Society in the 21st century is called 'knowledge society, as knowledge is becoming the primary factor of production instead of labour and capital. The focus is on developing knowledge structures, knowledge workers and knowledge deployment. This utilisation of knowledge is believed to create national prosperity and to enable India to transform into a 'developed powerful nation.
In this context one is reminded of Swami Vivekananda's words: "Excess knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils." Indeed, sharpening the intellect should be accompanied by the sublimation of feelings and motives. For a humane and all round development, knowledge society should be firmly rooted in a spiritual ideal and guided by moral values.
Our information-orientated education should evolve into a personality-building activity. Swami Vivekananda repeatedly emphasised:
"Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life- building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library."
Recognising the importance of such man-making education, the position paper 2006 of the national Curriculum Framework, 2005, rightly says, "Being a good human being must be deemed an integral, not optional, attribute of an educated person. Overloading the brains of students, while starving their emotions, sensibilities, and sensitivities, fail to do justice to the goals of whole-person education."
Thus, educating students in values is now widely recognised as crucial to the well-being of our future.
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