Values
Values have major influence on a person's behaviour and attitude and
serve as broad guidelines in all situations.
Values are deeply held beliefs about what is good, right, and
appropriate. Values are deep-seated and
remain constant over time. We accumulate
our values from childhood based on teachings and observations of our parents,
teachers, religious leaders and other influential and people.
Importance of value-based Education at Primary school level.
It is of utmost importance to develop personal and social values in
our pupils because we do not live in seclusion but amongst other individuals
and as such we have to ease every relationship around us.
It should also be borne in mind that each and every individual is
different and inculcating values in our pupils will help them to understand and
accept the difference of others.
The following values will
help an individual to become a good citizenship:
º Care and Compassion
Care for self and others
º Integrity
Act in accordance with principles of moral and ethical
conduct, ensure consistency between words and deeds
º Doing Your Best
Seek to accomplish something worthy and admirable, try
hard, pursue excellence
º Respect
Treat others with consideration and regard, respect
another person’s point of view
º Fair Go
Pursue and protect the common good where all people are
treated fairly for a just society
º Responsibility
Be accountable for one’s own actions, resolve differences
in constructive, non-violent and peaceful ways, contribute to society and to
civic life, take care of the environment
º Freedom
Enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizenship free
from unnecessary interference or control, and stand up for the rights of others
º Understanding, Tolerance
and Inclusion
Be aware of others and their cultures, accept diversity
within a democratic society, being included and including others
º Honesty and
Trustworthiness
Be honest, sincere and seek the truth
In Mauritius, the structure of school is divided into three parts:
§ Pre – Primary
§ Primary
§ Secondary
The education and inculcating values in each child starts since the
child is in pre – primary school.
Challenges facing teacher for the effective implementation of value-based education at school level
Ü Bulky syllabus
The primary school syllabus is overloaded. General Purpose teachers are responsible for
teaching examinable subjects such as Mathematics, French, English and
Science/History and Geography. Many teachers
work very hard to complete their syllabus.
They hardly have time to teach values.
Ü Lack of training to teach
Values
Moreover, teachers are not trained to teach values. They have been trained to teach subjects such
as Mathematics, French, English and Science/History and Geography. As there is no teaching guide for Values
education, teachers teach in their own way and spent few minutes on it. Many teachers feel they are not adequately
trained to teach all the values topics and thus they opt not to do it.
Ü ‘Chalk and talk’ method
most popular teaching strategy.
In Mauritius, many teachers always use the black / white
board and books only. Values cannot be
taught only by using these learning strategies.
There has to be role–play, debates, cooperative learning, storytelling
etc to make the class interesting and thus the students will easily understand.
Ü Limited time allocated in
school time table
The time allocated for Values education is quite
short. The teacher cannot do many extra
activities and will use the usual learning strategies. As the syllabus is overloaded, some teachers
use the time allocated for Values education to teach the core subjects.
Ü Availability of learning
materials
Learning materials are central to effective teaching and
learning that require wide and equitable availability of learning
materials. For Values education, there
is no teacher guide. Teaching aids such
as charts, pictures, posters etc are not provided. Once again as the syllabus is bulky, the
teacher will not prepare anything as they consider it as a waste of time.
Moreover there is no pupil’s workbook. The topics are integrated in the core
subjects. Teachers lay more emphasis on
topics which will be examinable and hardly talk about values.
Due to the absence of pupil’s workbook, the students
lack interest to learn about values as most of the time they just sit down and
listen to teacher.
Most schools have only one television and cd
player. Sometimes they are not even
operational. Therefore each time a
teacher need them, he must make sure the viewing room is free. It is a problem for the whole school as each
one has to wait for the room to be free.
Thus many teachers prefer to stay in the classroom and use the same
learning strategies each time.
Ü Limited access to
photocopying facilities at school
Sometimes some teachers might prepare a worksheet for
the pupils but then he has to make copies the worksheets. But owing to the limited access or no access
at all to photocopying facilities at school, they cannot do it.
Ü Crowded classes
In most schools in Mauritius the classes are
crowded. Thus there is a lack of space
for group work and difficulties in controlling noise level when using
participatory approaches. To avoid all
this problem, the teacher prefer not to do all these activities.
Even if the teacher decides to use other learning
strategies, for example, a role–play, as the class is crowded, all pupils
cannot take part in it. And if the
teacher gives everyone the opportunity to participate in such activities,, the
time allocated for Values education will not enough.
Ü Lack of parental
cooperation.
The subject Values education is not examinable, many
parents do not give importance to it.
They teach their children only a few values.
Many parents think students will learn the values
somehow or the other and it is not their responsibility or the teacher’s
responsibility to teach it as a subject at school. Thus they also do not care if the teacher is
not doing it in class.
