Abstract
The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the foundational issues centering around the question of integrating education in human values with professional engineering education: its necessity and justification. The paper looks at the efforts in ‘tuning’ the technical education system in India to the national goals in the various phases of curriculum development. The contribution of the engineering profession in national development and India’s self-sufficiency is crucially linked with the institutionalization of expertise and the role of morality and responsibility. This linkage can be created through a proper understanding of the social role of the profession—what motivates the professionals and what makes professional life meaningful. Value education facilitates the process of moral maturity and the development of a ‘holistic’ mindset. This paper deals with the need to create such a mindset, the human values associated with it and gives examples of efforts to impart such education through ‘action-oriented’ programmes introduced in some institutes of engineering in India.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrews, K. R. (1969). Towards Professionalism in Business Management. Harvard Business Review, 47, 49.
Arrow, K. J. (1973). Social Resposibility and Economic Efficiency. Public Policy, 21, 300.
Aumann, R. J., & Kurz, M. (1977). Power and Taxes. Econometrica, 45, 1137.
Bayles, M. (1988). The Professions. In C. John (Ed.), Ethical Issues in Professional Life. Callahan, New York: Oxford University Press.
Bowie, N. (1988). The Profit Seeking Paradox. In N. Dale Wright (Ed.), Ethics of Administration. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press.
Camenisch, P. (1983). Grounding Professional Ethics in a Pluralistic Society. New York: Haven.
Carson, T. (1993). Friedman’s Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility. Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 12, 3.
Davies, M. (1998). Non-conventional energy development in India: A report of studies conducted through a 1997 Fulbright grant to India, based at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and advised by Professors Rangan Banerjee (Mech. Engg.) and Amitabha Gupta (Hum. & Soc. Sci.); http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~mdavies/vitae.mht and http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~mdavies/energy/ncei.pdf.
Davis, M. (1987). The Moral Authority of a Professional Code. In J. Roland Pennock & W. John Chapman (Eds.), Authority Revisited: NOMOS XXIX. New York: New York University Press.
Davis, M. (2006). Teaching ethics across the engineering curriculum. Online Ethics Center for Engineering 6/26/2006 National Academy of Engineering; http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/8924.aspx.
Dore, R. (1983). Goodwill and the Sprit of Market Capitalism. British Journal of Sociology, 34, 459.
Dore, R. (1984). Authority and benevolence: The Confucian Recipe for Industrial Success. Oxford: The McCallum Lecture, Pembroke College.
Durkheim, E. (1975). Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Durkheim, E. (1982). Rules of Sociological Method. London: Macmillan.
Durkheim, Emile (1890–1900). Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (Cornelia Brookfield, Trans.). Westport: Greenwood Press (1957).
Emmet, D. M. (1966). Rules, Roles and Relations. London: Macmillan.
Friedman, M. (1996). The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. In J. Des Jardins & J. J. McCall (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics (3rd ed.). Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth.
Friedman, M., & Friedman, R. (1962). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Friedman, M., & Friedman, R. (1979). Freedom To Choose. New York: Avon.
Gewirth, A. (1998). Self-fuilfillment. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Gupta, A. (2002). Curriculum development in undergraduate engineering education by integrating human values: A proposal. The Journal of Technical Education, 25(2), 12–22.
Halfon, M. S. (1989). Integrity: A Philosophical Inquiry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hardwig, J. (1994). Towards an Ethics of Expertise. In D. E. Wueste (Ed.), Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Hilonga, A. (2013). Academia for society and industry: How to do it better!: A report of study on IIT Bombay and NM-AIST (Nelson Mandela Institute of Science and Technology) conducted at Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay through the C V Raman Fellowship for African Researchers; 24th July to 23rd Oct. 2013, supervised by Professors Narendra Shah, A. Arora and V. Sardeshpande.
Hughes, E. C. (1965). Professions. In K. S. Lynn (Ed.), The Professions in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hume, D. (1739/1740). A treatise of human nature: Being an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subject, London: John Noon; London: Thomas Longman, iii. i. 1.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness. Cognitive Psychology, 3, 430.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (Eds.). (1982). Judgment under Uncertainty. Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koehn, D. (1994). The Ground of Professional Ethics. London: Routledge.
Kultgen, J. (1988). Ethics and Professionalism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Martin, M. W. (2000). Meaningful Work: Rethinking Professional Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.
May, L. (1994). Conflict of Interest. In D. E. Wueste (Ed.), Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
McFall, L. (1987). Integrity. Ethics, 98, 5.
Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society. U of Chicago P: Chicago.
Midgley, M. (1995). Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. New York: New York Americal Library.
Morishima, M. (1982). Why Has Japan ‘Succeeded”?. Western Technology, Japanese Ethos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nehru, J. (1946). Important Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru. In J. S. Bright (Ed.), 2d rev (pp. 123–145). Lahore: The Indian Printing Works.
Newton, L. (1989). Ethics in America: Study Guide. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1986). The therapy of desire, The Martin Classical Lectures.
Peters, R. S. (1969). Ethics and Education. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Peters, T., & Waterman, R. H., Jr. (2003). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies (p. 1982). London: Profile Books, First published by Harper & Row.
Raphael, D. D. and Macfie A. I. (1976). Introduction. In their edited, The theory of moral sentiments, (pp. 5–11) op cit.
Reid, L. A. (1962). Chapt. III: “Values in Life and Education,” Philosophy and Education. London: Heinemann.
Schmidt, J. A. (2013). Changing Paradigm of Engineering Ethics. Original Paper, November: Science and Engineering Ethics. 2013.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sen, A. (1981). Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sen, A. (1982). Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Oxford: Blackwell and Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press.
Sen, A. (1984). Resources, Values and Development, Oxford: Blackwell and Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
Sen, A. (1985a). Commodities and Capabilities. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Sen, A. (1985). Women, technology and sexual divisions. Trade and Development, 6.
Sen, A. (1987). Economic behaviour and moral sentiments. In On Ethics and Economics (pp. 87–122). Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (1759/1976). The theory of moral sentiments. In D. D. Raphael & A. I. Macfie (Eds.) (pp. 145–167). New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (1776/1976). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, A. (1776). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, op cit. pp. 90–91.
Sukhatme, S. P. (1990). A study on the nature of work and placement of postgraduate alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Report submitted to the Department of Science and Technology.
Sukhatme, S. P. (1994). The Real Brain Drain. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Limited.
Sukhatme, S. P., & Mahadevan, I. (1998). Brain Drain and the IIT Graduate. Vol.XXIII: Economic and Political Weekly.
Sztompka, P. (1999). Trust: A Sociological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, G. (1985). Integrity. In Pride, shame, and guilt: Emotions of self-assessment, Oxford: Clarendon.
Taylor, C. (1992). The Ethics of Authenticity. Mass.: Harvard University Press.
TOI (2002) Leaders such as N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies Ltd.
Weber, M. (1904). Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner Press.
Weber, M. (1922). Economy and society: An outline of interpretative sociology. New York: Bedminster.
Wueste, D. E. (1994). Introduction. In D. E. Wueste (Ed.), Professional Ethics and Social Responsibility. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Zecha, G., & Weingartner, P. (Eds.). (1987). Conscience: An interdisciplinary view. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the reviewers of this paper for making insightful comments as well as the Editor and S.K. Saksena for their valuable observations on language and style of the paper. I am also grateful to Milind A. Sohoni, Head, CTARA and Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IITB and Narendra G. Shah, Professor, CTRA, IITB for making certain studies available to me and giving me permission to use them.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gupta, A. Foundations for Value Education in Engineering: The Indian Experience. Sci Eng Ethics 21, 479–504 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9537-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9537-9