A value-oriented curriculum at the professional studies level is important

The need for continuing and reinforcing a value-oriented curriculum at the post graduate level and the level of professional studies may be considered even more important. Most of the students trained at these levels are likely to become leaders of business and industry, technocrats, leaders of thought, teachers and educationists, research workers, professionals, political leaders and social workers, besides playing their normal roles as citizens and family members like all other people. It appears that most of them, at the time of leaving college after 3 to 6 years of study, may have a poor idea of the values of freedom and human dignity, the value of food, security and health care for millions of poor and disadvantaged people, the importance of correct public policies for managing societies and solving several problems, and the importance of proper human relations and personal life styles. A good number of them, however, are now getting opportunities to acquire modern scientific and technical knowledge of high standards, particularly in some of our institutions of excellence, comparable to the best institutions in the developed countries. But the problem of inadequate access to this kind of modern knowledge for the poor and disadvantaged groups in our society constitutes a serious social and moral issue. Curricular reform and reconstruction on proper lines should be the active concern of educationists and educational planners, because, as pointed out in the national policy document of 1986, it can be a forceful tool for the cultivation of social and moral values. In our culturally plural society, education should foster universal and eternal values, oriented towards the unity and integration of our people. Such value education should eliminate obscurantism, religious fanaticism, violence, superstition and fatalism.