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The goals of learning, according to Unesco, are four: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live in harmony and learning to be. Value education embraces all of these.

Learning to know is quite different from learning merely to pass examinations. In learning to know, ‘how to think’ is more important than ‘what to think’. The bane of the current practice of schooling — even in the best of schools — is that students are not taught the art and science of thinking.

Dictated learning

They are told what to think, consigning them to rote-learning, which degrades the otherwise joyful process of learning into a burdensome imposition.

Examination-driven rote-learning, observes John Dewey, the American philosopher of education, inMoral Principles in Education, subverts the moral development of children. This implants in them the immoral idea that ‘nothing has any intrinsic value’, which orients them lifelong to mere expediency......................Read more

 

Source: The Hindu