1) The document discusses issues at the human, societal, and environmental levels and argues that value education is needed to address these issues. 2) Value education deals with what is truly valuable and meaningful for human beings. It helps develop clarity on one's aspirations and how to fulfill them through complementing values with skills. 3) The document outlines some basic guidelines for value education, including that it should be universally applicable, rational, naturally verifiable, all-encompassing, and promote harmony.

1. Chapter 1
Understanding Value Education

2. ISSUES
• At the human level, we can see that there continue to be issues in individuals with
respect to lack of clarity on life-goals, contradictions and stress, while at the level of
human relationships in the family, we see problems in mutual understanding,
increasing mistrust, insecurity and generation gap.
• Further at the level of human relationships in society we see increasing communal
conflict, exploitation and strife, terrorism and violence in various forms. The
increasing corruption and other unethical practices in various professions is also
causing serious concern.

3. ISSUES
• At the level of nature, we have increasing problems of environmental degradation
in various forms as well as resource depletion threatening the very survival of the
human race.
In fact, all these problems are a direct outcome of the ‘well-planned’ human
activity carried out in the name of progress and in spite of all the advancements of
science and technology.
Where then, lies the solution? What exactly is a miss? This is an
important question intriguing the human mind today.

4. Purpose:
• The overall purpose of education is to enable a human being to live a
fulfilling life, in harmony with oneself and with family, society and
nature.
• Hence, it becomes the responsibility of educators to enable the
resolution of these issues, so that human society can achieve the
cherished goal.

5. Value Education:
The subject that deals with ‘what is of value’ or 'what is valuable to a human being’
is called ‘value education’.
Values thus provide the basis for all our actions and there is an essential
complementarity between values and skills which needs to be ensured in any
education system.

6. Advantages
• It is holistic and not fragmented- covers all dimensions of human life: thought,
behaviour, work and realization.
• Addresses the ‘Self ’ – Discusses the human being or the Self and does not just
focus on external realities. This proves to be self-empowering since each
individual is able to make decisions and find out what is of value to them in
their own right.
• Is closely associated to life and living – Establishes relevance in a person’s life
and does not just deal with information and skills. One can see the results of
this understanding in human living in the form of behaviour with people and
work with nature

7. Advantages
• Methodology facilitates understanding and not just rote learning: The focus
is on understanding in one’s own right by focusing on reality and its
experiential verification and not just on reproduction of information and rote
learning.

8. Need for Value Education:
All human beings aspire for a happy, fulfilling life. For a human being,
there are two important questions pertaining to this:
• What is my aspiration? (What to do?)
• How to fulfil my aspiration? (How to do?)

9. • The purpose of education is to facilitate the development of clarity on the aspiration and
adequate competence to actualize it.
• For this, it is essential to understand what a happy, fulfilling and successful life is – what is
really valuable for human being; what is our purpose as a human being?
• Understanding human aspiration, or what is really valuable for human being, is the value
domain. The subject which enables us to understand this domain is called ‘Value
Education’ (VE).
• It enables us to understand our aspirations and visualise our goals for a fulfilling life and
indicates the direction for their fulfillment. In relation to these issues, it also helps to
remove our confusions and contradictions.

10. • The subject which enables us to learn the skills is called ‘Skill Development’ (SD).
• It enables us to learn the science, technology, management and other skills for
fulfilling our aspiration.
• In that sense, SD addresses the issues related to ‘how to do?’.
• Values and skills go hand in hand. Both values and skills are required. There is an
essential complementarity between the two.
• The priority is values, then skills; i.e. first understanding ‘what to do’ and then
developing the skills for ‘how to do’. And of course, checking if this results into a
fulfilling life!

11. Need for Value Education:
1. Correct identification of our aspirations
2. Understanding universal human values to fulfil our aspirations in
continuity
3. Complementarity of values and skills
4. Evaluation of our beliefs
5. Technology and Human Values
• Value Education enables us to understand our needs and visualize our
goals correctly, and also indicate the direction for their fulfilment. It also
helps remove our confusions and contradictions and enables us to
rightly utilize the technological innovations.

12. Basic Guidelines for Value Education
• Universal: It has to be universally applicable to all human beings for all time and all
places. This implies that values should not change according to sect, creed, nationality,
gender, etc.
• Rational: It has to appeal to reasoning; and not be based on dogmas or blind beliefs.
It has to be open to address the related questions. It cannot be a set of sermons or
do’s and don’ts.
• Natural and Verifiable: It has to be 'naturally acceptable' to the human being and
there needs to be every provision in nature for its fulfillment. It needs to be
experientially verifiable, and not based on dogmas, beliefs or assumptions. It is not
merely an intellectual exercise or information transfer.

13. Basic Guidelines for Value Education
• All Encompassing: It needs to cover all dimensions (thought, behaviour, work and
understanding) and levels (individual, family, society and nature/existence) of
human life.
• Leading to Harmony: It ultimately needs to promote harmony within the
individual, among human beings and with the entire nature.