Popo had just returned from the university after reading for his mathematics degree. Those were the days when someone with a university education was rare. People in the locality were indeed proud of him and his parents: they could tell others they had at long last a graduate living close to them. In turn, Popo with an air of self- importance, took his father?s bicycle for a ride around the area to see how the residents would welcome their little hero.

Aunt Marthe, in conversation with her next-door neighbour Titli on the roadside was quite shocked at seeing highly ?educated ?Popo going straight past without saying hello, nor even showing a sign or indication that he knew them. These two elders had never expected such a cold and distant manner from him; they were thinking Popo, thanks to his higher education, had become refined with graceful manners ? in short, a role model for the youth of their region but they were certainly disappointed.

What is education? Does it simply mean having degree(s) and diploma(s)? On top of academic qualifications, society at large looks for something more intrinsic with a good moral influence in our elite, which they seem not to have or to be increasingly losing. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, education means ? bringing up (of the young); systematic instruction; development of character or mental powers.?

One of the greatest scientists of all time, Nobel Prize winner for Physics in 1921, Dr Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is for sure to the point in his opinion regarding education. In the New York Times of October 5, 1952, he writes that it is not enough to teach man a speciality. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquires an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good.

Otherwise he ? with his specialized knowledge ? more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. The eminent scientist emphasizes that the student must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions and their sufferings to acquire a proper relationship with individual fellowmen and with the community.

Eventually, the student must learn to become a human being in flesh and blood, not just a performer, an operator on the basis of the full-time instruction received at the university. This is definitely the missing dimension in today?s education.

Until the teaching of values ? human, moral, spiritual, social etc - is made compulsory in the form of an examinable subject right from primary level, no society can have a solid foundation on which to stand ? a society devoid of shameless corruption and crime of all sorts. If such ills cannot be eliminated, they can at least be at first reduced ? we can then look forward to a better society. Before it is too late, it is time that the stakeholders, after so much dilly-dallying, seriously consider a radical rethink about the teaching of values in our schools.

Kaviraj SOHUR</B>