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IDCA Forum on Education in India, on April 29,from 2 PM at Oak
Brook Library
India Development Coalition of America
www.idc-america.org, info@idc-america.org
Dear IDCA Members, and Friends:
You are Cordially Invited with Family and Friends to Participate in
A Panel Discussion on
Education to Accelerate Sustainable Development in India
Moderators: Professor Mahendra S. Bapna
Mr. Visweswararao Durga,
Panelist:
Dr. Ratnam Chitturi
North South Foundation, (www.northsouth.org )
Mr. Porus Dadabhoy
Mr. Vivek Singhal
Date: September 30, 2006
Time: 2:00 PM- 4:30 PM
Venue: Oak Brook Library
600 Oak Brook Road, Oak Brook; IL 60523
(North of 31st Street & ~1 mile E. of Route 83) Tel: (630) 990-2222
Directions: www.Oak-Brook.il.us
Please participate in this on-line and panel discussion and share your experiences and knowledge in this area or learn more from others. We will appreciate if you will encourage others you know to participate in this forum and share their ideas, stories or whatever else they know about this topic.
You can start participation now by sending an email at info@idc-america.org, with something that you want to share or comments on what we have shared with you. For questions please call Professor Bapna at 630-986-8289, or Viswesh Durga at 630-682-8022 or Mohan Jain at 630-303-9592.
Learn more and Support: www.afhd.org, http://www.atree.org,www.idsusa.org,www.iges.org,www.smsfoundation.org/, http://www.treesforlife.org/
IDCA: A Catalyst to Accelerate Sustainable Development in India
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Invitation to the Education forum we have planned for you on September 30. We have three panelist representing organizations working in different parts of India. We expect to have
lively discussion about this important issue.
You may find the attached article published in Hindu few years ago about
Value education of some interest. It will be good to hear your thoughts about
this . We will appreciate if you could share anything else you know about this
subject with us all. We will exchange ideas about this until the day of this forum and better
our understanding to be able to participate actively to support this.
For your information below are some more organizations who are working in
the field of Education. You may like to visit these website and share what
you find interesting.
ASHA for Education: www.ashanet.org
Pratham, USA: www.prathamusa.org
Shikshantar Andolan: www.swaraj.org/shikshantar
North South Foundation: www.northsouth.org
Educate the Children: www.educatechildren.org
Ekal Vidya Foundation: www.ekalvidya.org
Education for Change: www.education4change.org
iWatch: www.wakeupcall.org
Bodh Shiksha Samiti: www.bodh.org
Batchu Foundation: http://batchufoundation.org
Mohan L. Jain, Ph.D.
President,
India Development Coalition of America
www.idc-america.org
m.jain@idc-america.org
"Working Together to Accelerate Sustainable Development in India"
630-303-9592 (O)
Date:21/01/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com
hindu.com/edu/2003/01/21/stories/2003012100130200.htm
Towards good citizenship
Values cannot be forced, even if conveyed with good intentions. No real
integration or internalization of values can be achieved unless the
learner agrees with it. Communication is the key in this. This is one
tradition we lack in India, but it can be developed with the cooperation of all.
WHAT TYPE of education is needed to empower citizens to become agents of
change for better world societies? This was an issue before delegates at
the eighth UNESCO-Asia Pacific Program of Education Innovation for
Development (APEID) held at Bangkok, Thailand, recently. In a world grappling with the
challenges posted by intolerance and fundamentalism, especially India,
where the attack on Parliament, Godhra and its aftermath changed
perceptions about social-cohesion forever, the meaning of the term "citizenship
education" assumes particular importance.
The current emphasis on values in education as articulated in the National
Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) National Curriculum
Framework for School Education-2000 (NCFSE) is a product of many years of
contemplation into the sad degeneration of society into hedonism,
corruption and violence even as poverty, inequity, injustice and the
environment continue to send warning signals.
How can we prepare our future generations to cope with the challenges and
fast changing realities of today and tomorrow? How can we develop citizens
who can bring about the transformation of this culture of violence,
intolerance and greed to one of peace, non-violence and respect for one
another? These are not going to be achieved with the click of a finger.
There is no ready-made solution waiting to be adopted. In fact the debate
in India over value education, which has rankled for the past two years,
shows how easily political rhetoric can overtake the best of the
professional and academic intentions.
The NCERT had proposed that India, being home to people of many faiths,
should look to its own, rich spiritual tradition to find the ways to
grapple with contemporary problems — look back into the future as it were.
The Jesuit educationist, Father Herman Castelinio has pointed out that the
need for inter-faith education has been recognized for nearly five decades
by several education commissions, but never taken seriously.
In 1999, the government took the laudable step of identifying the
strategies to strengthen the Fundamental Duties of Citizens, which formed
a little known chapter in our national Constitution. The culmination of these was
the enshrinement of education as a Fundament Right, which proves beyond
doubt that India was well aware that the ideal type of citizen will be shaped by
an educational paradigm.
Our national goal of striking unity in diversity must be realized through
the approaches we follow in our educational policies, programs and
practices and their implementation in our schools.
Value education, as envisaged by the NCFSE, is not to be a structured
process. We subscribe to an advocacy-pedagogy route in which the educator
is attuned to the process of learning. At the same time it demands the
teacher's sensitivity to opportunities for teaching which result from the
meaningful interaction between the educator and the learner and also among
the learners themselves. There is a popular misconception — which perhaps
led to the postponement of value education instruction in India for
decades — that values are "better caught than taught". In reality however,
values are both caught and taught.
The learning does not solely come from the teacher but the educator for
the child is both the teacher and his peer group. In this light, the teacher
is more of a guide and facilitator, and indeed, the true partner in learning.
The success of the valuing process, according to contemporary
educationists, lies in encouraging the learner to ask the "Why" and "What
for" at the right times. This tendency checks the proliferation of blind faith. For
instance, it is quite a scientific achievement to be able to clone
animals.
But society needs to question what is the need for this? Valuing, therefore,
guarantees a humanism that otherwise may sadly be lost in the excitement
of new discoveries. So, value education is not simply the heart of education, but also the
education of the heart. It is a necessary component of holistic
citizenship education. The NCFSE does not recommend mere teaching about values but
rather learning how to value, how to bring knowledge into the deeper level
of understanding and insights. The holistic learning experience aims at
the internalization of values by the learner and translating them into their
behavior. A total learning process is therefore envisaged. It is time for decision
makers and professionals in the field of education to lead in the total
effort of designing and implementing new and more effective ways of
preparing our future citizens and future leaders into the creation of
better societies. Our priority should be to translate the valuable lessons from
our spiritual texts — the Gita, Koran, Bible and Guru Granth Sahib — to
transform the growing culture of violence, greed and intolerance into one
of peaceful co-existence.
Now, that is hardly achieved without designing a concrete yet flexible
program or course complete with activities so that each school can fulfil
its mission of creating "civic capacities". The NICER has already started
a nation-wide consultation process and has involved eminent scholars from
varied religious and institutional backgrounds. Their valued inputs led to
the decision to develop a Handbook for Schools on Strategies of Value
Implementation which hopefully would keep those responsible for the
selection and development of instructional material for inclusion in the
schoolbooks they may think of developing. Simultaneously, Incest's
National Resource Center for Value Education has started several projects
for independent research and innovations in Value Education in collaboration
with several institutions and organizations.
Values cannot be forced, even if conveyed with good intentions. No real
integration or internalization of a value can be achieved unless the
learner agrees with it. Communication is the key in this. This is one
tradition we lack in India, but it can be developed with the cooperation of all. In
value education, more than in the academics, educators will never be able
to impose their values. Rather, they must circulate in the community of the
learner and pass on, through discipline, the fine humanism of respecting
others in the same manner that one expects to be respected in return. As
this climate of respect surrounds the learners, they automatically imbibe
an attitude of tolerance towards their fellow men.
J. S. RAJPUT
© Copyright 2000 - 2002 The Hindu
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