Value Education Today - Explorations in Social Ethics

Although values are implicitly communicated through all the academic disciplines, they are explicitly discussed only in such courses as moral education, social ethics and other similar ones. Specific values relating to right/wrong, good/bad situations come into focus in the latter courses in a way they do not in the former. The term value education is favoured, in our pluralistic context, by educationists and academicians, for, it could be distinguished from its close cousin, religious studies. However, religious studies could also promote the values upheld by value education. Social ethics, a kind of value education, discusses the ethical issues pertaining to the various social institutions. Evidently, this discipline rests upon the infrastructure of sociology and hence presupposes some basic knowledge of sociology. In other words, every student of social ethics is expected to acquaint himself, if he has not yet, first of all, with the basic facts about the society he proposes to examine. However, the stress is on ethics: on the ability to use such criteria as right/wrong, and good/bad. It is hoped that a course in social ethics will train the student in the systematic application of these criteria. Such academic exercise should, however, be preceded by attempts at sensitisation to issues and followed by persuasion to participate in social processes and do the needful. The present volume results from a collective exploration into the various terrains of our society, national and global. When all the trails left behind by the explorers are put together, we get a map of our modem society. This map may not be a very detailed one but, certainly, highlights some of the major 'areas' of our concern. In this on-going corporate search, everybody who is concerned about India tomorrow or the world tomorrow, must participate in one way or the other. Although the book is mainly meant for the undergraduates, the search is not. While all the contributors envisage the world or India of tomorrow as the common destination, the approaches they take are varied. In spite of their ideological differences, the reader is likely to find that they are unanimously agreed on the need for commitment to values. Opposed viewpoints on issues, which are quite legitimate in an academic context, should not discourage the reader from clarifying his own vision but provoke him into deeper perception and sustained deliberation of that vision and, most importantly, dedicated action which will translate that vision into 'reality'. However, it may be stated that the views expressed by the contributors (other than the editors) are not necessarily shared either by the editors or the publisher. The book falls into several sections such as Education, family, Economy, Polity, Religion, Communication, Medicine and Social Order.