This article has been written by Dr Poonam Parihar.
Morality Refers to personal or cultural value codes of conduct or social values. It is fact that morality plays an important role in an individual’s life as well as in the society, we learn moral values from family and education. These are the two important institutions, where we learn how to behave in a society. In the pre-independence era, when few people had access to formal education and it was known that educated persons would display civilized behaviour, decency, good manners and ethical conduct, on the other hand, Uneducated persons would display uncivilized behavior and mostly crimes were committed by them. However, with a huge expansion of the education system, there is a marked decline in the characters, ethical moral values. Today most of the crimes are committed by students coming out of schools and colleges and well-educated people.
In most of the educational institutions, there is lack of emphasis on the concept of human development and nation building process. Their emphasis instead is on moneymaking and materialism. This has resulted in the gradual decline of values among people.
The main aim of imparting moral values and ethics during Gurukul system was to build a positive character among students that lead to make a true citizen and ultimately leads to gear up nation building process.
Around the globe the declining trend of value and ethics is a burgeoning problem which needs to be tackled soon. With the advent of modern technology from British rule skill education was emphasized rather than value education.
Our Vedic education tenets like Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha were forgotten from the modern education. In the present day corporate culture teaches only the mannerism part but the truthful inceptions of ethical values are still absent there. In a mechanized world where electronic gadgets are present viz. television, computers, radio and 4G internet services provide every information either good or bad in decent form.
Social networking sites facebook, twitter and instagram also makes our relationship closer but also ruined the emotional wall between elders and youngers on the name of frankness, which is a grave concern for ethical and moral values.
As we all know that India & Indians are considered for their moral values since ancient times. The Vedas, Puranas, holy books all depict the moral values or the moral duties of a human being which was considered as mandatory to lead a perfect & happy life. It is not the only ancient belief but has relevance even today. It is believed that following a moral and ethical life would lead a person to attain salvation i.e., moksha. With this belief, people lead their lives.
However, it is sorrowful to see a lack of morality and ethics in the present time. Earlier, there was equal treatment to men and women as neither Vedas nor a holy book discriminated women in any way. Now women have given an equal status but the morality and ethics of the people have been faded away with the time.
The morality and respect which uses to be vested in the people by virtue are being lost. As we all know that technology has somewhere confined our life only to it. Technology has become the best way of upbringing a child nowadays. Parents to give the best of life to their child & earn money, they cannot give time to check on the activities of their child because of which sometimes technology ruins their growth. The child of today is not related to any ancient stories, ethics and any of the holy books which can lead them to make a proper difference between the right & wrong for them. Sometimes it results in heinous crimes like rape, acid attacks, drug addictions, actually lead a child towards immorality.
As we all know that rape is being a dominant crime not only against women but also males. The morality and respect from the society have been replaced somewhere by such crimes & somewhere by the feeling of revenge. We all want to prevent this immorality from society but no one wants to take a step as with the view that any of incident has not happened to them. The victims of such crimes lead a horrible life as they are usually boycotted by society. India & Indians which were used to be known for their morality or the moral values are just being on the pages of closed books with dust over them.
Those books need to be opened so that the dust from society can be removed. Everyone has to take a vow against this immorality to make India again a country of moral values. It can conclusively be said that the morality, ethics & respect towards each other has constituted the India & Indians that should be preserved at any cost by each & every citizen of India. The children of today are the future of tomorrow. They’ll shape the world so they should have all the requisite knowledge and qualities to build a strong world.
It is vital to inculcate good values in them as then only they will nurture into citizens with strong character who can make this world a better place. Thus, moral values hold significance in the development of children into well-balanced individuals.
When most people talk about a school curriculum, they think about math, science, social studies, and language courses. Seldom do I hear or read about moral values as being part of the curriculum. The problem is that the neglect of teaching moral values in schools is hurting our students and causing problems in society. If a person has never learned any moral values, how is she or he be able to discern the difference between right and wrong? That is basically the essence of moral values education.
Why Teach Moral Values to Students?
As parents and educators, we should all advocate the teaching of moral values in our schools for the following reasons:
Preparing Our Children for Future Roles in Society
Knowledge gained in school is only one goal of education. The primary goals of education should be enabling students to gain knowledge and moral values. Our children will need both in preparing themselves to be good parents and citizens in society.
Many Parents Aren't Teaching Moral Values
If all parents were teaching their children moral values in the home, it would not be necessary for the schools to do this work. The sad fact is that a lot of kids are not learning from their parents the difference between right and wrong. This is because most mothers and fathers in their busy workdays spend only a few hours with their children. In many families, there is only one parent and no other role models for kids to follow.
There Is Too Much Violence and Dishonesty in Society. Every day students are exposed to violence, dishonesty, and other social problems in the media and the real world. How many times have we heard about school shootings? What about other times when students are caught cheating on exams? Then, too, we read about bullying in school and fights between gangs. If moral values were taught in schools, we would have fewer of these problems.
Countering Bad Influences in Society
Unfortunately, many of the role models of young people are setting bad examples. These bad examples range from sexual promiscuity, degrading of women, advocacy of violence, and the condoning of dishonesty in order to succeed.Moral Values Will Stick With You for Life
◆ Top Seven Moral Values:-
It would serve society well if the following seven moral values for students were taught in schools:
1 Unconditional Love and Kindness
In most cases, if you love someone, he or she will love you back in return. This, however, is not the real meaning of love. Love should be unconditional. With more love in the world, kindness will follow and replace cruelty.
2 Honesty
Students must be taught that dishonesty and cheating are wrong, and will get you nowhere in the future. As a student, one is only hurting himself or herself by cheating, because this action will eventually catch up to you in the end with bad consequences.
3 Hard Work
Nowadays, so many students want to cheat and cut corners in their studies because they are lazy and don't place any value on hard work. This thinking must definitely change.
4 Respect for Others
Unfortunately, in our highly competitive dog eat dog society; many people will tread on others to get ahead in life. Respect for others should include respecting different religions, races, sexes, ideas, and lifestyles.
5 Co-operation
To achieve a common goal, it is necessary for all people to work together. If this is not done, a few people may profit, but the end result for everyone will be a failure. We should believe in the motto, "united we stand and divided we fall."
6 Compassion
Compassion is defined as being sensitive to the needs of people. If there were more compassion in the world, there would be less homeless, hunger, wars, and unhappiness.
7 Forgiveness
Almighty God taught us to forgive our enemies or people who hurt us. In most cases, anger is caused by unwillingness to forgive. There would be less violence and fighting in school if students could learn this moral virtue.
As I look around in our society, as I read newspapers, watch news on TV I find moral bankruptcy in our country. I often wonder why is it that this land of Saints and sages, the cradle of civilization is today in such a sorry state of affair.
As quoted by Swami Vivekananda education was for “Man Making and Character Building” and Nelson Mandela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”
The decline of ethical values in education system will give rise to unethical person in all walks of life despite of having a huge success in professional terms. This trend needs to be addressed if India has to survive as a nation and acquire its due place in the world.
Corruption, absence of good teacher, undue political interference, inadequate government policies, defective course curriculum, lack of faculty and principal training are the key factors which increases unethical works, are the main causes of ethical decline. The ethical decline also effect the personal and social life of an individual in terms of nuclear families, broken marriages, decline of social contacts which leads to create loneliness.
The only way to arrest this ethical deterioration is to provide novel modes of value education having the gist of ancient education system. Thus there is an urgent need to re-introduce value based education in the curriculum dealing specifically with human values, to redesign the fabric of Indian educational system with the equal balance of skill and value education.
It is matter of research for the social scientist to devise the method to restructure the course curriculum having the jewels of our Vedas and Upanishads.
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Dr Poonam Parihar
Division of Agricultural Extension Education
Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology, Jammu
(Email-Id-pparihar2003@yahoo.co.in)
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