“Education without Values, as useful as it is, Seems Rather to make a man a more Clever Devil.’’ | HPSC Preparation: All subjects - HPSC (Haryana) PDF Download

Education

C.S. Lewis commented in the above quote how the absence of value based education has led to moral denigration in contemporary times. It shows how ironic it is that modern education, which has become an indispensable part of a person’s life, causes more harm than good.
Education is a systematic process through which a child acquires knowledge about the world around him. Many great thinkers have treated education as the premise on which a human develops. According to Aristotle, education is creating a sound mind in a sound body, and Mahatma Gandhi, education is that which draws out the best in man- mind, spirit, and body. Swami Vivekananda defined it as a manifestation of the divine perfection already existing in man. Education uplifts one from shambles of ignorance.

Education vs. Value Education

“Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye” means salvation can be achieved with education. Education increases our awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the things around us. Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, habits and promotes an individual’s growth and the development of society. Values teach us respect, tolerance, patience, kindness, honesty, good ethical conduct that needs to be inculcated in humans since childhood. Knowledge without character is one of seven sins, as denoted by Mahatma Gandhi, and a person should be in possession of high moral character irrespective of the work he/she does or the academic distinctions he/she possesses. Education without values is lame, and values without education are blind. Providing education without ‘good’ values is like giving a man a weapon without teaching him, whether it is for their defence or for causing destruction.
The importance of education in a knowledge-based society is quintessential. In contemporary times, materialism and consumerism dominate, which is very different from ancient times when education was a spiritual experience. Hence, subjects that help in getting a job and acquiring wealth are preferred. Subjects such as Science, Economics, etc., are value-neutral, and value enriching subjects take a backseat. A person who lacks moral education who does not differentiate between right and wrong inculcates the characters of a devil.

Education in Character Building

Family, society, and education are the most predominant influence on the moral foundation of a person. Education is not about merely passing on knowledge but also about making the individual ready to face all the challenges life is going to throw at him. However, today, we find that families are breaking, society is disinterested, and a good education from the best schools and colleges may not guarantee a better moral character. Few today attend university for the purpose of gaining wisdom or nurturing their souls. Instead, their emphasis is to obtain a degree and seek good compensation irrespective of the nature of work and its impact on humanity.
Through education, people should ideally learn the needs of others and, in doing so, gain a level of empathy and understanding that actually leads to objectivity. However, this also gives them the ability to manipulate others’ emotions and use them for their own benefit. Concepts like emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman were designed to help humans understand emotions, but in the hands of the wrong people, it can become a weapon that is used to manipulate the emotions of other people and use it for their own benefits.

Education without Moral Values

A person who lacks ethical behaviour tends to use his knowledge destructively. For example, nuclear power is as much a boon as a bane. It rests with the scientists how to utilize it, for the benefit of mankind or its destruction. Valueless education is the root cause of intolerance. The modern education system lacking values has been churning out self-centred individuals who have no time for the well-being of the society they live in, educated people joining terrorist outfit terrorists like Osama Bin Laden (Civil Engineer). Mostly educated people involved in the crimes like online theft, bank frauds/scams, cyber terrorism are done by educated people who seem to have acquired education without having moral values along with it. Examples like the Enron scandal by highly educated accountants, the Harshad Mehta scam, 2008 financial crisis were caused by educated-unethical persons.

Importance of Value-based Education

Teachers are most important to disseminate values. Value-based Education promotes effective learning and continuously promotes the personal, social, moral, and economic wellbeing of an individual. Education instead of instilling a sense of humility can make a person arrogant. Getting educated in such a competitive environment leads to a natural feeling of arrogance. Thus, some of them then tend to look down upon others as inferiors. An example of this is the civil servants without any moral compass, who are involved in corruption and rent-seeking due to privileged positions of power.
Educated immoral people are much more likely to intentionally abuse any power they may have, rather than those with little or no education. Such people may deliberately use this to manipulate others in their personal relationships. While those of Anand Kumar of Super 30, who, although being exceptionally brilliant worked for the benefit of the downtrodden, who was aloof from good quality education. Thus, education, if wrongly delivered, will act against society. So, it is time we understand the importance of value-based education and strive towards it to make educated beings with a strong moral compass. However, education imparted with compassion, tolerance that promotes honesty and integrity, can also impart lasting values and morals.
Bright minds like Nandan Nilekani, who conceptualized the UIDAI, which can transform the delivery of government services transparently, cutting out red tape and systemic corruption significantly, APJ Abdul Kalam, who although worked in the domain of missile/weapons, always fostered its use for defensive purposes and for the benefit of his fellow brethren. Similarly, M S Swaminathan is quotable who learned the virtues of hard work from his father, who thought him that the word “impossible” only exists in mind and nothing is IMPOSSIBLE rather it’s always ‘I-M-POSSIBLE’ and thus resulting in Green revolution which has benefited thousands of poor farmers since the 1970s.
Albert Einstein famously said that the intellect should always be a slave to the human personality. Once we start treating intellect as the master and reduce the human personality to the status of a slave which has to obey, the repercussions would be very chaotic. The nightmarish scenario of the machines and AI (Artificial intelligence) taking over humanity, as depicted in countless movies, seems not much distant from possible reality.
The problem is not that people without values get educated, but that a morality-enhancing education is not universally accessible and demanding. Consequently, in today's knowledge-based society, not many people without the best of degrees can effectively challenge the educated devils! The devious nature of educated humans cannot be controlled until the time tested the power of Satyamev Jayate starts to begin asserted. Therefore, it can be said that education without values would make a man a cleverer devil, and to deal with it, value-based educated has to be prioritised.