructive self-image, increased confidence, and a sense of personal mastery in such a way that they may be sequenced from simple to complex, from single to multiple, but closely related sub-values. EHV assists students in relating to values at three levels – cognitive, affective, and behavioural. With the help of EHV, the student is motivated to explore and develop a clear understanding of human values in the way that this sharpens the student’s critical thinking as well as problem-solving skills and raises the student’s awareness of his own conscience, improves the level of self-awareness, particularly of thoughts about oneself, others, motivation and feeling, offering self-confidence and emotional resiliency; undertake continuous self-evaluation of behaviour that enables the student to deal with moment-to-moment decisions and put him on a continuous trajectory of moral learning; and pursue numerous studies showing that EHV being introduced makes schools come out as better learning centres, which grow in behavioural manners, student’s respect for self or others, school culture, cooperation, and academic standards. Besides this, teachers spend less time on behaviour management and more on academic work – their stress is reduced.
The outcomes of EHV are many: providing better academic achievement, improvement in literacy and numeracy in a way such that students get concentrated and able to grasp concepts more easily, and the development of the learning environment in school. Through its behaviour and discipline, the classroom becomes more peaceful; the incidents of inappropriate behaviours decrease; fights in the playground lessen; students themselves take positive action to reduce conflict; and interpersonal skills increase. Its increased social skills involve better listening skills, conflict resolution, cooperation, decreased vandalism, and a harmonious atmosphere at school. At last, its intrapersonal skills even include increased self-confidence, better self-concept or self-esteem, an increased sense of pride, and the emergence of leadership skills in students.
Finally, education in human values is a multicultural, multifaith, self-development programme designed for children and young adults all over the globe. It is a simple education tool devised to help develop positive values in the young so that children and young adults are getting fit for life, not just for earning a good living.
