No Such Thing
Here in the host country, it can be rather easy to make the mistake in thinking that what is touted as new here is also new in the West. This is because there is a Western veneer that comes with the machinery of modernization which is currently running at full-tilt. So, I will try not to speak of “value education” as something which is innovative in every place. That being said, value education is certainly being treated as a sort of new celebrity on the education scene here in the host country. At least that’s the impression that I got from a tabloid I saw today.
Value education is…defined in the article as “a way to achieve the holistic development of an individual”. Not terribly helpful is it? Then again, wouldn’t you guess that the term means teaching people a worldview? After all, isn’t that what “values” express-an individual’s view of what is important/worthy/valuable in the world as well as what is not? So, the assumption under-lying the article is that Education has failed in the past and/or is failing in the present to impart (the desired) values to its pupils, therefore a concentrated effort has to be made to remedy this neglect.
Nonesense.
Here’s a quote that I have in the signature file of my institutional e-mails:
“The notion of value-free education is a myth: every choice of teaching materials, every mode of instruction and every action by the teacher carries a set of values.” Angus M. Gunn
Since values are implicit in education, the idea that someone(s) should say that it isn’t and ought to be is delusional in its conception and redundant in its expression. It’s like saying that the sky is not high, but it should be and then enlisting a group of engineers to come up with a way of making it so.
Another presupposition of this short piece of writing is that Education and Business are leading the way towards the rectification of this situation. One life-long educationist is quoted to say, “If we can create teachers who actually understand value education and impart it to children it will bode well for the future.”
The implications here are:
A) teachers don’t understand “value education” or to be more pointed-teachers don’t understand that Education is a tool for imparting a particular worldview/set of values
B) teachers ought to be the ones educating children in terms of the values they should hold
C) a good future is dependent upon teachers imparting values to their pupils.
Have you gotten around to asking yourself which values should be promoted by teachers? (Don’t forget; there is no such thing as a value-free education, therefore the real question is “Which values are being promoted?”) A general manager for a regional company “and a distinguished Toastmaster” (I’ll spare you the obvious joke), says
“…we should also be creating people who empathise and relate to others…”.
Okay. I’ll imagine that no one opposes promoting empathy and move on to the rest of his statement.
“We can lay the foundation for it in school and college.”
Too late! Perhaps we can argue that school-agers are still in process, but college is far too late to do anything foundational regarding individual values…short of tearing out the foundation and starting over which is commonly referred to by psychologists as “brainwashing”!
Now that we’ve heard from Education and Business, where are the parents? Remember them? The article affirms that they have a part to fulfill in value education. Take a look at the list provided by a parent training consultant:
“Educators, parents, institutions, corporates, media, business, government and policy makers have a role to play in integrating values into the education system.”
Personally, I don’t think it’s an accident that parents are mentioned after educators. Rather I think it’s an unconscious indicator of a tacit belief: Education (and its associates) is the proper arbiter of the worldview of a society and its members. This is in itself a value and it is one that I personally do not hold and have no intention of passing on to my children or my students.
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