Value Education in Schools

• If you inculcate values and life skills in students, it improves the motivation to learn so that the teacher’s job gets easier. – Dr. Ali Khwaja
• I have met many young girls from the X standard who find themselves pregnant and don’t know what to do. – Sr. Annunciata

The tinkering with the school curricular goes on. With the bifurcation of class periods handed down by the board, instead of moral lessons and value-based discussions, students are more and more being encouraged to give priority to field trips to the market, social living, and commercial arts. Is it time to admit defeat and say goodbye to value-based education? No sir, never! Not as long as persons like Dr. Ali Khwaja and Sister Annunciata walk this earth. Mentor catches up with value’s greatest champions in this nation.

Dr. Khwaja puts it succinctly: “I am a believer that if you inculcate values and life skills in students, it improves the motivation to learn so that the teacher’s job gets easier. I do a lot of work with teachers and I always tell them this: ‘The choice to be happy is yours. Where salary or hours of work is concerned, you don’t have a choice, but whether you want to smile at the end of each day is your choice. A happy teacher automatically means happier children who want to learn.

“Many times I ask them (the teachers) frankly how many really wanted to be teachers and inevitably it turns out that it was not the real choice of even 25% of those present. So I say to them, ‘Many of us are not in the vocation we wanted or started out with. What we now do with life is to take on the future with long term and short term goals, and however unrealistic it may seem, couple the long-term goals with short term goals. Among the short term goals, I would say this – choose to be happy. A happy teacher and a happy parent will result in a content child, ready for growth.”

Sr. Annunciata agrees. “I am one of eight children. My parents always made each of us feel cherished and loved. I have always loved children. That’s why it seemed the best choice to get into the educational field.  I wanted to get involved in not just the academics, but in the children’s lives. Whatever subject I taught I brought in values and morals. History lessons were not merely about conquerors, victories or rise and fall of empires but I made these lessons more about people. We looked at their lives closely and saw what we could learn from them.

“Principals and teachers have to take a more important role in the child’s life. Teachers should learn to be patient with the children.  They should teach the children the importance of being good citizens of this country, not just good students. Having been a teacher and a principal, I know how important it is to complete the syllabus but it should not be at the expense of the value education class. Values are what make children excel in life. It not only makes the parents and teachers proud but in the long run the country is filled with people who have good, strong values and will not compromise them. Its especially important today when both the parents are working and children are picking up their values from the television and other shaky sources.”