11.6 Value Education & Environmental Education

Value Education & Environmental Education

Quick Answer: Unit 10 pairs these two as a single bullet because both are cross-cutting curricular concerns rather than disciplines — each is meant to permeate the whole curriculum rather than occupy one timetable slot. Value education cultivates moral, social, cultural, aesthetic, democratic and spiritual values; its Indian policy record runs from the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948–49) to the UGC's Mulya Pravah (2019, revised 2023). Environmental education is defined by the Tbilisi Declaration (1977) and was made compulsory at all levels of Indian education by Supreme Court direction in the M.C. Mehta litigation.

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PART A: VALUE EDUCATION

1. Meaning and Classification

A value is an enduring conception of what is desirable, which guides the selection of goals and the evaluation of conduct. Value education is the deliberate cultivation of such conceptions, addressed to the affective domain — attitudes, dispositions and commitments — rather than to the cognitive domain of factual knowledge alone.

By nature of worth:

• Intrinsic values — valued as ends in themselves (truth, beauty, justice, compassion).
• Instrumental values — valued as means to a further end (punctuality, diligence, efficiency).

By domain:

2. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg proposed three levels, each containing two stages, describing how moral reasoning develops. It is the most frequently examined theoretical anchor for this bullet.

[!NOTE] Kohlberg's account is assessed on the reasoning offered, not on the choice made — two people who reach opposite conclusions may reason at the same stage. Carol Gilligan's principal criticism is that the framework privileges an ethic of justice over an ethic of care and consequently underrates characteristically female moral reasoning.

3. The Indian Tradition

• Mahatma Gandhi — Nai Talim / Basic Education (Wardha Scheme, 1937): education through productive craft, in the mother tongue, self-supporting, integrating head, heart and hand. Character formation is the aim of education, not a by-product.
• Rabindranath Tagore (Santiniketan, Visva-Bharati): learning in harmony with nature, creative freedom, aesthetic sensibility and international understanding.
• Swami Vivekananda: education as "man-making and character-building assimilation of ideas"; the manifestation of perfection already in the human being.
• Sri Aurobindo — Integral Education: simultaneous development of the physical, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual dimensions of the person.
• Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: education as the instrument of social justice and emancipation, expressed in the formula "Educate, Agitate, Organise."

4. The Policy and Commission Record

5. Approaches to Delivering Value Education

1. Direct approach — a dedicated course, module or period on values and ethics.
2. Indirect / integrated approach — values embedded across existing subjects, co-curricular activity and institutional practice. Generally regarded as more effective because values are learned in context.
3. Value clarification — learners examine and articulate their own value positions rather than receiving prescribed ones.
4. Moral dilemma discussion — Kohlberg's own method, presenting conflict cases to induce reasoning at a higher stage.
5. The hidden curriculum — the values actually transmitted by institutional conduct, assessment integrity and the behaviour of teachers, which override any stated syllabus when the two conflict.

PART B: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

6. Definition and International Milestones

Environmental education develops a population that is aware of and concerned about the environment and its associated problems, and which possesses the knowledge, attitudes, motivations, commitment and skills to work individually and collectively toward solutions and the prevention of new problems.

[!WARNING] The Belgrade/Tbilisi distinction is the trap. The Tbilisi Declaration (1977) is conventionally cited with five objectives — Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Participation. The earlier Belgrade Charter (1975) additionally lists Evaluation Ability, giving six. Options that attach six objectives to Tbilisi, or that date Tbilisi to 1975, are the standard distractors.

7. Objectives of Environmental Education (Tbilisi)

1. Awareness — sensitivity to the total environment and its problems.
2. Knowledge — varied experience of and basic understanding of the environment and its associated problems.
3. Attitude — a set of values and feelings of concern, and motivation for active participation in environmental improvement and protection.
4. Skills — the abilities needed to identify and solve environmental problems.
5. Participation — opportunity to be actively involved at all levels in working toward resolution of environmental problems.

Guiding principles additionally specified at Tbilisi: environmental education should be lifelong, interdisciplinary, holistic, oriented to local through global scales, focused on current and potential future situations, and emphasise active learner participation and problem-solving.

8. The Indian Mandate

Constitutional provisions — both inserted by the 42nd Amendment, 1976:

• Article 48A (Directive Principle): "The State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wild life of the country."
• Article 51A(g) (Fundamental Duty): it shall be the duty of every citizen "to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wild life, and to have compassion for living creatures."

Judicial mandate. In the long-running M.C. Mehta v. Union of India environmental litigation, the Supreme Court held that environmental awareness could not be left to voluntary initiative. It directed the creation of public environmental awareness through cinema and broadcast media, and subsequently directed that environmental education be made compulsory at every level of education, requiring the NCERT to prepare a model syllabus and requiring universities to implement a compulsory course. This is the constitutional basis on which the UGC's compulsory core module in Environmental Studies for undergraduate programmes rests. Environmental education in India is therefore, uniquely, a judicially mandated curricular requirement rather than a merely policy-recommended one.

Delivery mechanisms:

• NCERT — environmental concerns infused across school subjects, with Environmental Studies as a distinct subject at the primary stage.
• UGC — compulsory core module in Environmental Studies for undergraduate students across disciplines.
• National Green Corps / Eco-Clubs — school-based environmental action programme.
• NSS and NCC — community environmental service.
• Centre for Environment Education (CEE), Ahmedabad — the national nodal agency supported by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

9. Why the Syllabus Pairs Them

Both are affective, cross-cutting and dispositional. Neither is completed by transmitting information: a student who can define biomagnification (Section 10.2) and still discards hazardous waste improperly has received environmental instruction but not environmental education. The pairing is deliberate — environmental education is in substance a form of value education, since it aims at commitment and conduct, and this is precisely the reasoning that Education for Sustainable Development and SDG Target 4.7 formalise by joining sustainability, human rights, gender equality, peace and global citizenship in a single learning objective.