Values Education in our schools

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.