By: Abdisalaan Ahmed
Somaliland sun-Value Based Education is the only means which can give to our young the right direction. There is need for Value based Education System in Somaliland.
We all discuss about high values and integrity, but it is the time for value based action. Anyone who stand in public places to speak to the audience is found to talk of high principles, or moral conduct, of spiritual and cultural heritage of our country. Good that they do it but in actuality we are coming across so many scams which smear the face of the nation black. And it is our leaders—those who were given or were invested with the charge of governing the nation have been found to be involved in these scams, are in and out of jail. What ideal are they—the leaders— presenting to countries—corning-up
generation the young minds—a very distressing a spectacle. What right
has such people to govern us , what right has they to be leaders, when
their own steps are going astray? In such a grim and graceless situation we are obliged to give a deep thought how and in what manner the nascent are and growing generation of the nation to be guided and oriented.
There is need for imparting proper values among the children. A child learns a lot from the people around him. If the social environment is not good, then it becomes very difficult for him to display ethics and values in his behaviour. We hear it all around, that children in Somaliland are going astray.
Newspapers report how a fifteen year old boy has been the leader of a gang of auto-thieves. And all these auto-thieves belong to the so- called high families. To get rich quick has been their ambition—not hard work, not sustained pursuits of high
order but just anything that can get them quick returns in the form of good money—that has led them to these nefarious ways. Ethics and values need to be imbibed among students.
Our country very much needs a value-oriented educational system. It is only at the level of the primary education that such lessons need to begin. If the impressionable mind once gets set to noble goals difficult would it is to lead him astray. It is not merely talking
about great men that the child would get oriented to values; the teacher has to play a major and a decisive role in giving this lesson by precept as well as by example. It is the intellectual, the physical, the emotional, the psychological parts of the child’s
personality which would need to be moulded and modeled.
The values inculcated among young generation would remain with them permanently. It may just be that the young boy or girl of today is better informed than what their parents had been at their age. He or she may sound smarter with new knowledge but this is due to the modern techniques to which he/she stands exposed and of which he or she has
the advantage.
T.V., internet, computer, etc. These were not available to the parents. Computers and the information received from them or the data fed by them may become outdated but values once inculcated would remain a permanent acquisition for all life. Sh Mustafa once said, “If education is identical with information, libraries are the greatest sages of the world and encyclopedias are `Rishis’.” There is something very much more than mere informationthat has to be imparted to the young mind.
1. Mother is the first teacher for her child. Value based teachings and education are the fields, the first teacher in which is the mother. It is the mother who tends to lend the first lessons and it is on her that rests the foundation-laying responsibility. What is right,
what is wrong, what is true, what is false, what is respectable and noble and what is not – it is the mother who imparts these lessons. It is the mother who taught her child remain honest. She encourages her child to always speak up the truth. She should ensure that herchildren never tell a lie. The mother should make the child learn that
she would never scold him if her child tells the truth even if the child had done some wrong. ‘Admit the wrong done and you would be a nice child’ – let the child develop this faith and he would never fall a victim to falsehood. This is how slowly and gradually, step by stepthe lessons in morality can be taught.
2.The role of schools and teachers are very important. Then, when the child enters the school at the age now of four or five, the schools and the teachers there have to give him lessons in universal brotherhood, respect for all religions, feeling of honour for our great man, a sense of pride in our national flag. Students learn moral values at school.
Along with these the child shall be given lessons in dignity of labour. No work is mean or low. Self-dependence, respect for the elders, concern for those who are handicapped or
under-privileged.
Finally our youth needs to be saved through value based education.
The author Abdisalaan Ahmed is alocally educated graduate and currently a lecturer in Sociology at the Somaliland Civil Service Institute-CSI in Hargeisa
