Recent statements by government leaders accusing their own schools of ‘values neutral’ education demonstrate clearly how out of touch they are with teaching and learning in the nation’s classrooms. ‘Values neutral’ education, if it ever had any support in schools, was a partner of the very deficient and long superseded ‘values clarification’ programs of the 1970s. Most teachers and educators now understand that it is an impossibility.
Values are different from attitudes which can change with seasons. Values have a permanence about them. A value is something precious, of great worth, something for which one is prepared to suffer, make sacrifices, even give up one’s life. Values give meaning. Like the rails that keep a train on track, they provide direction, motive and purpose. They are the non-negotiables in our society, under girding our various ‘bottom lines’.
While in the past, values education was seemingly the poor cousin in school curriculum, such is not the case today. Government and private schools have worked to enunciate clearly the specific values
they wish to teach and promote. There would be agreement between both systems about the need to teach what has been termed ‘traditional’ values:respect for the dignity of every individual; the importance of honesty and the need to search for and adhere to the truth; the value of hard work and achieving high standards; the mutuality of rights and responsibilities; the protection of human life at every point along life’s continuum; safeguarding the neediest in our community. These values have an enduring lighthouse quality about them and, as such, the term ‘traditional’ does not do them justice.
It is important then to recognise that not all values are equal. For simplicity, we can reduce them to two levels—instrumental values, those which enable us to achieve various ends or goals in life, and intrinsic values—those which are valuable in themselves in whatever conditions of life, in and out of season. Often the two are confused. A healthy economy, despite political argy-bargy, is simply an instrumental value, an important means to achieving a higher intrinsic value affecting people’s quality of life. A healthy economy will facilitate the promotion of intrinsic values in schools outlined above.
In many non-government schools, because of their particular spiritual ethos and tradition, intrinsic values will very often adopt a religious hue. Christian schools, for example, will source their values in the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus. While this will be a