Indian Constitutional Values In Education

Indian Constitutional Values In Education

In its Preamble itself, the Constitution lays down four universal values: JUSTICE, social, economic and political LIBERTY of thoughts, expression, belief, faith and worship EQUALITY of status and of opportunity and to promote among them all FRATERNITY, assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation.

Justice ensures that the freedom of one does not become tyranny for another. The Justice to be truly meaningful needs sharing of power, compassion towards under-privileged and empathy towards the disadvantage. An education of rights and duties becomes important to ensure to fight for justice.

Liberty of thought and action is a fundamental value embedded in our Constitution. It is the basis for creativity and exploration of new ideas and experiments that can advance social progress. Respecting the rights of others to liberty of thought and action are the hall marks of a civilized society. Ensuring that this liberty of thought and action is not used to belittle or diminish the beliefs and status of others is what constitutes a decent society. Democracy creates opportunity to pursue

one’s chosen ends as well as respect others’ rights to do so. In a diverse country like India, exercising freedom with responsibility is a must for ensuring peace in the nation.

Equality is another value enshrined in the Constitution. Freedom and justice remain mere words if equality is not ensured. It implies freedom from exploitation and ensuring to provide opportunities for individual’s development, irrespective of the background, gender, cultural or socio-economic identity and status.

Fraternity is at the heart of school, society and nation. Social solidarity is a vital part of a society that has place for the aspirations of all members of society. Understanding the importance of fraternity or solidarity and the knowledge that we all belong to a large community, a nation and the globe is also to discover our innate humanity. It is only we recognize our interdependence then we empower to help build a peaceful nation and a world. The citizens need to internalize the principals of equality, justice and liberty to promote fraternity among all, regardless of religious beliefs, regional and local diversity. As the Constitution encompasses the values for living in harmony with self and one’s natural and social environment. It provides the baseline in working out the framework of values to be nurtured in students. If values like truthfulness, sense of responsibility, trustworthiness, loyalty, love, peace, respect for others etc. are nurtured right from the beginning, the efforts will go a long way to enable students abide by the Constitution and contribute to larger health of society and nation at large. In fact, promoting values at the school or societal level begins with the individual and the individual in relation to community, larger society, nation and the world.

As desired earlier, value education does not take place in isolation. It must be set in the context of the world in which we live. Our choice to

decide about the key value concerns in schools must also be firmly rooted in the contemporary challenges of society. Where there is terrorist’s attack every now and then, women and girls are abused, where theft, murder and violence are so frequent, where many are marginalized and ignored by society as a whole, it is important that education for values is clearly set in the global as well as local contexts. Threats to humanity from climate change, globalization, emergence of technological choices, violence, terrorism, commercialization of education, the increasingly competitive environment and the aspirations of parents place a tremendous burden and add to the stress and anxiety on children. Schools are the microcosms of the world society. The disorder of the society and the world surfaces in schools in many ways. Further, there are disadvantages in education arising from inequalities of gender, caste, language, culture, religion, disabilities etc. These hierarchies deeply influence access to education and participation of children in schools which range from the high cost ‘public’ (private) schools to poorly functioning local body run primary schools. These realities tend to reinforce privilege and exclusion in schooling and undermine the constitutional values of equality of opportunity and social justice. All these conditions are detrimental to the personal growth and development of students and distortion of values leading to indiscipline, violence, lack of responsibility, lack of respect etc. Thus our efforts towards value education must be rooted in the context of the problems and issues facing teachers and pupils in the schools.

Reference:
http://www.ncert.nic.in/departments/nie/depfe/Final.pdf