QQC AN ETHIC OF EXCELLENCE

NAME : MOHAMMED KHIMANI Quote: CRITICAL FRIEND : SHRIDHAR JAGTAP

The notion of excellence proposed here is broad it includes academic and artistic excellence as well as excellence in character. It recognizes that schools play a major role in shaping values in children. Though society debates the question of whether schools should teach values, the process of schooling itself imbues values we have no choice about this. (pg. no. 7) Comment: I agree with Ron Berger here that school plays a major role in shaping values in children. Apart from academic achievements, a good character plays a major role to lead a successful life. Since education is one of our most precious resources, we should try to shape the character of a child through education. For that, it is important to set curriculum standards that clearly include character education. Character education enables students to come face to face with realities of life, teaches to value integrity, and promotes self-awareness, positive self-esteem, and compassion. A child becomes responsible, disciplined, and sincere. A child starts showing positive personal values. Last year when our character education teacher had organized the grandparents day as a part of character education, the behaviour of all children was surprising. All of them were disciplined, showed high respect and almost everyone was in tears. Being an educator, as a facilitator, we should first bring some ethics in our behaviour, communication, approach if we want to make character education as part of our curriculum because students look at us as role models and imitate, and copy our behaviour knowingly or unknowingly.

Questions: How will I be able to integrate character education with my subject? What methodologies should I adopt for that? Will I able to achieve my goal in given frame of curriculum set-up?

Quote: To build a new culture, a new ethic, you need to begin somewhere. You need a focal point a vision to guide the direction for reform. The particular spark I try to share as a catalyst is a passion for beautiful student work and developing conditions that can make this work possible. (pg. no.8) Comment: Each school has its own culture. The culture of the school is largely affected by many factors and culture is one the most influential factor. We also have an ethic, a culture. Our vision is also clear - that is to make a child 21st century learner. In our endeavour of achieving this goal, first we need to change our approach. We will have to come out of our comfort zone. Second thing is we will have to create our own methodologies which can best be fitted in our culture affected by the community we live in. In this process, we may get failure initially, but we should not put our arms down. We should try to find out the weakness and try to eliminate that. But instead of doing this every year we implement a new methodology adopted by the worlds best schools. Nothing is wrong in that. But are these schools culture and our school culture same? Do we get the same community support as they are getting? Are not they following a particular set-up since many years? Or they also change their methodologies every-year if they fail to achieve their desired goals. Is change all the time and everywhere helpful? Ultimately, who is going to suffer? I think we have to re-think over our approach. Our vision is very noble but the path we are selecting is not correct. Moreover, instead of drastic change over the entire school set-up, the change should be implemented step-by-step. First change should begin with lower standards and then to higher standards.