Frequently Asked
Questions:
Q1: What do you mean by Human Values in education?
Q2: What does the Human Values as an academic course try to achieve?
Q3: Values are relative, they may even be personal. How can Human Values
course be taught when the subject matter itself is relative?
Q4: Human Values is like counseling on how to become a “good” individual. It
is a highly desirable activity. But why is it a part of academics?
Q5: Even if human values should be part of education, how can it be called an
academic course? A course has lecture, tutorials, and well-defined material.
Q6: But an academic course should discuss alternative approaches. An academic
course should discuss philosophies, and theory of ethics or human values.
Q7: An academic course should have an evaluation mechanism. How do you
propose to do it in case of Human Values?
Q8: But what about evaluation in the Human Values course for the purpose of
grading?
Q9: A course should have regular work including home assignments. There
should also be reading material etc. Does the Human Values course have these?
Q10: Would there be a lot of variation in the HV discussion groups? Not all
faculty mentors might be able to conduct the discussion along the lines you
mention.
Q11: What has been the experience of running Human Values course at IIIT-H?
Answers:
Q1: What do you mean by Human Values in education?
A1: Education system today concentrates on providing to its students the
skills to do things (which are of economic value). In other words, it
concentrates on providing “How to do” rather than “What to do” or “Why
something should be done”. A result of this is the production of graduates
who are neither aware of their surroundings nor of their ownself, and face
life with difficulty.
The education system does not prepare students for dealing with life. It
prepares them only for profession or jobs. They have to learn by themselves
to deal with life, which includes examining ones goals, identifying and
sorting out conflicts, dealing with relationships in family and friends,
understanding society and a mutually enriching relationship with nature. This
requires ability to think critically about everyday matters of life. Education
does not address issues of commitment either.
Thus, the education system is failing to develop critical thought which leads
to clarity and commitment among its students. This situation has prevailed
for quite some time, but what has made this lacuna more glaring today is the
recent reduction in such exposure in early schooling and in family.
Education system must try to develop not just skills but also an
understanding of what should be done, and commitment to choose and do what
one considers as right.
Q2: What does the Human Values as an academic course try to achieve?
A2: The Human Values course(s) tries to achieve two goals. First to develop a
critical ability to distinguish between essence and form, or between what is
of value and what is superficial, in life.
What makes it difficult is the fact that the ability is to be developed not
for a narrow area or field of study, but for everyday situations in life. It
covers the widest possible canvas.
It should be mentioned that frequently people assume that a course on Human
Values teaches values. This assumption is not correct. The course does not
teach values but encourages students to discover what is valuable for them.
Accordingly, they should be able to discriminate between valuable and the superficial
in real situations in their life.
The second goal of the course is to draw attention to the fact that
discrimination leads to commitment. It is not sufficient to develop the
discrimination ability, it is important to act on such discrimination in a given
situation. Therefore, experiments or practicals are important. The difference
is that the laboratory is everyday life, and practicals are how you behave
and work in it. One of the foci in the course is or needs to be on
observations which are mainly on the self, the other and relationships. Such
observations and their analysis would be shared and discussed in the group
discussions. Faculty member’s role is in pointing to essential elements to
help in sorting them out from the surface elements (in pointing to the basic
principles under which incidents take place, so that different incidents can
be understood and explained). The group discussions would also provide
support to a student in performing actions commensurate to his / her
preferences born out of his/ her understanding. Hopefully, this would lead to
development of “commitment” for behaving and working based on one’s values.
Q3: Values are relative, they may even be personal. How can Human
Values course be taught when the subject matter itself is relative?
A3.Let us take an example. There might be a society in which beggars are
killed, another in which they are cared for and provided opportunity to lead
respectable life.
Q: But you have chosen a strong example. First one is clearly bad!
A: I thought you said values are relative. Are you accepting that they are
absolute (atleast sometimes or at least in this case)! To state it in terms
of Jeevan Vidya, ethnical values (or practices to be more precise) may be
relative, but human values are not. Human values are innate and universal,
that is, they are present in every human being and are the same. But this is
only a proposal, there is no insistence on you to accept it. Everyone can
verify this on the basis of his Natural Acceptance.
Coming back to the course, the goal is not to give values, they would be
discovered by the student in himself or herself. The goal is to develop their
level of consciousness, their level of self awareness which leads to
development of discrimination ability in the student. As part of such a
development, the student discovers (or re-discovers) values. For example,
even in the scenario regarding beggars, the faculty mentor need not comment
on righteousness of action no matter how obvious the answer might seem. In
the course, we follow the golden rule of avoiding speaking on do’s and
don’ts. So the faculty mentor need not say one action is wrong and the other
right. Instead, one has to help the student develop his self-awareness which
in turn results into the ability to discriminate.
Q: What would the faculty mentor do if one of the students takes a stand in
favour of the first option (killing of beggars)?
A: True to the spirit of the course, the faculty mentor would neither say yes
or no, nor argue with the student that he or she is wrong. The mentor would
explore issues in the setting, unravel them, and allow the student to connect
to his inner feelings, and allow him to explore.
Q4: Human Values is like counseling on how to become a “good”
individual. It is a highly desirable activity. But why is it a part of
academics?
A4: Goal of education is to develop not just skills (or questions of how) but
also ability to decide on questions of what and why. The latter questions are
extremely important, and they have been left out of modern education system -
not just in India but throughout the world. As a result, we find that
students are ill-prepared to think about and face such questions in
real-life. Such a lacuna is increasingly being noticed in education
throughout
the world. In fact, this lacuna is said to be the reason behind increasing
violence in family and society, and exploitation of nature.
There is also a difference between counseling and a Human Values course.
Counseling is usually done when there is a problem being faced by a student
and he seeks help. Counselor suggests a course of action to the student, in
other words, gives do’s and don’ts in the situation. Human Values course, on
the other hand, is very different. It is not in response to a specific
problem being faced by a student. Its subject matter is general, namely, life
itself. The desired outcome is that the student develops ability to deal with
different life situations -and thereby leads satisfying and happy life in
accordance with his values (or human values).
Q5: Even if human values should be part of education, how can it be called an
academic course? A course has lectures, tutorials, and well-defined material.
A5: Human Values course has two parts. One, the students go through a week
long Jeevan Vidya workshop for 8 hours every day, which can be broken up into
5 hours of so called “lectures” and 3 hours of tutorials a day. The lectures
have definite material - with well defined topics and concepts. The
presentation, however, is in the form of a dialogue, and content is in the
form of proposals. There is no insistence that the proposals be accepted. On
the contrary, insistence is on not to accept the proposals, until verified by
oneself.
Lectures/dialogue cover new material, whereas the tutorials clarify issues already
covered, and take up exercises.
The other part of the course is that there are weekly discussions in small
groups (of size 10 or 20 students) with an assigned faculty mentor. This is
more of a group discussion format. It is akin to having a “guide” in group
discussion model.
The weekly group discussions take up sharing of experiences of students
(practicals), and connecting them with lecture material. These go on for 2
semesters or the entire first year.
Q6: But an academic course should discuss alternative approaches.
A6: As mentioned earlier, the goal is to develop discrimination ability and
commitment. Jeevan Vidya is an extremely good vehicle for these goals. It
does not refer to God, to scriptures, to religions, or any such thing. It
says that one should be able to decide oneself using sahaj svikriti or
natural acceptance within oneself. If there are alternative methods (other
than Jeevan Vidya) which can be effective, one can experiment and try them.
Q: An academic course should discuss philosophies, and theory of ethics or
human values.
A: To address the view that academics only deals with “high theory”, let us
consider the example of computer science. There is a well developed theory of
algorithms and computability. There is also a body of knowledge on software
engineering and program verification. However, the first course in computing
is not on any of the above, it is onprogramming. In the first course, the
student learns how to think procedurally and write programs. Even though
there are many alternative programming languages, only one of them is picked.
In fact, while teaching that programming language, comparisons with other
languages are avoided so that the student does not get confused. The second
course on data structure is similar. While teaching the course, a teacher may
refer to concepts which would be covered in future courses, but little else.
A student majoring in Computer Science does full courses later on Algorithms,
Theory of computation, Principles of Programming Languages, (Program
Verification) and Software Engineering. Thus, the first course exposes and
explores, even develops a practical skill.
Teaching of Human Values course may follow a similar line. The first course
would draw the attention of the student to his own goals, conflicts in them
(if any), to his relationships with family and friends, to roles and links in
society, and relationship with nature. Concepts and a terminology (like a
programming language) is provided. The focus is on making student connect
with these things in his/her real life. The above course can be followed by
several theoretical courses as well as Humanities Project(s).
Q7: An academic course should have an evaluation mechanism. How do you
propose to do it in case of Human Values?
A7: The real evaluation of the Human Values course(s) would be to see how the
thought, behaviour and work of students undergo changes. The HV course has
been running at IIIT Hyderabad for the past 3 years. Many changes are visible
among students in their collective actions ranging from cultural festival to
ragging. Let us taken as an example Felicity, the student cultural festival.
It used to be about glamour and show off, the content was low on quality, and
participation was limited. There is a discernible change in a positive
direction. Similarly, situation regarding ragging has undergone a major
transformation – we are perhaps reaching zero ragging. As yet another
example, the farewell (FSIS) session with outgoing B. Tech 4th year students
was a pleasant surprise. Students had positive feelings towards the Institute
and faculty. Even when they differed with some policies like attendance
(which they expressed quite vocally), it came out very clearly that they
harboured no ill-feelings. There was no sense of opposition – instead they
talked with a sense of ownership towards the Institute.
As yet another example, running of yuktahar mess is a case in point. The mess
is run entirely by the students, and provides simple but nutritious food with
little oil or spices. The relationship with staff is excellent. The mess was
started with some 20 students eating in it, with the expectation that the
number will never exceed 50. Now the mess, routinely, runs with 200 members,
and there is a demand for another one like it in the other hostel.
A study has also been commissioned by a social scientist into changes in
attitudes of students due to Jeevan Vidya and Human Values course. Surveys
have been done over past 2 years. Their analysis is awaited.
Q8: But what about the evaluation in the Human Values course for the
purpose of grading?
A8: As you know, there is only pass-fail grade in the HV course. I as a
faculty mentor know the level of discrimination ability and commitment of
every student in my discussion group, but the pass grade is given based on
effort. If a student has attended the Jeevan Vidya workshop, attended the
discussion group sessions and participated in them, then he gets a pass
grade.
In principle, it is also possible to give an open book exam in which the
students have to critically analyze a given scenario, and present their
views. They could be judged based on depth and breadth of their analysis.
(The commitment of a student is not easy to judge through an exam.)
The above would be not very different from an exam in a literature course, in
which there is an open book exam (even a take home exam) to write a critical
review of a story or a novel. There is no unique correct answer. Yet the
teacher is able to judge the quality of work and give marks. In the Human
Values course, a similar evaluation can be done, and here only a pass-fail
grade is to be given.
Q9: A course should have regular work including home assignments.
There should also be reading material etc. Does the Human Values course have
these?
A9: The Human Values course at IIIT Hyderabad does give home assignments to
students in asking them to watch themselves, and observe how they interact
with their friends. For example, when do they get angry, how well do they
utilize physical resources, etc.? They are expected to share their
observations in the class. However, not everyone does it to the same degree.
It should also be mentioned that the students study today when they perceive
that a course or subject is very important from the point of view of job, or
because of grade point average. Human Values course does not qualify in the
student's mind on either of these two counts. On the other hand, there is a
lot of work pressure from other courses. As a result, students give it a
lower priority, and do not take their home assignments in HV that seriously.
The home assignments on the self are not easy to do either. It is not
something you sit down to do!
However, it is possible to give more structured (and less difficult) home
assignments. For example, one can give readings on which students can be
asked to write a critical summary. These can be discussed in class, where
some students may be asked to present or lead the discussion. Parts of movies
may also be shown, on which discussions can be organized.
Q10: Would there be a lot of variation in the Human Values discussion
groups? Not all faculty mentors might be able to conduct the discussion along
the lines you mention.
A10: This is a new course, different from all others. It would take sometime
to develop it. Even when a new course in engineering is designed, there is a
lack of teachers and suitable material. The first time the course is taught,
it is taught experimentally. That is how the teachers get trained, and
textbooks get written.
By running the course for 3 years at IIIT-H a fair amount of material has
been developed. It can be further refined and made available to the faculty
mentors and students.
It has also been observed that regular meetings of faculty mentors to prepare
for each class are extremely helpful to the faculty mentors in conducting
discussions.
Q11: What has been the experience of running the Human Values course
at IIIT-H?
A11: My personal experience has been that the course is evolving in a
positive way. In the first year, my group discussion with scenarios ran quite
well in the first semester. My student group was quite forthcoming. However,
as this was a completely new area for me, it was difficult at times to sort
out the issues. When some students argued why show-off is important, it was
difficult to draw attention to the essential aspects of the situation. As the
semester progressed, I started getting a hang of it. But in the second
semester, somehow the group ran out of steam.
In the second year, group discussions went on fine. In the second semester
that year, the discussions ran a little better as we were able to focus on
the self and sharing of experiences.
The third year has run quite well for me and both semesters have been
satisfying. The second semester has allowed us to focus on sharing of experience,
and it came out during course feedback that the students appreciated this
aspect quite clearly.
It should also be mentioned that the first year it was conducted, there were
many prejudices among senior undergraduates students because of which they
made fun of the 1st year students regarding the course. The environment has
undergone such a major change now that the 4th year students (who teased the
then 1st year students, and who themselves have not gone through the Human
Values course and Jeevan Vidya shivir), even they talk positively about the
course. All the three batches who have gone through the courses are affected.
Many students have been sensitized to a degree that they have become much
more aware of their surroundings and this is reflecting in their behaviour
and work slowly but sweepingly.
Rajeev Sangal
IIIT Hyderabad
sangal@iiit.ac.in
