'Only-for-Profit' Value Education

By J. M. Dasa

Most current books on leadership have borrowed heavily from religious sources ranging from Adam to Zoroaster. While this may be perfectly acceptable, what strikes as unacceptable is that, often these borrowed snippets are stripped clean of their core values, be it spiritualism or plain vanilla morality and adapted for a manager engaged in extracting maximum profit for his organization, or ensuring a prodigious output from his workforce or exploiting an unsuspecting customer base.

Also, one cannot help but wince at the mangling that comes with the management. In one very popular leadership book, (Shiv Khera's You Can Win) the David and Goliath story (extracted from the Bible) goes like this: There was a giant who was harassing the children in the village. One day a 17-year old shepherd boy asked, "Why don't you stand up and fight the giant?" The terrified people replied, "Don't you see he is too big to hit?" But David said, "No, he is not too big to hit, he is too big to miss." The management mantra of 'different perception' is drawn from this mangled version.

In the real biblical version however, Goliath was a Philistine warrior (not some village bully), chosen to fight any one soldier from the Israelite army to decide the outcome of a battle which would otherwise be an exercise in wonton bloodshed. Besides, more than being big, Goliath was clad in body armor, which is why the most memorable part of the story is: David killed Goliath (with a slingshot) by hitting him on his forehead - the tiniest most exposed portion of his body. So how does one make sense of the 'too big to miss' bit?

David & Goliath. The body armour clad Philistine (Greek settler) against a ill -armed native, David, and that too a youth who incidentally killed Goliath by hitting him with a sling shot on the tinest exposed portion of his body - his forehead. Shiv Kera needs to brush up his history...

The point is: these repackaging, stripped clean of its core value education in the first place and given an only-for-profit color and that invariably percolates to the classrooms, is a shabby and dangerous trend. Removing the spiritual color of the original also has the unfortunate effect of removing the sheet-anchor of value education in these teachings thereby rendering it redundant. Indeed, like a rose plucked from its thorny bush, value education when separated from deep-rooted spirituality (never mind that we no longer subscribe to the latter), eventually withers and dies.

Earlier generations had the privilege of learning from the original spiritual sources that invariably laid a firm foundation of solid values upon which were built their loftier and admittedly, the not-so-much-in-demand spiritual imports. The all-purpose foundation however was worth its weight in gold for it served multifarious ordinary pursuits as well. Beginning from instilling the ethics of capitalism, and rendering harmless the fiery passion or craving that fuel capitalism, to respectable 'interest' and 'rational' pursuits, it uncomplainingly served to instilled a host of 'good' qualities such as a sense of discipline, conformity, trust etc., that are just as urgently required to pursue even outright godless endeavors.

The results of this ill advised 'de-spiritualizing' are already visible. The face of leadership has decidedly changed. Earlier, the leaders were righteous and responsible men, bent on doing good for the people at large. Today's leaders are business managers and politicians wholly occupied in profiteering, which often involves finding people's buy buttons and gleefully stepping on them. Morality has been reduced to polite behavior- to vapid 'pleases' and 'thank you', the ability to discriminate right from wrong, rewired to gauge the more profitable deal. Exploring the 'bad' within us has become fashionable and 'letting our hair down' and 'living life king size' has become the religion. 'Good' is looked upon with open derision and the ordinarily upright too dragged down to licentious depths.

This breakdown in morality has alarmed educators the world over and prompted them to explore ways and means to address this issue. And, not surprisingly these introspections have led to the reintroduction of philosophical introspection and spirituality back into the system.

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