The purpose of value education is best served by focussing on

Concept. Value education is the planned effort to help a learner internalise the qualities that make conduct humane — truthfulness, compassion, justice, tolerance and respect for life — so that right action springs from inner conviction rather than from outside pressure. What defines it is the object it cultivates: values held to belong to human beings as human beings. It is therefore stated in universal terms, and is not defined by the customs of any one society, the rules of any one group, or the precepts of any one creed.

Applying it here. The stem asks which focus best serves that purpose, so the test is which of the four offered focuses matches the aim itself rather than being only one particular vehicle for it. Concern for human values is the focus that is co-extensive with the aim: the purpose of value education is itself stated in terms of human values, so directing attention to those values pursues the purpose directly and holds in every setting a learner will meet.

Contrasting the alternatives.

• Cultural practices prevailing in the society — these differ from one society to another and change over time, so a focus on them makes the values taught relative to a single social setting.

• Norms of conduct laid down by a social group — these are maintained by the group's approval, expectation and sanction, so a focus on them tends to produce outward conformity rather than the internalised conviction value education aims at.

• Religious and moral practices and instructions — these can be a powerful vehicle, but each tradition's precepts are its own, so anchoring value education to them narrows it and weakens it as common ground in a plural classroom.

• Concern for human values — universal in scope and independent of any single society, group or creed, so it covers what each of the other three focuses can deliver only in part.

Cross-check. The same conclusion follows from policy. The National Policy on Education (1986) asks that, in a culturally plural society, education foster universal and eternal values oriented towards the unity and integration of the people, and that value education help eliminate obscurantism, religious fanaticism, violence, superstition and fatalism — a universal human-values framing rather than a cultural, group-normative or denominational one. Hence the purpose of value education is best served by focussing on concern for human values.