Engg students -- Govt to save their souls

Engg students -- Govt to save their souls
NIRMALA GANAPATHY

NEW DELHI, OCT 11: Morality and science will soon be uneasy bedfellows in engineering colleges around the country.

The Government has decided to make "value education" a compulsory part of the curriculum for aspiring engineers and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi will be the centre for it.

Value education will not be limited to engineering colleges only. It will soon be a part of the curriculum at universities, schools and technical institutions in India, said Education Secretary M K Kaw.

He announced the plan at the conference of state education secretaries which was held in the city on Tuesday. Also in the pipeline is a "centre for consciousness and leadership" to be set up at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.

The coursework is likely to include the spiritual side of life, the teachings of Shankaracharya, Sai Baba and Chinmayananda. Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, Christianity will all be part of the curriculum. "Comparative religion must be part of the education. Secularism is respect for all religions. In India, secularism has meant absence of any religion but true secularism is respect and knowledge of all religion so we have respect for each other," said Kaw. "Part of the course material would be developing similarity in world religions," he added.

Value education will be divided into personal values, social values and professional values.

"Personal values like spirituality, meditation, yoga and ways to manage the self and consciousness will all be part of value education," said Kaw. He said that social values would include how they interact with people and professional values with how they interact in the workplace and work ethics. In engineering colleges the education is geared towards inculcating a sense of loyalty towards the country. "The choice of technology should be value driven. They (students) should think of poor people and underdogs of country and not of MNCs and money," he added.

At IIT, one professor who is involved in the scheme said, "We want to make education holistic. This will make them better human beings."

Students will not get their degrees unless and until they pass this extra paper. But they will not get any credits for the paper. The All India Council for Technical Education and the National Council for Education, Reasearch and Training will also be introducing value education in all their syllabus.

University Grants Commission chairman Hari Gautam had earlier said about value education: "It is a must for everybody who studies in higher education."