Introduction
In spite of all kinds of developments, human life is becoming more and more miserable. Quantity of knowledge on various subjects is increasing but quality of life is deteriorating.1, 2, 3 Educated people are increasing but at more pace general misbehaviour has also increased. A lot of teaching institutions have grown but civilized persons are relatively reduced. During ancient period, the gurus and their shishyas lived together helping each other in day-to-day life. The main objective was to have complete learning, leading a disciplined life and realising one's inner potential.4 In present context, we see a lot of differences. Therefore, there is a strong need of integrating human values to be added in today’s education for a better life tomorrow. Human values are the ethical conduct. These values are often defined as abstract ideals that guide people’s behaviour.5 They leads to an ideal behaviour of human being by adopting noble principles and high standards. These values are potentially present in every one but eventually gets developed over a period of time when one relate oneself with one’s purpose of life. Human values in education gives ideal, divine and pure relationship between teacher and student. These values also develop strong intrapersonal communication and shapes holistic personality. Therefore, one’s life should be based on human values. The purpose of an individual’s life shapes and develop these values.
For understanding values, one must understand ‘Life’ and its purpose. ‘Life’ is a journey from ‘B’ to ‘D’, i.e., from Birth to Death. No one has any control over the two. Instead, one has potentially full control over the choices one makes. Every inspiration (inhalation) is life and each expiration (exhalation) could be death. So, every breathe is a new life.
Life gets its meaning from its ‘WHY’. So, knowing one’s why is very important. There could be possible four WHYs.6 This could be prior classified into two kinds:
Pseudo purpose includes
Survival
Survival includes our physiological needs mainly food, shelter, sleep, clothing, reproduction, etc. Everyone who works only for these needs and limit themselves to any further achievements come into this category.
Status
One’s purpose which focuses more or less about show-off is termed as ‘Status’. One’s primary focus is on his/her self-worth. These people along with fulfilling their basic needs wish to have a nice car, a house, go to a good school or send their children to a good school. They wish to be able to talk about having this or that. This is all about keeping up with the social equals. Status is better than survival. But it still lacks a lot moral conducts.
Freedom
The third one is freedom. In this category, one wishes to be self-dependent or self-reliant or wish to do something for themselves out of their own capacity and interests. These people may wish to live in a particular community because they want their kids to be able to play outside and not worry about them. Or they may want to have a big back yard so their kids can run around and play safely. So, freedom is also a ‘why’, which is self-centred. Thus, it’s not the highest level.
True purpose
Purpose
The highest level of ‘Why’ is ‘purpose’ or ‘true purpose’. When one goes beyond self-requirements and self-fulfilments and is able to see a bigger picture where one could think oneself apart from the self, there the true purpose comes to play its role. True purpose is beyond having personal assets, recognition, fame, status or freedom. It’s actually liberation from all these things and following something which is driven by the heart and soul for the welfare of the society or nature.
Why very few people reach the purpose level
When one acquires a vision of its true purpose and start traversing its path in that direction, one becomes capable to manage their life in proper manner meeting their satisfaction. Contrary to this, very few people reach to this level as they are too lazy to spend time thinking about it, or they are too afraid. So they don’t give them self time to ask the question, “What do I really want to do with my life?”
We have examples of people, who had a true purpose in their life as a result of human values. They managed their own life and were able to contribute and benefit their surroundings. A few examples are:
Baba Amte: He was an Indian lawyer and social activist who devoted his life to India’s poorest and least powerful and especially to the care of those individuals who suffered from leprosy. In 1949, Amte founded Anandwan, an ashram dedicated to the treatment, rehabilitation, and empowerment of leprosy patients. The centre came to encompass programs in health care, agriculture, small-scale industry, and conservation and to serve people with disabilities. His work earned him numerous international awards, notably, the 1988 UN Human Rights Prize, a share of the 1990 Templeton Prize, and the 1999 Gandhi Peace Prize.7
Kailash Satyarthi: He is an Indian social reformer who campaigned against child labour in India and advocated the universal right to education. In 2014, he was the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Malala Yousafzai, "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education." Kailash Satyarthi and his team at Bachpan Bachao Andolan have liberated more than 90,000 children in India from child labour, slavery and trafficking.8
James Christopher Harrison : He is a blood plasma donor from Australia whose unusual plasma composition has been used to make a treatment for Rhesus disease. He has made over 1,000 donations throughout his lifetime, and these donations are estimated to have saved over 2.4 million babies from the condition. Harrison was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 7 June 1999.9
There are many more example whose purpose of life and moral values inspires people. Their self-awareness developed understanding of their potential and they shaped their personality. Their will power, self-confidence, imagination power, intelligence and emotional maturity shaped their personality and development of human values made them successful in their life. Thus, there is a need to teach these values in modern education along with the regular curriculum in a practical manner. These would help the individual not only in the professional area but also the personal space where the individual needs to grow in multiple dimensions of their life.
Materials and Methods
The method used is the evaluation of the practices and teachings mentioned in various ancient and recent texts. A review of various ancient texts like Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagwat Geeta and others are carried out to understand teaching and learning process. Teaching learning processes mentioned in these texts are correlated with the requirements of present education system. It is a review of various teaching and learning techniques in different areas for improving the quality of students and teachers in education.
Results
Ancient Indian teachings were entirely centred on human values, which could be of great significance in modern times. These values may lead to an ideal behaviour of human beings by adopting noble principles and high standards. The ancient teachings talk about the higher purposes of human life like ‘moksha’. Moreover, many ancient texts explains and teaches various life skills to deal with various aspects of life for both students and teachers. For students, Lifestyle Management, Study Management, Relationship Management, Communication skill management, Character Building and Personality Grooming and Self-Excellence are described to be significant in Indian teachings. Similarly, the Indian teachings says that the teachers need Creative Excellence, Team Building and Leadership and Spiritual Excellence for quality teaching. These values would help the individual not only in the professional area but also enhances the personal space where the individual is required to grow in multiple dimensions of life.
Discussion
Curriculum for students
Students or youth are the real asset of any nation. The future of the nation lies on their shoulders. Their quality of education. Their purpose of life and moral values become that of the nation’s purpose and ethical conducts as well. Therefore, curriculum of students has significance of its own. When we talk about ancient Indian education system, both formal and informal ways of education system were there. At home, in temples, pathshalas, tols, chatuspadis and gurukuls were the places of indigenous education.4 Young children were guided by people in homes, villages and temples, imbibing pious ways of life. Students used to go to viharas and universities for higher knowledge. From the time of Rigveda onwards, our ancient education system evolved over the period and focused on the holistic development of the individual by taking care of both the inner and the outer self. The system focused on the moral, physical, spiritual and intellectual aspects of life. It emphasised on values such as humility, truthfulness, discipline, self-reliance and respect for all creations.10 Students were taught to appreciate the balance between human beings and nature.
The objective of this curriculum for students is to provide success and satisfaction which develops correct and deep understanding towards life of students. The values and ideals help in identifying the originality and creative potentials in students and try to develop it in a right direction. This curriculum for students is a training for a balanced life style, harmonies relations and efficient living. As based on ancient teachings of India, this curriculum guides to noble, compassionate and refined human being leading to integral development of personality.
The curriculum details are as follows:
Life style management
There are two parts of life management - view of life & life style. When an individual learns about his own abilities and possibilities, and assesses his life with reference to the circumstances, it is called view of life. But when we talk about lifestyle, it’s a wholistic concept and not limited to any single dimension of life. The area is vast – from intrapersonal to interpersonal and from interpersonal to community level. Life style displays the aim and ideals of personality.
Life Style can be improved and managed with the following tools:
As Ancient Indian text says:11
yuktāhāra-vihārasya yukta-ceṣṭasya karmasu
yukta-svapnāvabodhasyayogo bhavati duḥkha-hā
This means that he who is regulated in his habits of eating, sleeping, recreation and work can mitigate all material pains by practicing the yoga system.11 Here, in Bhagwat Geeta, Lord Krishna directs an individual for a holistic living by adopting and implementing simple changes in the routine, dietary habits, life style, etc. These tools help in grooming the personality. When one develops consistency in ideal daily routine, develops healthy food habits, proper dressing sense, positive and healthy company and follows social etiquettes, one’s life style starts to get manage. Parallelly, work efficiency of the individual also enhances. This includes positive way of thinking and good behavioural skills. One becomes able to understand oneself and through self-evaluation one develops responsibility toward family and society as well.
Study management
From the very childhood, we are taught how to study. Every one of us knows the fundamentals of studying. But along with the basics, there is also a need of excellence in this area. For continuous growth and movement towards the purpose of life, one is required to be motivated and proactive in learning.
Time management is an important part of study management. Ancient Indian texts relates human life as equivalent to time and makes general divison of the time in four parts as per the need of time and duties which are required to be performed. The four parts or asharam are -Brahamcharya, Grahasth, Vanprastha and Sanyas. The duties needed to be done are called ‘purushartha’. The four purusharth are - dharma, artha, kaama and moksha.
Yajurveda 3/6 states as:
आयं गौः पृश्नि॑रक्रमी॒दस॑दन् मा॒तरं॑ पु॒रः। पि॒तरं॑ च प्र॒यन्त्स्वः॑ ॥3/6॥ 12
This means that the earth revolves around sun and as a result of this, different components of time like day-night, seasons, etc. happens. Similarly, cycle of time which is called kaalchakra is mentioned in Atharvaveda 9/9/11,12,13 and 14. These mantras give the knowledge of time management. These mantras help us to prioritize our duties as per the aim and objective of human life. Thus, excellence in study management could be achieved with the following tools with proper time management :
These tools help to achieve excellence in the subject matter. Time management skills of categorizing important and not important, and urgent and not urgent tasks helps to manage time efficiently.13 Proper management of time builds self-confidence and a disciplined life. A disciplined life creates space for growing human values. Good concentration, better memory, improved reading and writing skills are other areas of excellence and breeding ground for other human values.
Relationship management
We are in a relationship by default with many people from the day we are born in one way or the other. Being in a relationship is one aspect and managing that relation is completely different. Thus, relationship management has to be learnt for grooming human values. This will not only help in strengthening the relationship but also supports the two in emotional and social development.
To meet social needs, expectations and self-satisfaction, one needs to learn adjustment and behavioural skills for relationship management and emotional competency.
ayaṃ nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghu cetasām | udāracaritānāṃ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam
aṣṭādaśa purāṇeṣu vyāsasya vacanadvayam | paropakāraḥ puṇyāya pāpāya parapīḍanam ||
śrotraṃ śrutenaiva na kuṃḍalena, dānena pāṇirna tu kaṃkaṇena,
vibhāti kāyaḥ karuṇāparāṇāṃ, paropakārairna tu candanena ||
These ancient Indian teachings shows the path of healthy relationship management. They teach us to consider the whole world as one family. Vedas and puranas are full of teachings of altruistic behaviour with others. Thus, Vedas teaches us about the value of moral in our life. They creates value by reducing chaos in the society. Moreover, these Indian teachings give message of being humble to others and perform selfless services.
Following tools are helpful in relationship management:
Adjustment
Positive mental attitude
Negative emotions management
Refinement of emotions
Emotional intelligence & its development
Human values grows and develops with social interaction. Both personal and professional life needs adequate adjustments, proper mental attitude, management and refinement of negative emotions at various situations. Purpose of life couldn’t be achieved lonely. Instead, one needs continuous social support for achieving one’s purpose of life. Thus, development of emotional intelligence helps in relationship management.
Communication skill management
Communication essentially means the transfer of ideas, feelings, plans, messages or information from one person to another.16 Communication is involved in everyday activities. At home or at workplace, all our activities revolve around oral or written communication. Also, the non-verbal communication which, includes body language (gestures, facial expressions, posture, hands and legs movement, etc.) and the paralinguistic features (voice, pitch, voice modulation, volume, etc.) plays indispensable role. Kinesics, Proxemics, Chronemics, Artefacts, Haptics influences our communication and thus, there is a requirement of managing communication skills.
Communication skill management teaches an individual to express oneself in adequate manner according to the demand of the situation and nature of the receivers (listeners). Communication skill management teaches us to include human values like love, compassion, sympathy, empathy, gratitude, etc. in our communication.
A very famous text called “Thirukkural” written by Thiruvalluvar in Tamil states the following:
“Iṉiya uḷavāka iṉṉāta kūṟal kāṇi iruppakkam kavarntaṟṟu!!”
This means that a person should never use a bad or a filthy language to address another person, whomsoever he/she might be. This message was also given by Lord Ram in Ramayana. In ‘Kishkindha Kand’, praising Hanuman, Lord Ram gave teachings of communication skill to his brother Lakshman. He said that the language that we use should be pleasing for the audience to listen to just like Hanuman. People should not feel irritated or bored in listening to our talk.17
Following tools of communication skill helps in its management:
Presentation
Written communication
Meeting and meeting communication,
Telephone communication
Creative and spiritual communication
Different Communication functions like– Speaking, Visualizing, listening, Auditing builds strong management skill for communication through various tools like presentation, written communication, meeting or telephonic communication. Adding spiritual components like politeness, pleasing words makes the communication stronger and healthier. Moreover, spiritual communication brings out the very nature of human beings - to be humane.
Character building and personality grooming
Character is the light which shines when the sun is down, and all other lights are out. Character is that impregnable foundation on which stands all indestructible institutions of life. Education is hardly edifying without provision for character. Character transmission is the essential mission of education.18 Thus, personality development could be incomplete without character building.
In Bhagwat Geeta 17/14,15,16: 12
deva-dwija-guru-prājña- pūjanaṁ śhaucham ārjavam
brahmacharyam ahinsā cha śhārīraṁ tapa uchyate .B.G.17/14
Lord Krishna here teaches to practice the three austerities of body, speech and mind. He says that worship of gods, of the twice born, of teachers, and the wise, cleanliness, uprightness, continence and non-violence are the austerities of the body.
anudvega-karaṁ vākyaṁ satyaṁ priya-hitaṁ cha yat
svādhyāyābhyasanaṁ chaiva vāṅ-mayaṁ tapa uchyate .B.G.17/15
For the austerity of the speech, Lord Krishna says that words should not give offence and should be truthful, pleasant, and beneficial for others.12
manaḥ-prasādaḥ saumyatvaṁ maunam ātma-vinigrah
aḥbhāva-sanśhuddhir ity etat tapo mānasam uchyate .B.G.17/16.
And lastly, for the austerity of the mind, He says that serenity of mind, gentleness, silence, self-control and purity of heart are the characteristics.12
Therefore, following tools lay foundation to build strong character:
Simple living & high thinking
Hard work & devotion to duty
Sense control (indriya samyam, swadhyaya and satsang)
Humble behaviour & co-operativeness
Goodwill, tolerance & positive mental attitude
Spirituality is the foundation of Character Building and Personality Grooming. Moral values and purpose of life is reflected well under strong foundations of character. Simple living with higher thinking attitude, one’s devotion to the duty, self-control and humble behaviour makes one capable of having strong will power. Strong will power helps to achieve anything one desires.
Self-excellence
Blaming, complaining and irresponsibility are general barriers which obstruct or prevent one from excellence. One needs to be holistically healthy for excelling the self. Holistic Health supports reaching higher levels of wellness as well as preventing illness. People enjoy the vitality and well-being that results from their positive lifestyle changes, and are motivated to continue this process throughout their lives.
Samadosha, samagnischa, Samadhatumalkriyah |
Prasannatmendriyamanah, Swastha iti abhidhiyate ||
In Sushrut Samhita, (Sutrasthan, Ch. 15, Shloka 10), according to the ancient Ayurvedist Sushruta, holistic health leads to excellence in all parameters like; anatomical, physiological, mental and spiritual well-being.19 Therefore, practice and use of following tools are helpful for self-excellence:
Physical wellbeing
Intellectual strength
Emotional maturity
Inner health & spiritual insight
Life of integrity
Purity of thought and action sow the seeds of self-excellence. Self-awareness, self-confidence and devotion to duty make an individual holistic from all dimensions – physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual. Equanimity leads to the true purpose of life and maintains the ethical conduct of the individual.
Faculty developmental programs
Faculty development programs aims at the professional development of faculty members of institutions of any education. It has been long believed that the most important resource that any institution of higher education has is its faculty members who teach knowledge and skills to students.20 But there is also a need of such faculty development programs which are oriented in the development of moral values along with the skills and the knowledge. In the present context, our education system faces numerous problems. Among them, a few are – materialistic outlook, selfish individualism, concern for personal gain, absence of duty consciousness and mentality of adopting double standard for self-benefits. So, there is a strong need of integrating human values to be added in today’s education programs. Adopting noble principles and high standards for faculties would be of great significance as this could change the ambience of the entire institution with following.
Creative excellence
Our schools teach us how to develop problem solving expertise in narrow domains. Also, knowledge is carved up and served to students as separate subjects and this undoubtedly affects cognitive development and in particular the approach we take to creative problem solving.21 Therefore, for higher institutions, there is a need to understand the students and help developing them their excellence all together holistically. There is a need of creative excellence. Dr. E. Paul Torrance described creativity as "a process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty; searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies: testing and retesting these hypotheses and possibly modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results."17 Thus, development of excellence with creativity is the new way for the holistic growth of the students. Therefore, there is a requirement for teachers to excel in creativity.
Following tools would benefit in the process of creative excellence:
Will power & imagination
Creativity in action and thought
Dimensions of your personality
Creative use of stress & emotions
Creativity and spirituality
Creative excellence helps to solve the problem of narrowly focused manner of deploying our creative thinking skills . It helps us with proper tools of will power and imagination along with all other tools, to develop holistic creativity.22 In the Vedas it is said, “ This universe, in truth, in the beginning was nothing at all. There was no heaven, no earth, no atmosphere. This being, that was solely non-being, conceived a wish: ‘May I be’.” This is the how the will originates.
Creative excellence is a crucial step toward a richer understanding of creativity and a more sustainable world. The challenge for our generation may be not to come up with creative ideas, nor to find creative solutions to problems, but to find creative ideas and solutions that do not generate other problems, that take the broader context-including its interrelated social, cultural, and ecological components-into account.23
Team building and leadership
There were humans long before there was history. From the beginning, human beings live in communities. Ants and bees can also work together in huge numbers. Also, wolves and chimpanzees live in packs and communities respectively. But they are not the dominant beings on this planet. Ants and bees work together in a very rigid manner and only with close relatives. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of other individuals that they know intimately. But in case of human beings, as Yual Novah Harari says, “Sapiens (human beings) can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.”24
Since our individual existence is not natural, we need to learn to live in communities with proper ethical conducts fulfilling purpose of our life. Thus, strong team building capacity and ideal leadership quality becomes necessary for faculties to develop and grow. Yajur Veda25 has authoritatively insisted on certain qualities for a King or the head of state (i.e. leader) and thus it has prescribed the leadership qualities. A King is the leader of an organisation bigger in scale and scope. Hence, the qualities of a King can rightly be taken as the qualities26 of a leader in today’s context.
Following are the tools which help to grow the qualities of a leader and build a strong team:
When a teacher or faculty learns self-leadership skills, he/she also becomes a good leader. Guidance of those teachers, thus, build a good class of students. In a good leadership, one requires good strategic thinking. The strategy should meet every positive aspect of work and prepare for adverse consequences. Unbiased decision making skills becomes the strength of the leader resulting their students into a disciplined class. The students obeys the rules and moral conduct.
Spiritual excellence
If we look at the two streams of knowledge, Science and Spirituality, both appear to be contradicting and nullifying each other’s principles. But both of them are aimed at finding the ultimate truth. Actually both are interrelated and interdependent as the famous scientist, Einstein says, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Thus, spirituality must be scientific and vice versa.
Spirituality is the most evolved and comprehensive science of psychological, sociological and moral development, and ultimate progress. It brightens the intellect together with inculcation of sensitivity towards fellow beings and towards the grace of nature.27 Spirituality is the science of consciousness, involving mind, body and spirit relationship. Generally, the gross body is only considered to be of importance or taken care of. But there are existence of subtle and causal bodies as well. Unification of these three bodies -physical body, subtle body and causal body moulds and develops our life and enable us to achieve higher and true purpose of one’s life.
The spiritual tools which helps to grow are as follows:
Spiritual view of life & spiritual life style
Abstemiousness, morality, self-study, good accompaniment (Sanyam, Sadachar, Swadhyaya and Satsanga)
Self-awareness/invocation of divinity within, self-refinement/self-restrain, selfless service/service above self (Upasana, Sadhana & Aradhana)
Power of concentration, meditation & prayer
Yogic practices – shatkarma, asana, pranayama, mudra, bandh, etc.
Knowing spiritual view of life and adopting spiritual lifestyle gives broader perspective to analyse this world. This enables teachers or faculties to teach their students not only through words but with their actions as well. Spiritual excellence develops pious environment of teaching between students and teachers. These tools help to develop high Spiritual Quotient28 (SQ) which include an ability to think out of the box, humility, and an access to energies that come from something beyond the ego, beyond just me and my day-to-day concerns. SQ is the ultimate intelligence of the visionary leader. It was the intelligence that guided men and women like Churchill, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa.29
Conclusion
The relation and interaction of teacher & student (guru - shishya) has always been of great significance since ancient times in India. This Curriculum for students and Faculty Developmental Programs in the education system based on Ancient Indian Teachings, will produce well-groomed highly cultured and civilized generation. It will help in Designing Life pattern and will play important part in building life. Relations amongst Teachers and Students will be on an ideal level as it was during ancient times. The curriculum will help to develop behavioural science. This will improve the behaviour of both students and teachers inside the classroom and outside class or the institution. Moreover, the moral values will bring better relations between parents and their children. Holistic development will not restrict the student to only studies. It will develop interest in participating in extracurricular activities. Thus, a generation will be created who is morally responsible and duty-bound. Thus, infusion of scientific spirituality into life style of this generation will transform and develop the nation in multiple dimensions.