Article Type: Research Article Article Citation: Pradipaditya Sing. (2020). THE STUDY OF VALUES REFLECTED IN
SECONDARY LEVEL ENGLISH SYLLABUS OF W.B.B.S.E. International Journal of
Research -GRANTHAALAYAH, 8(12), 141-148. https://doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v8.i12.2020.2696 Received Date: 05 December 2020
Accepted Date: 31 December 2020 Keywords: Value Value Education Ultramodern Life Principle Nonfiction Traditionally in Indian education system values and value education is an integral part which is lacking among the today’s young generations. The objectives of this study are to find out how the English syllabus is helping the students inculcating values, to identify the types of values incorporated in English syllabus of W.B.B.S.E. For this study qualitative method has been undertaken and content analysis has been done. The major findings of this study are that prose lessons are mostly able to develop values among the students than nonfiction and poetry; Nonfiction, though it is little in number of lessons, has high efficiency in the development of values, the English syllabus of W.B.B.S.E is able to develop social values, moral values and national values.
1. INTRODUCTIONHuman
beings started dwelling all together since the time immemorial when they were
in jungle. They learned that loneliness is preying by others and togetherness
is feeling happy forever. When they began to live together automatically, they
started to follow certain norms and rules which are approved by the others.
These norms are called, in present days, values. It is very hard to define what
value is but it is very easy to feel. If it is defined, it may be a life
principle or philosophy of life which varies man to man, society to society,
state to state but universally acceptable for the wellbeing of the human being
and society. Nowadays we
are living in an ultramodern society where our every stapes is followed by the
determination of science and technology; where technology is more trustworthy
than a human being. It means one does depend to other and most horribly one
does not care about others. This makes the downfall of the values which
connects to the society, in broader sense, to the universe. In earlier days
this moral value departed from the family and people from the surroundings but
now it is in vain. The children are forced to join the rat race competition to
achieve material achievement and pleasure. They are also morally degraded. The value
education becomes a matter of discussion in present days to get rid of social
degradation. In this respect value education is must incorporated is the school
curriculum. It is very necessary for the secondary students because they are in
adolescence period which very difficult period in the life. This is the most
horrible stage of life when the children suffer from depression, indecision and
distract from the right way. They sometimes involve in unsocial activities.
That's why secondary stage education is the right time which influence the
pupil to be a good citizen. It becomes very necessary to incorporate value
education in secondary syllabus especially in English language study where
various stories help to develop both language competency and knowledge of
various values. English is the global language and one must have to know English to communicate with others in the outside of the country. So, every education system has adopted to teach English language as a subject which is taught in the schools in India as a 1st language or 2nd language. Again, it is very easy to deliver value education with various types of value related stories, essays, poems etc. Now the
time has come to think over it to maintain the values in the society. Education
itself depends on certain values but in modern age the society is degrading and
departed from values. That’s why social unrest occurs in the society. To
maintain this English is very helpful and if the feeling of value has to grow
among the students the English is very important subject and it can take an
effective part to develop it. In this respect how far, the present syllabus is
appropriate to achieve this goal needs to be verified. 2. REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATUREGupta, R. R. (1987) made a study which aimed at identifying the
values adhered to by pupil-teachers. The sample included 90 rural and 40 urban
pupil-teachers of Amethi. Hindi version of Alport-Vernon-Lindzey
study of Value Scale was used. Mean and S.D. were obtained. Rural student-teachers
were higher in religious values than the urban student teachers. However, urban
student-teachers were higher in political and economic values than rural
student-teachers. The aesthetic theoretical and religious values of male
student-teachers were higher than of female student- teachers. Bhatia & Dash (2011) did a comparative study of value
based higher education system of six countries - UK, China, Australia, Brazil,
and South Africa with India. The objectives of this study are to find the factors
to innovate value based higher education system, to give suggestions for
improving higher education system. The data is collected from the secondary
sources of research reports, journals and research papers. Talts, L., Kukk, A., Tuisk,
M. & Kaljuve, M. (2012) made a study to explore primary
school teachers' beliefs about learning and teaching and to analyse their
realisation proceeding from the principles of child-centred pedagogy. The aim
was this study was to clarify which teaching related values primary school
teachers most appreciated. The teachers' opinions were collected from the 357
primary school teachers from various regions of Estonia. The finding of this
study was that the primary school teachers depended on learning and teaching
related values prescribed by National Curriculum and applies principles of
child- centred pedagogy. Patil (2013) conducted a study on role of value-based
education in society to review different options of scholars and implementation
in present education system and role of the value education in the society. The
study was done on the basis of secondary data. This study showed how value
education can develop physical, mental, intellectual, emotional and spiritual
values to enrich the life of an individual. Cubukcu (2013)
conducted a study to explore the values which pre-service english
teachers have. In depth interview and survey method was adopted for this study.
Bernardo, Clemente, & Liem
(2014) tried to
describe the values of Filipino adolescents: a comparison with pan-cultural
norms. The researchers wanted to describe the value of Filipino adolescents and
to find out how pan-cultural comparisons can complement emic approaches to
studying values. Data was collected from 752 adolescents with the Portrait
Values Questionnaire and a confirmatory factor analysis was done. The result of
the study reveals that Filipino adolescents are subsequently similar to the
pan-cultural student norms and they gave higher ranking for hedonism and
stimulation and lower ranking for achievement. Paula & George (2014) made a
study focusing on the role of cultural values and how it helps to promote
chastity. A survey and in-depth interview were done to collect data from the
female adolescents and their families. In this study quantitative and
qualitative research method is done to find out the successive result. The
result of this study was that the media does not play any effective role to
encourage adolescents to remain chaste and the role of family in maintaining
moral sanctity cannot be over emphasised as the family is the primary agent of
socialization. Mello, Jing, Armumugam
& Noh (2015)
made an observation and semi-structured interview to investigate the effect of narrating
moral stories using storyboard on students in two primary schools taking 57
children aged 7. The study resulted that the use of the use of storyboard for
moral stories is an effective tool for primary schools and it also proved that
the children tried to internalise the values demonstrated by the characters of
the moral stories. This value-based story is very helpful to arouse self-esteem.
Finlay, Wray-Lake, warren & Maggs (2015) endeavoured to study whether adolescent future values in six denominations
(i.e., family responsibility, full-time job, personal responsibility, autonomy,
civic responsibility, and hedonistic privilege) predicated adult social roles,
civic behaviours, alcohol use. The data was collected from ages 16 and 34 and
included 11,545 individuals. Descriptive statistics was made to find out the
result of the study. The result suggests that the special attention should be
paid to how adolescents are thinking about their futures due to the associated
links with long-term social and health behaviours. Vaičekauskienė (2015) made
a study to highlight the conative expression of moral values in modern
teenagers of early adolescents. The objectives of this study were to discuss
the authenticity, responsibility and dignity, as the core of moral values
education in early adolescents; to highlight the characteristics of empirical
expression of authenticity, responsibility and dignity towards others in early
adolescents; Compare the attitudes of 5 - 6th graders, their parents and
teachers towards the moral behaviour of pupils. The theoretical, empirical
& structural method is used for this study. The result of this study was
that the early adolescents are self-centrical and they asses their moral
behaviour more strictly than the behaviour of their peers. Marks, Christian & Graive
(2015) conducted a
mixed method study to find out the relationships exist between measures of
students’ values literacy and students’ values internalisation and measures of
gender, school size and years in the school and the correlation exists between
measures of students’ values literacy and students’ values internalisation. The
study resulted that Year Seven students
had a varied knowledge and understanding of the Nine Core Values for Australian
Schooling that appeared independent of background variables. The participants
generally had sound levels of internalisation of values, but that the levels of
internalisation among girls exceeded that among boys. Lastly there is no
relationship between the knowledge of values and the internalisation of values. Chowdhury (2016) examined how rapid science and technological
advancements and globalization are affecting to the complexities in social life
and underpinning the importance of morals, values and ethics. A comparative
study has been made between the philosophical and theoretical basis of modern
Western moral education and the universal Islamic moral values and education.
It suggests a range of teaching, learning and pedagogical techniques to foster
morals, values and ethics in students' mind. Abrar's (2016) attitude was to portray ethical values in
three selected English stories i.e. “The Rabbit and the Turtle, The Fox and the
Goat, and the Monkey and the Crocodile” and to correlate with the values of
real life and Islamic views. Qualitative research design and descriptive
analysis had been adopted for this study. The study revealed that each story
has moral lesion in its narrative. Garg, Shivranjan
& Sharma (2017)
had made a study to review various opinions about values given by various
scholars and their importance in the field of education and their need and role
in value-based education in the society. The study was done with the secondary
data collected from the different books and web sources. The researcher
concluded that value education is necessary in every institution to cultivate
the feeling of success on the basis of values. Bhakta & Dutta (2017) had made a qualitative study to
find out the importance of moral values, the causes & consequences of moral
degradation and the remedies to reduce the moral degradation among Indian
youths. This study concludes that the value is very important in present days
and the cause of value degradation is due to excessive use of scientific and
technical interventions. The remedy of this grave problem is value education. Shobana & Kanakarathinam (2017) had attempted to analyse the need
and awareness of the value education for students by the perception of teachers
in Pollachi region. The objectives of this study were to find the factors
influenced as ethical values among teachers, to know the perception of
faculties for the need of ethic in education curriculum, to analyse the values
that transform the character of the students, to know the values that influence
the balanced life in future. The data is collected from randomly selected
different departments of colleges in Pollachi region by using five-point likert scale. With this study it found that the teachers
are ethically aware and they also depart ethical awareness to the students. Gul(2017) studied the concept and importance of value
education and explained the role of teachers to promote values. Qualitative
analysis had been made with the secondary sources of books, magazines,
journals, newspapers and websites. The researcher concludes that only an ideal
teacher whose life itself is a beacon light of values can lead a society in the
right direction. For the sustainable human development as well as for the
social growth, there is a need of value-based education, spiritual education,
ethical education, as well as need-based education. Lakshmi & Paul (2018) made a study on value education in
educational institutions and the role of teachers in promoting the concept. The
objectives of this study were to understand the need, aim and objectives of the
value education, to study about the Evolution of the ‘Value Education’ Concept
in India, to explore some of the value education policies followed around the
world and to define the role of Teachers in Value Education and suggest some
improvements in the existing Value Education programme. The study was conducted
on the basis of secondary data. Fu, Lv,
Yang, Yu & Wang (2018) had studied a sample of 434 Chinese adolescents to find out how the
special cultural value and the adolescent social behaviour would influence each
other over time. It is a longitudinal study. After this study the researchers
found that the earlier prosocial behaviour toward powerful people was
positively correlated to subsequent power distance value, but not vice versa. 3. RATIONAL FOR THE STUDYIt has been found that the researchers had made
various studies on value education in various perspective but the values in
secondary English syllabus has been remained untouched. One had studied on
various English stories but they are not strongly related to the school
curriculum. Only the four short stories have been studied. So if the secondary
level English class is to be studied, it will be a new beneficial work for the
syllabus justification. 4. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDYObjective
1 - To find out how
the English syllabus is helping the students inculcating values. Objective
2 - To identify the
types of values incorporated in English syllabus of W.B.B.S.E. 5. RESEARCH QUESTIONSObjective
1- 1)
How
does poetry help to develop values among the students? 2)
How
does prose help to develop values among the students? 3)
How
does non-fiction help to develop values among students? Objective
2- 4)
iv)
Which type of values does the poetry develop? 5)
v)
Which type of values does the prose develop? 6)
vi)
Which type of values does the non-fiction develop? 6. METHODOLOGYIn this study certain methodologies had been
adopted. The qualitative method had been applied for this study. The critical
analysis had been done to find out the elements of values in English text books
of class IX and X of W.B.B.S.E. 6.1. SOURCE
OF DATA
The primary data had been collected from the
text books of class IX and X and the secondary data had been gathered from the
various reports of councils and commissions, books, articles, websites. 7.
DELIMITATIONS
This study has been conducted only on the basis
of the English textbooks of secondary level of Bengali medium schools of West
Bengal Board of Secondary Education which is taught as a second language. 8. OBJECTIVE WISE FINDINGSThe English textbooks of class-IX and X for
Bengali medium school of W.B.B.S.E. have 8 poetry (4-IX, 4-X), 9 prose (6-IX,
3-X) and 4 nonfiction (2-IX, 1-X) having the ability to develop values in
various rate. Objective 1- To find out how the English syllabus is
helping the students inculcating values. Answer to Research Questions: 1)
How
does poetry help to develop values among the students? 2)
How
does prose help to develop values among the students? 3) How does non-fiction help to develop values among students? Table: 1 Potentiality of Poetry, Prose and
Nonfiction for the development of Values
Figure 1:
Percentage of Lessons of Poetry, Prose and Nonfiction Responsible for the
Development of Values Figure 2: Percentage
of Lessons of Textbooks Responsible for Development of Values From table
no. 1 it is found that 77.8% of the prose lessons are able to develop values
out of all prose in the secondary syllabus of textbooks. On the other hand,
37.5% of poetry and 66.7% of nonfiction can develop values. Though number of
nonfictional lessons in the textbooks is very small in number, it is better
than poetry. So, it is
clear that majority of the prose lessons are able to develop values in respect
to other lessons. With the content analysis it is found that the proses are
taken from various long stories which are presented in abridged version. Both
the textbook of class IX and X are able to develop values. Sixty percent of
texts are able to develop different values. Table: 2 Overall lessons, Able to Develop
Values
Figure 3:
Percentage of Lessons of Poetry, Prose and Nonfiction Able to Develop Values From the table no 2 it is proved that majority
of prose lessons are able to develop values. Among the all lessons which can
develop values, 58.3% prose lessons can able to develop values. With this it is
clear that poetry has fewer competencies in the perspective of value education.
Nonfiction is also able to develop values but it is very little in number
included in the texts. Objective 2- To identify the types of values incorporated in English syllabus of W.B.B.S.E. Answer to
Research Questions: 1)
Which
type of values does the poetry develop? 2)
Which
type of values does the prose develop? 3) vi) Which type of values does the non-fiction develop? Table: 3 Types of Values Developed by Poetry, Prose and Nonfiction
From the table no 3 It is very clear that poetry, prose and nonfiction, all these genres, mainly in secondary syllabus, can develop social and moral values. The last two genres can develop national values. But no genre can develop spiritual and religious values. Actually, all types of genre are able to develop values. It depends on the choice of the curriculum developers who will choose the Lessons. 9. ANALYSIS OF THE MAJOR FINDINGTo find out the efficacy of secondary English
syllabus of W.B.B.S.E. in Bengali medium the qualitative method had been
adopted and content analysis had been done. The result of this study has come
that the English syllabus is able to develop social, moral and national values
but it is unable to develop spiritual values and religious values. The syllabus
contains various prose texts, poems, nonfiction dealing with different topics.
With this study it is proved that the prose texts and the nonfictional texts
play major role for the development of values. This is also supported by the
opinion of the teachers who teach English as a subject. They are strongly
agreed to the development of social values, moral values and national values.
They are not agreed and not sure about the development of spiritual values and
religious values but they are highly consent about the development of
secularism. 10.
CONCLUSION
With this study it is evident that the secondary English syllabus of W.B.B.S.E has the potentially for the development of values among the adolescent students. It rates of achievement depends on many other aspects for example teachers’ teaching methods and skills, environment, family background etc. These are also the matters of research and new thing will also come out. SOURCES OF FUNDINGThis research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. CONFLICT OF INTERESTThe author have declared that no competing interests exist. ACKNOWLEDGMENTNone. REFERENCES [1] Abrar, M. (2016). Learning from
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