Dasho Pema Thinley Emphasizes the Values of GNH
6-8 JANUARY 2012: In a keynote address delivered at the three-day International Conference on “Human Values in Higher Education” at IIIT Hyderabad, RUB Vice Chancellor Dasho (Dr) Pema Thinley, emphasized the importance of understanding the values of GNH.
In his address focused on ‘Educating for Gross National Happiness’ he highlighted the key elements of the initiative including the efforts to educate Bhutan’s youth at all levels of education from primary to tertiary education with the values and principles of GNH. Emphasizing the need to understand the concept of GNH, the Vice Chancellor said the concept of happiness had been the guiding principle of Bhutan’s development efforts since 1972. Guided by this philosophy, development initiatives since then have always stressed the need to integrate economic progress with environmental conservation, good governance and the preservation and promotion of the country’s rich and profound cultures and traditions.
He said that understanding the values and principles of GNH will help the younger generation to mak
e the right choices in their lives. He said that an education system that is imbued with values will make it holistic and meaningful.
Organized by IIT Kanpur, Punjab Technical University (PTU) and IIIT Hyderabad, the conference deliberated on a wide range of issues facing higher education today, including the need to envision the future society, human values, the institution of the family, the new world order, goals of education, human values and higher education, implementing human values in higher education, and future prospects.
The conference highlights included addresses by Samdhong Rinpoche, former Prime Minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Professor Mohammad Yunus, Founder of Grameen Bank and winner of Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, and Dasho Pema Thinley.
Dasho Pema Thinley said, ‘In India, particularly IIT Kanpur, IIIT Hyderabad, Punjab Technical University, and IIT Delhi, a group of Professors are working on foundation courses focused on introducing human values in technical institutes and colleges”. He said that IIT Kanpur and IIIT Hyderabad have already experimented with the humanistic orientation to learning by introducing foundation courses on human values and professional ethics in their curricula for the last two years. The feedback from the students, he said, has been very good feedback. The Vice Chancellor said that programmes like these are in line with what RUB is trying to do and achieve in the RUB colleges. He said that it would be “worthwhile for RUB to work with these institutes’.
To start off, the Vice Chancellor says that RUB will soon send relevant lecturers to attend workshops in some of these institutes. The knowledge, skills, attitudes and convictions that they develop in these workshops can then be used in developing and introducing GNH values as a non-credited course on a pilot basis in the RUB colleges. Eventually, this would help to accelerate the introduction of a course in GNH values in July 2012.
