What Values? Whose Values?

• Universal Values are beliefs that are accompanied by actions that uplift or benefit humanity.


• SNS does not prescribe specific values though we believe that there are universal values we can all agree upon. Many of these are common to all school communities, and consistent with values held by other countries and cultures. Each school community can come up with its own set of universal values such as: Sharing, Honesty, Friendliness, Co-operation, Truthfulness, Compassion, Helpfulness, Courage, Responsibility.


• In the SNS curriculum, we have indicated those virtues and values that we have identified as most relevant to the majority of contexts but a teacher, in consultation with the school members and the community, may discuss other virtues and values to adopt in addition to the suggested ones.


• The diagram below represents the content of education of a fully literate person in the 3rd millennium as defined by SNS. This framework has been adopted from the Council for Global Education’s Framework for Education as the following page describes.

SNS – The Content of Education

Virtues and Qualities

Virtues and qualities to be acquired for each of the four building blocks of education as defined by the Council for Global Education are as follows:

1   Universal Values : Nurture the character traits and universal values of respect and responsibility, honesty, kindness, openness, truthfulness, patience, courtesy, trustworthiness, courage, loyalty among others

2   Global Understanding : understanding, helpfulness, co-operation, ability to appreciate diversity

3   Excellence in All Things : to compete against oneself and not simply others, to believe in the potential of every child to become a light of this world, a potential Mahatma Gandhi or an Abraham Lincoln, and to not limit a child by our expectations.

4   Service to Humanity : to instill in every child a sense of his unique opportunities and future responsibilities, purposefulness, generosity, and compassion, so that they can view the process of learning as preparation not for a job but for a life of service through any profession or trade, to work in a spirit of service to humanity.

Attitudes

Such as a spirit of service, appreciation, optimism, reverence, loving kindness, love of beauty, sense of humor, detachment, openness, freedom from prejudice, love of diversity, positive demeanor, desire for harmony and unity, empathy, caring and compassion, humility, joyfulness, love for beauty, taking initiative, eagerness to help others, eagerness to stand for justice, friendliness, flexibility, an attitude of search for solutions, positive attitudes towards life and learning, optimism, preferring others above self or simply treating others as equals, ability to listen to other peoples views with full attention and to appreciate views different than one’s own, concern with the downtrodden, search for knowing and reflecting truth, commitment, and the like.