Today, we live in a rapidly-changing world. Students and teachers focus mainly on academic scores. In such a scenario, our value system, based on our rich heritage and accumulated across many thousands of years, has taken a back seat.
As a nation, we are well aware of our Fundamental Rights, yet the fundamental duties that we owe to our people, society and nation have escaped our attention.The Preamble and the fundamental duties enshrined in the Constitution of India encompass basic human values which, if internalized, can pave the way for the emergence of a harmonious, well-knit, well-ordered, prosperous and value-based society. There is, thus, an urgent need to prepare teachers for a national system of education where academic excellence goes along with a focus on value education.
VITAL (Value Integrated Teaching and Learning) is an initiative to help promote value-based education. It seeks to educate teachers to appreciate the Constitutional values and to disseminate this learning by integrating them in the subjects they teach. VITAL seeks to ensure that the process of teaching and learning leads not only to academic excellence but also to the all-round growth of individual students and teachers, and, thereby, the entire society.
VITAL’s methodology complies with the policy directives of national educational organisations, such as NCERT, NCTE and CBSE and also with the recommendations of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution on “Effectuation of Fundamental Duties of Citizens” that has outlined the need to integrate Constitutional values in our education system.
