Originally Published in the Illinois Music Educators Journal Fall 2020.
A Gift
We offer this article as a gift to you. What we humbly offer is an opportunity that can improve not only your class but also your personal life and well-being. We want to acknowledge your humanity in a way that many other parts of life do not. Education in Human Values has had a profound impact on our teaching, students, and personal journey and we are honored to share it with you.
What is Education in Human Values?
Education in Human Values is a universal values-based teaching program. This program was created by Indian guru and philanthropist Sathya Sai Baba. The core of this program is two-fold:
There is inherent goodness in every human being, and
Be the example of goodness you want to teach to your students.
The goal of this program, which should be the goal of all education, is character and wellbeing. Too much of our educational system is designed around performative outcomes and bookish knowledge. Institutions strive to compete with each other on statistics or measurements of perceived intelligence but rarely is such assessment and consideration given to how happy a student is or how well they will live their life.
Education in Human Values challenges us to redefine our meaning of success or even allow the students and families to define what success means for them. As we continue to talk about character, we encourage you to think on this question: Would the world be better off with more smart people, or more kind people?
We are not interested in indoctrinating American values or the values of any institution. We want to draw out the positive human characteristics that are already in the student and in us. This work seeks to draw out the Human Values in us all untainted by the capitalistic or colonial values that so often dampen the potential of morality in young students as well as young teachers.
When we boil down education to its base function, what better goal could we have than to teach how to be a good human being? I will argue that you are already unconsciously teaching human values through your good example.
What we offer you with this program is the strategy with which to teach it overtly and consistently with your heart. In this way students will be immersed in the work and can reflect on their own human values. The negative influences on our students are so ever present that so must our messages of humanity be.
Educare
There is a common criticism of the educational system which says that our current model was built for the industrial revolution. Cue the bell ringing. Our schools do often feel like factories in which students rotate on an assembly line with teachers installing knowledge into them. In this work we focus on the process of Educare, a Latin word meaning “to draw out or extract from within.”
We ask you to believe that the students in your classroom already have the values in them. They already have kindness, motivation, and excellence in them. What we are doing is drawing out those values through inspiration.
Think of a time that you were inspired. Were you inspired by an excellent musician or a master teacher? When you feel those goosebumps and start to shake it is because the goodness in you is resonating with the goodness that you see in the other. The values then come to the surface through this sympathetic vibration and in this moment, you say, “I can do that.” Those are the moments we live for as teachers.
And if we adopt the idea of Educare we invite ourselves to know that every child can do it. Every child can be a happy human being.
As Sai Baba said himself “Education is not merely accumulation of information or the acquisition of skills. It is the cleansing of the mind, the strengthening of unselfish tendencies, and the discovery of the truth, beauty, and goodness that lie dormant in every being. It is the cultivation of integrity, discipline, tolerance, compassion and love.”
What are Human Values?
Many schools have examples of values or virtues written on their walls. Beliefs that are expected to be upheld by students and teachers. Examples of these include respect, responsibility, grit, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with these values but without a guiding principle they too can be used to cause harm.
For example, grit is a wonderful characteristic for a student to have. But if teachers and schools promote the value of grit as the ultimate factor in a child’s success and a student still fails according to the standards of success of the school, this value could make the student feel like they are not good enough. Teachers and administrators may fail to recognize other factors that make learning challenging for the student. For example access to food, resources, travel time to school, the availability of culturally relevant pedagogy, and many other factors and needs the child may have.
These values on their own can be used to harm children and even other teachers because they can become an instrument of our unconscious bias.
This is why this work asks us to always interrogate our own bias and do the inner work. It also asks us to pair the values with the five universal human values of: Love, Truth, Peace, Non-Violence, and Right-Action.
Let’s take the example of grit. If Grit was paired with Truth, this grit can lead to success but we must acknowledge the truth that there are systems of oppression that affect their achievement. Students with this understanding will be less likely to internalize a lack of potential, and instead be empowered to succeed against their odds with the support of the teacher and community.
The Five Teaching Techniques
Sathya Sai Baba always said to keep it simple. This work in a sense may seem simple but we ask you to approach it with the heart of a child. Simple does not mean the work is not deeply impactful. To go along with our 5 universal human values, we have five teaching techniques: Thought of the week, Song, Story, Activity, and Silent sitting or Meditation.
The simple strategy asks you to choose one Sub-value paired with one Universal Value each week and teach that sub value through these five techniques. Let’s take the sub value of Togetherness paired with the universal value of Love. The thought of the week should be short and memorable. An example can be “always better when done together.”
The idea of repeating this at the beginning of class every day for a week would really help to internalize that message for students and before long they start repeating it to each other. You have set the tone for togetherness in your class. Many students that may crave togetherness are now emboldened to act on it because you set the tone for it. We can say be together all we want but we are only activating students on an intellectual level. If we want to activate that value in them on a deeper subconscious level, we need to keep it simple and repeat just as you would a section of a song.
When we began doing this work, we started with the thought of the week by just writing it on the board under the value and sub-value. Students noticed a new thought each week and that organically led into conversation and became a desired part of our Monday morning routine. Although we reserved the first 5 minutes of class for this exercise, the sub value of the week kept being referenced naturally by ourselves or by students while rehearsing and learning. It had become a part of the class culture.
The first five minutes of class for the remaining 4 days of the week were each dedicated to one of the other teaching techniques, but they always relate back to the sub value of the week. By the end of the week students not only understood the word togetherness in a cognitive way but they had resonated with it in a deep way that inspired ownership of the value through their actions and attitudes.
Imagine this process of one value per week for 40 weeks and the impact it had on students. It wasn’t about teaching good values to students but more like allowing the right condition for the flowers to blossom. We just made sure that the students had what they needed to grow. You could hear their joy, peace, and self confidence in the music they were making.
The Inner Relationship
It was said about Mr. Rogers that on the show he had a lot of slow space but never wasted space. Sometimes pausing to meditate with students seems like a waste of time. Our lives are regulated and rushed.
Rarely are we afforded the time to sit silently to reflect. These silent moments are the times where we can find our humanity. To give the gift of silence to a student is transformative and always appreciated.
There is no shortage of studies around the benefits of mindfulness. In the context of Education in Human Values we see silent sitting as a tool to reconnect with and repair the inner relationship. As you read the following question, I ask you to pause reading and reflect. Do you love yourself? When I ask most of my students, they don’t know what to say, some say yes, many say no, almost all say no one has ever asked them that before. This highlights a key dysfunction in our system that we prioritize skills more than how students feel or how they can learn to heal themselves.
Silent sitting is an opportunity for that. We start it as a game of let’s see who can be quiet for 30 seconds, next day 60, who is able to not think for that long? Now, who hears a voice inside when they are silent? What does that voice say? Is it a nice voice or not? What does it mean to have an inner best friend? This game is easy for children but hard for adults. Luckily through the power of music we are all young at heart. The most important relationship that we have is the relationship with ourselves.
If we can teach students to repair that relationship and how to love themselves, we can set them up for a lifelong journey towards happiness. Many will not see that as success. We must shift to letting students define what success means to them. When you are truly happy with yourself you want to share that with others. Self-love is the gift that continues to give. That gift is found in the silence.
Be The Example
For each part of your Human Values Lesson plan which includes the universal value, the sub value, and the five teaching techniques, there is one criterion above all else.
Does it inspire you?
If it inspires you it will inspire the students. The lesson plan does not teach. It is the teacher and the students together that make learning happen. Even if the lesson plan is perfect it is the messenger that counts. In order for the students to resonate with the human values in you, it is your responsibility to first practice the human values in our own life. That means writing a practice guide for yourself.
This is the critical part where we lose many teachers. For this to work you must be the example by being the example. As Lao Tzu said “A good leader guides by good example. A bad leader resorts to force and intrigue.” Your inner string must first be in tune in order for sympathetic vibration with the student to be possible.
I Like You As You Are
The pressures of this profession are many. We often feel like we are reaching against the clock and the calendar to make sure we put on a good show or that our students learn everything we intended for them. Some of you may not believe that you have 5 minutes a day to give. We encourage you by saying that this work will buy you time in the long run.
When your students feel at peace and cared for in your class, they will be more productive. What is by far more valuable is that your students will feel human. It is time we put humanity first. It is time we say to our students every day, as one of the best teachers in our country's history used to say, “You have made today an amazing day just by you being you. There is no one like you in the whole world and I like you just the way you are.”
For students to be fully human they need a daily expression of care and humanity. And what better classroom for that message to be delivered than your classroom.
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