Challenge of Value Education and Task of Professional Ethics in India

In India, the need for value education has become all the more important in the modern context where globalization, consumerism, religious fundamentalism etc. have gained stronger roots. The impact of mass media, particularly visual media has tremendous impact in the minds of modern youth. In this complex background, there is a craving need to impart value education in the proper perspective especially in the midst of professional students and youth so that they are not misled. The family system in India has a long tradition of imparting values from generation to generation. However, with the progress of modernity and fast changing in the role of parents, it has not been very easy for parents to impart relevant values in their children. Here comes the importance of value education in schools in a general way and naturally in professional institutes in a specific way.

The Catholic Church has always given careful consideration to the paramount importance of value education in the life of human beings and its ever-growing influence in the social progress of this age. Considering the importance of value education, in India, the Preamble to the Constitution and National Policy of Education 1986/1992 has focussed the need for inculcation of values in children.

Man is basically a moral being and he cannot simply ignore or be indifferent to the call of the good - to do good and avoid evil as far as he can (natural tendency). This moral imperative binds all his freely made plans, choices and actions, including of course professions and business enterprises. Profession and business is not just for money and material gains but for people. In the first decades of the twentieth century people began to think more about human dignity, human rights,social justice etc. So, in the human-centred and social nature profession and business makes it necessarily an ethical affair. 

Professional education is a branch specializing in the various aspects of effective profession like social service, production, distribution, publicity, marketing, human resource development, management, etc. Ethical principles required to discern and assess the rights and wrongs in all these operations. They are to be sought in the discipline of ethics. Therefore, professional ethics supposes earnest and enlightened collaboration between profession and ethics. It should be handled by persons qualified in ethics/morality and have enough expertise in the ground realities of profession. No teacher in professional ethics could provide his students with ready-made solutions for all the diverse ethical problems they might face in their professional career. But they should be equipped with the ethical vision, value-hierarchy and application skills which will stand them in good stead in their career decisions so as to protect and promote in the best way possible the good, well-being and interests of all those who are really involved in a given profession.

Further, most of the topics constituting professional education as such are very practical, result-oriented, evoking and perfecting the natural talents of the students involved. They are therefore appealing and challenging. In this context, ethics which is theoretical and rather prescriptive is not likely to be equally appealing and that makes its teaching and learning more difficult. It may also appear to some as a block to ‘smart solutions’ of easy profit making and easily solving problems, and sometimes ‘smart solutions’ expressing their skills and creativity. Here the policy of the institution in highlighting the importance of ethics in professional education and practice and the dexterity of the teacher in handling the subject dedicatedly and innovatively are important.