Introduction to Values Education: and Values Education in a Secular Democracy By Brian Hill From Values Education in Australian Schools, ACER, Melbourne, Chapters 1 and 9 Everyone knows what they want from education - until they are asked to spell it out. Then it becomes apparent that many people simply have a 'warm fuzzy' feeling about education. The situation in Australia is not dissimilar to that reported by Brookover (1955, p. 45) concerning his own country. 'Americans', he said, 'have great faith in formal education . . . What it is good for is not always clear, but Americans approve of education'. Australians may not go as far in endorsing formal education as the average American, but what faith they have is also, for the most part, at the level of the gut rather than the head. When people's support for education is insecurely grounded at the level of ideas, it can easily turn fickle. Thus, in recent days, as economic realities have weakened the confident connection in people's minds between getting more education and getting better jobs, many voices have been raised in criticism of schooling. The critics have a point. There are undoubtedly weaknesses in the practices of education. But there are also many strengths. The way opinion is swinging suggests that schooling, and public school systems in particular, are being made the scapegoats for problems which actually lie elsewhere; for example, in the job obsolescence caused by many modern technologies, the besieged state of management-labour relations in Australia, and the lopsidedness of Australia's import-export balance. Improvements in schooling practices will not, of themselves, heal the running sores in the economy, let alone the social problems of our country. Yet it is reasonable to expect the schools to make some kind of contribution to their solution. What is it, then, that schools can and ought to do? Those people whose opinions of schooling are founded on something more substantial than gut reactions have a wide variety of expectations. One theme which constantly recurs is a concern for 'the basics', by which is meant a range of basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. This was much referred to in the nineteenth century, as mass education spread amongst the lower classes who were obliged to compete fiercely for jobs in the factories of that time. The theme has re-surfaced in recent years as people discontented with educational innovations in the face of rising unemployment have alleged that 'standards' are falling alarmingly. We shall see in Chapter 7 that this is, in fact, alarmist talk which skirts more serious social problems and ignores the historical evidence of mass uplift through the universalising of educational opportunity. The 'back to basics' critics have something in common with another group of commentators: those who insist that the school's main job is to teach 'the facts' and keep opinions out of the curriculum. People in this camp are of two kinds, though they also share some common ground. The first kind is the person who considers that true social advance depends on discovering the truth and putting aside claims which have not been verified, or are possibly unverifiable because they have more to do with values than facts. This sentiment, as we shall see in Chapter 7, was very strong in nineteenth century Australia, when efforts were being made to establish state school systems which would be free of the controversies which were being pursued in the community at large, between religious groups, and between these groups and secularist or anti-religious factions. The remedy, according to people holding this opinion, was to be as objective and value neutral as possible, confining the curriculum to what is confidently known and proven. We shall have cause later to criticise this view for its naivete and unfortunate effects. A more refined view of this kind, however, is the one which emphasises the academic disciplines, and regards the school as responsible, in the main, for introducing students to recognised subject areas such as chemistry, mathematics and history. Not only does this view appeal to bureaucrats because it seems to have the virtue of steering a neutral path between areas of real life controversy, but it also implies a progressive curriculum, building up to tertiary level study, which is stable enough to be precisely tested and graded. The net result of this approach, however, has been to put more value on subject matter than on the persons being subjected to it. And this is a value in itself. Because it has been unfashionable to talk about values in education, or at least to do anything explicit about them, unexamined values which tend to dehumanise students have been a hidden curriculum in our schools. As we shall see, schooling is not a neutral process because, for a start, it represents something which adult society values. If it did not value education, then adult society would not be so ready to intervene in the on-going lives of children to the intrusive extent that it does by sending them to school. Having set out on the path of intervention, adult society then develops a curriculum which inevitably exercises a powerful influence on students. Apart from anything else they might learn, students get the message that, in the things which it includes and excludes, the curriculum mirrors the priorities which the community sets on things such as personal worth, job preparation, 'the basics', 'the disciplines', the rights of minorities, and so on. Values education goes on, therefore, even when we are not consciously planning for it. But when its effect is not acknowledged or controlled, the result is often that the wrong values for life are propagated by default. In schools where the emphasis is on learning subjects to gain good marks in order to beat others into higher education and better jobs, students are encouraged to develop a very self-centred and consumer-oriented value system. Values education is a poor cousin of other core areas in the curriculum for another reason. The openness of value debates, in which clinching proof of a position is often hard to pin down, easily leads to the view that such studies are 'soft' and 'vague'. The perceived contrast is with such subjects as mathematics and science, where the 'evidence' is precise and tangible, and it appears that truth claims are capable of being neatly resolved. This view is breaking down as social responsibility finds its way, with difficulty, into scientific studies, and it is increasingly recognised that scientific method is saturated with human hunches and personal preferences. Nevertheless, values education remains a vague and woolly notion. This state of affairs is reflected in the nickname given by students at my children's high school to social studies- they call it 'social slops'. This is a sad fate for a subject intended to be an integrating and value-clarifying approach to learning. The present book is about values education. In it, 1 have attempted to clarify what values education is and how it should be undertaken. Values are involved in all we do, but we shall be particularly concerned here with values which represent individuals' attempts to make sense of the whole of life and society, and to value their neighbours at something approaching their true worth. As we have already noted, these are not the only areas relevant to values in the curriculum, but their centrality justifies basing our case on the problems they raise, in the expectation that it will then be easier to extend the argument to other relevant areas. Special attention is given, therefore, to such issues as personal development, moral education, religious studies and multicultural education. Before we take up such topics, however, it is important to try to pin down in this introductory chapter some meanings for the terms we will be constantly using. The first of these is 'values' itself. Values When people speak of 'values', they are usually referring to those beliefs held by individuals to which they attach special priority or worth, and by which they tend to order their lives. A value is therefore more than a belief; but it is also more than a feeling. It has three elements, each sometimes referred to simply as a 'value', which is confusing. The three elements are:
3 Because one's most deeply held beliefs dispose one to act in certain ways, there is a volitional element, which leads us to refer to such beliefs as 'dispositions' or 'commitments'. We tend to make choices which are consistent with our value systems, that is, to live by the beliefs and values to which we attach highest priority. For example, many people put a high value on social justice. The cognitive content of this value is a concept of social justice, together with beliefs about what it means in practical terms and how it may be achieved. It is possible, however, to believe these things in a merely intellectual way, on a par with our belief that Napoleon was a French dictator. Such beliefs have little effect on the on-going behaviour of the individual. Our beliefs about social justice begin to function as values, however, when they move us, say, to strong pity for the victims of some social injustice we have seen depicted on our television screens. This experience adds an affective dimension to our beliefs. We begin not only to believe certain things about the idea of social justice, but to believe in its desirability. Finally, if these feelings go deep enough to create in us tendencies to act, for example to defend in discussion the idea of justice for the oppressed, or to act politically on their behalf, then it is possible to deduce the presence of a long term disposition or personal commitment. It is important to distinguish this last element-the volitional or motivational element in valuing-from the cognitive and affective elements because (a) it does not follow that teaching about value x will lead automatically to commitment to value x by the learner- this is the great chasm in moral education between knowing and doing; and (b) white it is legitimate to require students in a formal classroom situation to develop capacities of knowing and feeling, it is an invasion of their private space to demand conformity or agreement to value x as the price of a favourable formal assessment of their learning. Which values? We hold beliefs about many things, and regard some of our beliefs as more serious and fundamental than others. We are also inclined to relate our beliefs and values to each other and develop a 'value system' which represents our personal response to the world. This may also be referred to as our 'world view', 'religion' or 'life stance'. It is natural for human beings to try to link their experiences in a personal perspective or story which helps to confirm their individual identities. Conversely, a sensed loss of meaning can make people as sick as any victim of physical accident or deformity. Some of the experiences on which we set value, such as preferences for healthy food or holidays at the beach, have a fairly minor belief content and are easily set aside if we find it expedient to do so. Few people are ready to die for 'matters of taste'. Conversely, some of our beliefs relate to facts in the external world which do not particularly stir our emotions, such as the distance between Augusta and Cape York, or the specific density of iron. It is not usual for people to attach high priority for living to beliefs of this kind. For this reason facts are sometimes contrasted with value judgements on the ground that facts are descriptions of what is the state of affairs in the real world, whereas value judgements are opinions or rulings about the values we ought to attach to certain ideas, and to certain entities in the real world, especially other people. This distinction between facts and values has its uses, but it can be misleading. Even beliefs about matters of fact have a value dimension, however small. Thus, a fact is not remembered or recorded unless it is thought to have some value in relation to on-going 'human interests'. Again, these same interests will influence our choice of terms to describe that fact. Here is an additional reason for saying that no subject in the curriculum is free from the activity of valuing. Some of the areas of belief to which we attach great importance, and which lie at the heart of each person's value system, are: • Beliefs concerning the aesthetic quality of personal experience, from which derive our aesthetic values; • Beliefs about those areas of knowledge which contribute most directly, in a instrumental/technological sense, to our health and physical survival; • Moral beliefs about the way we ought to act towards other living beings; • Religious beliefs about the meaning of human existence in relation to the cosmos; • Political beliefs about the way human groups should be organised. When people talk about 'values education', they are usually talking about moral and religious beliefs and values, but this restricts our attention to certain specific bodies of subject matter at the risk of obscuring not only the other areas identified above but also the inevitable value-ladenness of any curriculum. The very acts of deciding to include certain subjects in the timetable, and of allocating to each a certain number of periods, enshrine. value priorities. Similarly, the styles of administration and teaching adopted in a school reflect inherent value judgements about the worth of human beings and how they ought to be treated, and how high a priority the staff of that school attach to the human right and capacity to make choices. A simple question about how many subjects are compulsory, and how many elective, can tell us something about that corporate value judgement. Everyone in a school is in the values education business. Nevertheless, because our education systems, private and public, are, on the whole, committed to subject-based teaching, the most obvious indicators of where our priorities lie are the range of subjects a school offers and the timetabling priorities they are given. Experience has shown that a failure to provide in the timetable for times when aesthetic, instrumental technological, moral, religious and political values can be examined in their own right, as contributors to the individual's personal value system, commonly has two unfortunate results.
Given the degree to which the subject-centred model of curriculum development is dominant in our education systems, perhaps we should be grateful for the tendency, in reports tabled in several States, to identify, as essential to the balance of the curriculum, areas sometimes loosely called 'Personal and vocational awareness', 'Human relations', 'Pastoral care', or other similar indicators of a concern for the development of self-esteem and a sense of future directions. Although references to such areas are usually intended to designate an 'across-the-curriculum' emphasis, so pervasive is subject-centred thinking that they tend to be interpreted as legitimations for the creation of specifically timetabled subjects under such headings as these. What can be done about such trends? Suggestions will arise in later chapters, but the point I want to make here is that as long as subject-based syllabuses continue to be the preferred curriculum strategy, a two pronged approach is necessary. One is to maintain vigilance across the whole curriculum in order to ensure that activities which specifically assist the individual to develop into a self-confident and organised person through the study, clarification and comparison of values and value systems are not neglected. The second is to provide courses which make very direct contributions to the fulfillment of these aims in particular areas such as physical and health education, vocational preparation and awareness, personal relationships and domestic adjustment, social responsibility, logical thinking and ethics, and the religious quest for personal meaning. The teaching of values We have said that if the teaching of values is to represent the phenomenon of human valuing adequately, then it must take into account all three of the dimensions identified earlier -cognitive, affective, and volitional. But how should each be handled? At one extreme, there are teachers who choose to teach as fact the belief content of some value x which they happen to hold, discouraging any testing of its truth claims or any comparison with alternative viewpoints on the matter. In doing so, they are prepared to use all possible means of reinforcement, from conditioning to reward and punishment, to impress the worth or priority of value x on the student. And in their assessment of student learning, they are only willing to give good marks to those who profess to have accepted value x and whose behaviour conforms to it. At the opposite extreme, there are teachers who represent value judgements as entirely subjective, based ultimately on emotional preference. They present the belief content of value x as something merely instrumental to the feelings it engenders, thereby implying that its truth claims are irrelevant to the question of its persuasive power. And in their assessment of student learning, they exclude from formal assessment any appraisal of the student's knowledge and understanding of value systems and values discourse. Between these extremes, we may position our preferred teaching policy. We will not, however, be able to do this merely by analysing the concept of 'teaching', for both of the above descriptions count as examples of teaching, irrespective of whether we happen to think of them as examples of good or bad teaching. To obtain a better idea of what teaching strategies should be used in values education, we must next ask what counts as 'education'. Education The concept of education has received a lot of attention in the last 150 years. In previous ages, there were very few challenges to the idea that the elite should be trained to rule, and the masses to follow. Individual choice was not highly regarded. These attitudes were reflected in church schools also, where direct religious proselytisation was an undisputed objective. But democratic ideas seeded in the West by the Jewish and Christian faiths and reinforced by the Enlightment achieved political expression as a result of the social changes triggered by the industrial revolution, and the ideal of schooling for all children was implemented. Private agencies like the churches could not hope to meet the new demand for schools, and state school systems were quickly brought on-stream. Obviously, these could not be required to promote the world view of one particular denomination. Were they then to become simply factories of knowledge? Liberal reformers could not be content with such a view. It seemed to imply that state education could best solve the problem of value pluralism by opting out of values education. But this was as undesirable as it is impossible. So a concept of education developed in which emphasis was placed on helping individuals to acquire an understanding of the pluralistic society in which they lived, and to develop capacities of reasoning and feeling which would equip them to make responsible personal decisions about their lives. Some educational writers have taken this to an extreme point where everything is summed up in phrases like 'critical rational autonomy'. The development of an independent and well informed mind is certainly an indispensable element in the modern concept of education, but there is increasing recognition that the school should also encourage the adoption of values held in high regard in civilized society 2. Some people see these two aims mutually contradictory, but I will maintain that they can and should go hand in hand. An exclusive concentration on 'inculcating' values-the word means literally 'fix in the learning mind'- deprives the individual of the dignity of personal choice. Behavioral conformity is the aim rather than intelligent commitment. In modern discourse, the word 'indoctrination' has come to mean the kind of teaching which preempts the right of individuals to make their own informed choices of values by teaching strategies which play down the existence of alternative views and discourage critical evaluation. On the other hand, an exclusive concentration on developing powers of independent critical reasoning, at the expense of exposure to widely endorsed values and life stances, can lead to a highly individualistic approach which suggests that everything is up for grabs, and ultimately no loyalty is owed to anyone but oneself. The concept of education requires a balance between transmitting the culture and developing individual autonomy. What does all this tell us then, about values education? Values education in Australian schools In general, anticipating the discussions of future chapters, values education should seek, as a minimum specification: 1 To enable students (b) to enter with empathy into the perceptions and feelings of people who have been strongly committed to these traditions; (c) to develop skills of critical and appreciative values appraisal; (d) to develop and put into practice the skills of decision making and value negotiation; and 2. It should encourage them to develop a concern for the community and the care of its members The rest of this book is, in effect, an amplification of this fairly formal specification for values education. Chapter 2 considers the question of what approach to values education is most appropriate for a culture which, like Australia, professes to follow the processes of democratic life. Chapter3 addresses the topic of moral education by identifying the different meanings people attach to the term 'moral'. Chapter 3 concludes that morality does not stand on its own feet, but requires that we identify the broader ways of life which give people a sense of significance and purpose in life. So Chapter 4 addresses the thorny question of religious studies in the curriculum, asking how they contribute to values education in general. It is necessary to signal at this point that the working definition of 'religion' implied above does not confine its application to those systems of belief and value which necessarily postulate the existence of God. Another dimension of the problem is investigated in Chapter 5, namely, the question of race and ethnicity, since these factors also involve value issues, and commit us to multicultural education. With these chapters behind us, we are then in a position to make some general comments in Chapter 6 about values across the curriculum, based on the organising idea of 'Education for democracy'. This chapter makes many demands on a school, and we are obliged in Chapter 7 to ask whether the job has become too hard for the state school, especially in the light of the historic emphasis on such schools being 'value neutral'. Are we obliged to settle for alternative policies of increasing support for privatised and pluralistic modes of schooling? Chapter 8 turns this coin on its head by asking whether non-state schools, as they are understood in Australian practice, are more able to do the job we have identified, or less able. And the conclusion, in Chapter 9, seeks to strike a balance by identifying some reasonable expectations for schooling, whatever context it operates in.the line of argument I have chosen to pursue is vulnerable to two criticisms in particular, to which I need to respond at the outset. First, it necessarily requires considerable attention to moral and religious issues, and constraints of length then mininuse the attention given to other areas of value, such as the aesthetic, the technological and the area of physical activity. I can only hope that what I say in Chapter 6 about values across the curriculum offsets, to some degree, this warranted criticism. If the general parameters proposed in this study find acceptance, then there is scope for further enquiries that follow up such other important areas of valuing in more detail. Secondly, and similarly, the level of generality at which I have deemed it necessary to work precludes giving detailed attention to particular moral issues such as concern for the environment, racial and gender discrimination, and bioethics. My answer must be the same. 1f the general defense of the inculcation and examination of widely embraced values, as against the narrower policies of alleged value neutrality or impartial rationality, is endorsed, then further enquiries into the representation of such concerns in the school curriculum will have somewhere to go. Endnotes The classic exploration of this problem is Frankena (1958), who distinguishes between MEX, or the attempt to develop an understanding of morality, and MEY, the attempt to induce moral performance. The most telling example of a writer endorsing this view is Peters (1979). Richard Peters gained initial acclaim for an analysis of the concept of education which was supposed to show that it firmly implied 'cognitive transformation' and did not endorse character education beyond what was required for rational autonomy to be exercised. Peters was explicitly scornful towards those theorists who had talked about 'external' (that is external to the concept itself) aims of education. In the 1979 article, however, he concedes that critics had shown his own analysis to be value laden, and acknowledges that 'the aims of education can be regarded as aspects of the values of a society that an educator considers necessary to emphasise at a given time' (p. 465). In contrast to Peters's limp apologia for what is a serious dilution of his former research programme, John White (1982) provides a robust philosophical argument for a wide rangeof aims, going beyond those supposedly 'intrinsic' to rationality to those addressing the good of the pupil and the good of society. Australian endorsement of the incorporation of substantive values relating to what is perceived to be the common good can be illustrated by state reports of the last 15 years and the Core curriculum for Australian schools, developed by the Curriculum Development Centre (1980) under Malcolm Skilbeck's leadership.
Chapter 9: Values Education in a Secular Democracy Having set up a vocabulary for discussing 'values education', we turn now to the question of what this should mean in a country, such as Australia, which calls itself a liberal democracy. It is typical of such countries that they describe their state educational systems as 'Secular.' This is a complex notion, which will be teased out later. For the present, it is enough to say that a number of countries describe themselves in these terms. There is mounting concern in such countries about what is perceived to be a moral vacuum in the curriculum of secular education. The issue is complicated by controversies over the relation of religion to morality, and the degree of neutrality it is reasonable to expect state schools to exhibit in regard to values and belief systems. Since, as we have noted, religion and morals are the principal areas of concern in discussions of values education, though not the only ones, l propose in this chapter to develop a framework within which to address such concerns by asking two questions: (1) how should the secular school respond to religious pluralism? and (2) how should it approach moral education? Whether the two questions are interrelated is itself a matter of debate, and I will defend a position in regard to it. In the first two sections, I will attempt to clarify what is meant by (a) the secular society; and (b) value neutrality in the curriculum. The third section will spell out six logically possible relations between religion and morality. 1 will then identify and evaluate three policy options for values education which are featuring in current curriculum discussions. Conclusion: The School and Beyond The focus of this study has been on values education in Australian schools. Little has been said about other educational agencies whose contribution to values education in the life of an individual is indispensable. There was more than enough material to fill a book concentrating only on what schools were doing, and should do. It would be wrong, however, to conclude this study without touching on the wider issues, if only to signal some directions in which further enquiry is called for. I propose, therefore, to sum up the book by asking what it is reasonable to expect of schooling as an educational strategy and what are the complementary roles of other environments in the total project of values education. What is it reasonable to expect of the school? Answers vary greatly. We noted in Chapter 7 that at one extreme sit the radical critics who say 'School is Dead' (the title of a book by Reimer, 1971), while at the other, apologists such as W.F. Connell (1980) see it as the cutting edge of the liberal society. The authors I commended for their balance in assessing the school's performance were, in particular, Wardle (1974) and Huson (1979). Empirical constraints The question has both an empirical and an ethical dimension. Empirically, we have tended to believe that the school has much more power than it actually has. The consensus of much research into the formation of attitudes and values, some of it quoted in Chapters 5 and 7, is that the home - even the laissez-faire home - has more influence than the school, even into adolescence. A stable home life can give the student confidence both to learn at school and to handle value conflicts encountered in school, peer group, and the wider community. Conversely, parents who try to off-load the responsibilities of value formation or faith development wholly on to the school are likely to arouse in their children bewilderment and insecurity. If, in addition, they actually abuse or neglect their children at serious physical and emotional levels, then they bequeath to the school problems of remediation which it is -and always will be, given its institutional characteristics - ill-suited to handle. A wise school staff will neither ignore home influence nor openly disparage it. The school is a bridge between the home and the pluralistic society: a bridge to be kept open at all times for traffic both ways. The school must accept the home backgrounds of its students as given, and as having at least some positive value: starting points from which to extend the child's awareness of the larger environment. A second empirical fact about schools, which helps to explain the first, is the inherent limitation of formal instruction in the compulsory mode. Students are not passive receptacles into which all we have to do is pour knowledge, but active selves with a determination to survive. However much we sugar the pills of compulsory attendance and compulsory assessment, students know when they are under constraint, and are prompted to resist attempts to change them in some way. Taking in facts and reciting them for tests can be tedious, and can pose a threat to the self-esteem of slower or more deliberate learners. But the threat inherent in developing concepts and intellectual frameworks can be considerably greater, because one senses that the structures of one's very mind and self-concept are being modified. Finally, most threatening of all, are sensed pressures to adopt attitudes and values different from those one previously had. Many studies have shown how effectively students can barricade their private selves from the teacher's prying. In the situation of the compulsory classroom one cannot escape physically, but one can hide inwardly. If the teacher becomes insistent that one profess agreements and feelings of a certain kind, it is easy enough to pay lip service to them for the time being, but what is learnt at a deeper level is resentment towards the things our over zealous teacher stands for. In the words of Samuel Butler: 'He [sic] that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still'. I pen these comments not merely with such subjects as morality or religion in mind; they apply across the curriculum. Nor is it only bright older children who are able to develop such defence mechanisms. John Holt's How Children Fail (1965) shows convincingly how dexterous children can be in shielding their self-esteem and compensating for rebuffs in the classroom by finding affirmation in other ways such as teacher baiting and peer group approval. Where attitude change and conversion of belief occur most readily, and properly, is in voluntary settings, in which the powers and trappings of teacher authority have been laid aside. To some extent, such settings arise in what are misleadingly called 'extra-curricular activities'. The term is misleading because it gives inferior status to the kinds of activities which, in actual fact, are most likely to achieve the higher personal objectives we lay down for general education. Hence, purely as an empirical fact, compulsory instruction is a limited strategy. It can be very effective in enlarging knowledge and awareness developing mental and physical skills, and sensitising Students to the feelings and beliefs of people different from themselves. These are no mean achievements, but they need complementing through voluntary interactions. The fact that these interactions are voluntary does not mean that they are necessarily unstructured or undemanding. But participation and commitment are self-chosen, and 4hat makes all the difference. Ethical constraints So far we have been discussing only the facts of the case, but I said earlier we must also consider the ethical dimension. Even if you knew you could do X, that would not necessarily make it right to do X. When deciding what it is right to do with students, we must look to what we believe about the nature and worth of human persons. The element of compulsion in formal schooling was what obliged us in previous chapters to recognise that schooling was an interventionist strategy in which the onus was upon us, the interveners, to justify our intrusion into the life streams of children and youth. Since Mill's important essay 'On Liberty' in 1854 (Mill, 1959) we have been alerted to the dangers of being so paternalistic in our attitude to these things that we overstep the mark without realising it and trample on individual rights. Children and youth, as human beings with the potential to reason and make decisions of their own, have rights of the kind regarded with great seriousness in democratic theory. Mill, himself, as we saw in Chapter 7, was unwilling to see the government involved in running schools because of the risk of manipulation in the interests of a uniform ideology. Yet, apparently, we are quite certain that it is right and proper to require attendance at school from the ages of 6 to 15, and there are mounting social pressures to increase this span of time, legally or de facto, at either end. Whichever way debates go about the duration of compulsory education, the question will remain as to what to require of children during those years (cf. Crittenden, 1982, p. 71 f). How much of the curriculum should be 'core' and how much 'elective'? And when we are teaching a subject, what objectives is it legitimate to assess - knowledge? understanding? beliefs? feelings? attitudes? commitments? My answers in the foregoing chapters have been varied. I have argued that it is ethically both permissible and necessary to equip children with a minimum range of capacities (which they might not, of themselves, realise they needed) for survival and participation in our kind of society. But I have also argued that we should stop short of trying to pre-empt commitment to ultimate beliefs and specific personal values, either by the expression of teacher partiality in classroom control, or by formal assessment which demands conformity to such beliefs and values. The emphasis should be on capacity. Summarising Chapter 6 in slightly different words, the particular educational strategy we call 'schooling' is best adapted to: imparting basic skills of economic and social survival; developing a critical understanding of our pluralistic, industrial society at the level both of ideas and technologies; exemplifying in itself a pluralistic community seeking to achieve common purposes through negotiation; deepening sensitivity of feeling and empathy with the feelings of other people, especially those of different class, ethnicity or religion; providing opportunities for individuals to discover personal aptitudes and experience self-realisation through the expressive arts and community service. This is a substantial charter, democratic in intention, but it falls short, for reasons brought out in previous chapters, of conspiring to pre-empt the individual's right to choose for oneself a comprehensive value stance to live by. That is the essential difference, in the setting of compulsory schooling, between education and indoctrination. These comments on the ethical constraints of classroom teaching correlate quite well with the empirical limitations spoken of earlier. This tends to confirm the theory of human nature implicit in the ethical stand I have taken, because it claims that human beings have within themselves an area of self-identity and freedom which resists attack, however benevolent. The political theory of democracy works on the same assumption. A school seeking to instantiate democratic values should have a better chance of achieving its aims than one dedicated to an alternative theory such as a thorough-going elitism, behaviourism or social determinism. The reason why voluntary groups can be so important in value formation is also made clear by these remarks. Human beings resist compulsion, but they respond to persuasion because it necessarily affirms their right to be themselves and their competence to take responsibility for their own choices. Should they suspect, however, that those who are dealing with them in the voluntary situation are not interested in them personally but only in their allegiance to the group, or the party, or the church, or whatever, then their revulsion will be expressed even more strongly than the resistance some students exhibit in school. The partners in values education It is not uncommon to read comments about the partnership of various agencies in the education of the child, and to feel that they invite us to endorse 'motherhood and apple pie' without spelling out how it should occur. In Chapter 6 I tried to overcome this defect in regard to community involvement in schooling, but there is more to be said. The home The primacy of the home as an educational agency is hailed by some writers, grudgingly conceded by others, and deplored by others. Those who are least happy about the documented influence of the home -even the poor home - are either socialist theorists resenting the negation of their efforts in comprehensive schools by the cultural domination of the upper classes (e.g. Musgrove, 1966), or social workers lamenting the damage done to many children before they get to school by neglectful and abusive parents. For good or ill, the home is for most children the place where the initial foundations are laid for their self-concept and value system. It is the cradle of commitment in the sense that parental values are not so much taught as lived in. To discount it or condemn it, as some teachers are disposed to do, does not make it go away. It remains to haunt them by setting up interference patterns with the values they are trying to exemplify in the classroom. There is, therefore, no real alternative to accepting home background as a given which must be factored into one's teaching strategies. Where homes are seriously neglectful or injurious, then remedial structures must be set up to provide alternative primary care and guidance. The classroom is not capable of carrying this responsibility. Nor are staff attached to the school for welfare and counseling services ever likely to be plentiful enough, or free enough of the pressures of the formal curriculum, to meet the need. The local community must come more clearly into the picture at this point, offering networks and local government services to complement what the school is doing. Voluntary groups This is where the things we have said about voluntary groups provide the third element in values education. If the home is the cradle of commitment, and the school is the instrument for creating an awareness of the pluralistic values obtaining in the wider world, and developing skills of values analysis and interpersonal negotiation, then the voluntary group is the ideal educational environment for encouraging personal commitment. At their best, such activities enable adults and students to interact on a footing of friendship and free will where, without the power to coerce, adults can actually have more influence. It is their authenticity as individuals which persuades the young person to 'try on' the commitments being lived out before them. Compulsory instruction breeds dependants; voluntary testimony encourages independent choice and commitment. There is room, however, for a more theoretically grounded approach to youth leadership in voluntary settings, which is becoming a very exacting task in the pluralistic society. The trick will be to avoid capitulating to one of the three professional paradigms which currently supply most of those professionally employed as youth workers (see Hill, 1983). These are teaching, psychology, and social work. Each has slipped into the familiar trap of professional elitism, which is all the more inappropriate when dealing with young people seeking a self-reliant, adult self-image, viable in the democratic society. The other great strength of voluntary groups is the opportunity they provide for young people to investigate their options in the pluralistic society, in settings where the prime motivation of the organisers is not to exploit them for their material assets. Commercial entertainment outlets, in seeking to attract young people to whatever it is they are marketing, often exhibit great skill arising from shrewd market research, but they are not noted for their pastoral concern! Voluntary groups, covering a wide spectrum of interests and activities, are one of the strengths of a democratic and multicultural community. It is unfortunate that one of the biggest concerns in the youth affairs scene is the number of young people who decline to be associated with them. 'Detached youth' are a major anxiety, for themselves and others, in our sprawling conurbations. The rhetoric of youth policy turns too often to condemnation when their plight is discussed. We should be asking why they are so profoundly alienated. Homes and schools have much to answer for, but so also do those voluntary groups which have invested too heavily in images of authority and social control. The schooling paradigm, and next to it the military, are, after all, the models most familiar to an older generation. The school as a liaison point Each of the three educational settings has strengths and weaknesses. Each needs the other. And the school should be a venue in which genuine respect and co-operation is exhibited towards the other two. The factor of professional jealousy may stand in the way of this kind of acknowledgement, but this must be overcome if values education is to proceed. Thus, if teachers consider that parents need to be trained and made more aware of the issues, then they are the ones competent to offer that service. Community education, in a non-patronising spirit, is a necessary part of the brief of any school which wishes to succeed in values education. For that matter, it is also an important way of enhancing the success of teaching in the various curriculum subjects to the children. As another corollary, teachers may consider that the leadership provided in the voluntary groups in their community is inefficient and amateurish. There may be truth in this view, but they should also bear in mind that the nature of their own professional occupation, focused as it is on the transmission of the formal curriculum in the setting of the compulsory classroom, may be reducing their capacity to understand the special opportunities created by interactions in informal and voluntary settings. Ironically, it is often wise for professional teachers to leave youth leadership at the grass roots to others. Despite the wide range of relevant skills teachers have acquired, many find themselves unable to doff the authority role of the working week in order to allow young people space to exercise the freedom and responsibility which are theirs. This is not to say that the best youth leaders are the untrained. There is scope in the Australian community to give much more attention to the training of those who will administer youth services over the long term. Only about three tertiary institutions in Australia have yet taken up this challenge, though several large voluntary organisations, including some religious denominations, have been in this field much longer. The challenge, as we move into what many are now calling the 'post-industrial society', is to recreate effective structures and networks at local community level. 'Generation gaps', often artificially constructed by commercial advertisers who see value in 'targeting' their wares to particular age groups, can only be dismantled by robust action at community level. The school can be a significant contributor to this action, but only if staff see their activities in this perspective, and are prepared to identify with the communities which their schools serve. We cannot continue to allow teachers to adopt the attitude that their primary task is simply to teach subjects to those who will listen and can respond. Nor should teachers be allowed to suppose that frequent transfers to other schools are entirely their own business. This comment may not be welcomed by teachers who commute to work from suburbs which may be of quite a different character from the one in which their particular school is set, and who pine for a school nearer home. It is, however, a first requirement for values education in the school that staff take the trouble to identify with their school community and commit themselves to long term interactions. Such an attitude may appear to work against one's promotional opportunities, and indeed, systems should be working on this problem to increase opportunities for teachers to gain greater rewards within schools instead of having to move to obtain preferment. It also has the potential, however, to increase both job satisfaction and teaching effectiveness. For it is when teaching becomes a partnership among persons, rather than merely a technical transfer of expertise from a superior to an inferior, that social control becomes easier, motivation to learn picks up, and teachers make new friends amongst young and old. Under these conditions, values education has the greatest chance of succeeding. Conclusion And that, of course, is where we came in. The school is in the business of values education, unavoidably. Right now, each school and teacher is either educating or miss educating at this point. The myth of neutrality has clouded the issue for too long. Australian schools must become more than knowledge factories, and assessment more than apple-sorting, for students are more than disincarnate minds, and so are teachers. It is possible to identify procedural values upon which the life of the school may be patterned, and it is desirable to put equal value on reason and relationships. It is plausible to envisage school and community working together, and to define the functions of teachers, parents, students, and other participants in such a way that none need feel threatened and all may feel valued. It is possible to identify the values which arise in the formal and hidden curricula of the school, and to explore them to the mutual enrichment of all. All parts of the curriculum commend certain values to the student for adoption - aesthetic, technological, religious, moral, multicultural, political, economic, historical, scientific, practical, performative . .. The highest values which beckon are those which encourage teachers to work for informed autonomy and moral responsibility in their students as they develop their own abilities, interests and lifestyles. To be facilitators in this process is the dreadful and exhilarating responsibility of the professional teacher, whether in state or non-state schools. It is no less an obligation laid upon parents, youth leaders, employers, entertainers, and users of the mass media. But this book has been directed primarily to those involved in schooling, seeking especially to provide an appropriate framework of ideas for teachers wanting to move beyond the austere instructional model of a previous era into a more rounded and personalistic interpretation of their role. Endnote 1 am perturbed that even some of the more careful advocates of 'alternative' Christian schools are willing to flirt with the position that indoctrination is ok provided that it is indoctrination of the Christian view. See Blomberg, op.cit., p. 14 and Noel Weeks, In Defence of Christian Schools', Journal of Christian Education, Papers 67, July 1980, ~ 27. See my objections to indoctrination of any sort in Brian V. Hilt, 'Education for Commitment: A Logical Contradiction?' Journal of Educational Thought, vol. 15, Dec. 1981, pp. 159-170. |