KVE301/KVE401 Universal Human Values and Professional Ethics
Chapter 1: Understanding Value Education
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Appendix
Content of Value Education
The scope of value education includes all dimensions (thoughts, behaviour, work and realization) and all levels (individual, family, society and nature – existence).
Accordingly, the content of value education will be to understand myself, my aspirations, my happiness; understand the goal of human life comprehensively, understand the other entities in nature, the innate inter-connectedness, the co-existence in the nature- existence and finally the role of human being in this nature/existence entirely. Hence, it has to encompass understanding of harmony at various levels and finally, learning to live in accordance with this understanding by being vigilant to one’s thoughts, behaviour and work.
Process of Value Education
The process for value education has to be that of self-exploration and not of giving sermons of telling do’s and don’ts. Whatever is found as truth or reality may be stated as a proposal and everyone is to be encouraged to verify it on his/ her own right. Various aspects of reality facilitating the understanding of human values will be presented as proposals. We need to verify these proposals for ourselves and examine our living in this light.
In other words, the process of value education adopted here is that of self-exploration which includes two things: verification at the level of natural acceptance and experiential validation in living.
Conclusion
Value education is required to correctly identify our basic aspirations, understand the values that enable us to fulfill our basic aspirations, ensure the complementarity of values and skills, and properly evaluate our beliefs. It also facilitates the development of appropriate technology and its right utilization for human welfare.
Technology and Value Education
Technology has neither its own brains nor heart. It can create or destruct as the person wills. However, the human who creates technology has both brains and heart and that is where value education is needed to create future technocrats by making them fully aware of both the constructive and destructive aspects of technology. If technology can produce life-saving drugs, it can also produce nerve gas that may be used for the mass destruction of life.
It is not the fault of technology but the technocrats who misuse the technology for producing destructive tools.
If technology is a tool in the hands of technocrats the human values implanted in their minds guide them into using this tool for bringing happiness to humankind. The need of value education for technical students is, thus, more than justified in order to produce an upcoming generation of technocrats.
If humankind is enjoying the immense benefits of advanced technology, it is also facing its woes in the form of pollution, global warming, and dwindling ecology because of the colossal absence of human values in the so-called advancement. Only technocrats who are well-grounded in human values can reroute the path of technological advancement for the better.
