Confusion over department of study on Value education course

Updated on: Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A compulsory course to be taught in the first year of the four-year undergraduate programme has mystified teachers. Called "integrating mind, body and heart", the subject is college-equivalent of the value-education course that CBSE has introduced in schools, only with a much greater dose of "Gandhian concepts".

"The course is essentially about Gandhian thought," says C S Dubey, part of the 61-member task-force that devised the structure for the four-year programme, "The idea is to instill notions of ethics, values and discipline using Gandhian principles." There will be one paper in each semester of the first year. Teaching of this course could operate as "a kind of counselling", says Dubey. "Integrating mind, body and heart" had been a topic even at the 2012 Academic Congress.

Apart from the full contents of the curriculum, what is not clear is which department will teach it. Letters from DU administration, asking colleges to prepare plans for work-load for teachers, were sent on April 16. "We are all confused. We don't know what the courses contain or how to divide the work," says one. St. Stephen's College principal, Valson Thampu, "wholeheartedly welcomes the belated retrieval of a lost but shaping goal of education" — value education — but makes his comments "without knowing the contents of the course".

According to Dubey, the committee handling the foundation courses is taking care of this one too. While Thampu feels the course will do the student community good, he is worried that "even the rudimentary resources" necessary to teach it are not in place.

Confusion over department of study on Value education course

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