A VALUES APPROACH

This posting is the last of a set of entries which is dedicated to the topic of values education. If you have not read the two previous postings, it would probably be best to go back and do so, although I believe this posting stands on its own. To date, I have presented two instructional models on how values can be treated in the classroom – they're procedural approaches to addressing what it means to say liberty is when a person has the right to do what he or she should do. This latter concern reflects how federalists see liberty and, as someone who is promoting a version of federalism, I foster such a view if only as an ideal. Of course, this view of liberty flies in the face of the natural rights view which states: liberty is the right to do what one wants to do as long as what one does does not hurt others or prevent others from having the same rights. In case you have missed my bias, I do believe schools have a role in promoting values. Therefore, what I am promoting is counter to the prevalent, natural rights view. For me, the question is not whether to deal in values education, but how it should be done.

For example, should a school make a list of values and say, “We're about promoting these values”? There is an approach that basically does this. There have been school districts around the country that have adopted a model proposed by Thomas Lickona.¹ In this model, some process is established locally to devise a list of values,² such as respect for fellow citizens and honesty, then garner a majority support for the list, and incorporate it into the district's curriculum so that the values on the list can be “taught” to the students of that district. This is similar to the widely advertised strategy that the First Tee program, a national golf instructional program, has instituted. I do have some concerns over this approach. I noticed that none of the formulated lists I have become aware of have such values reflecting critical thinking values or “questioning authority” values. Beyond that, the approach does not address the eventuality that any value on such a list, no matter how commendable it is, will come into conflict with another value on the list as it is applied in real life. For example, one such conflict occurs when a person has to decide whether to spend more time doing work related activities or meeting child rearing responsibilities at home. Dilemmas in life are caused by such conflicts and a curriculum that does not address value conflicts does not prepare students for such situations.

But then again, the aim of such approaches is not for students to “think” about these things, but to accept a line of thinking. Some might call that indoctrination. That has to offend true advocates of the natural rights perspective. And we see that contention in today's headlines. Over the past years, the First Lady, Michelle Obama, has been promoting healthy foods in our school lunchrooms and the elimination of unhealthy foods from vending machines installed on our school campuses. On the face of it, how can anyone protest this effort or the value upon which such an effort is based? One can ask this especially when we have had an obesity problem among the nation's youth. Yet there has been a constant drumbeat against Obama's efforts, describing them as government interfering with child rearing decisions. That is, this “governmental” initiative is trying to interfere with individuals deciding for themselves what it is they or their children will eat for lunch. Some of this is just plain political shenanigans, but the glimmer of seriousness this reaction might express reflects a bias toward natural rights values. Schools, under this predominant view, have no business trying to instill any values with the exception of the value entailed with the unencumbered rights to choose on an individual basis – no matter how immature the person is.

For a federalist, there are two tugging conceptual forces at play. As with Raths' approach to values education, a federalist would be concerned with a student being able to define what he or she believes in – a central element of having a positive self-image, a view of who one is. Only this kind of person – a person who actively is about determining his or her own values – can be an active member of a federated union, a person who knows, appreciates, and can act in fulfilling his or her responsibilities within that association. On the other hand, as with the Oliver-Shaver approach, a federalist has an overarching value orientation that is shared by the other members of the association since no association– be it a social group, a sports league, a family, a local jurisdiction, or a nation – exists without valued aims and goals. Whether that orientation follows Gunnar Myrdal's American Creed or the federalist moral code offered in this blog or any other moral orientation, it provides a guide to what value issues should be studied and what questions that study should utilize.

So, the efforts that constitute values education need to incorporate both the concerns of the Raths' model and those of Oliver and Shaver. Such an effort might be an affront to Rath's view, in that by adopting an overall value orientation, instruction would favor a certain values and limit, to some degree, the free-wheeling nature of that model. On the other hand, using Raths' language in carrying out instructional value discussions with students does not offend the aims of Oliver and Shaver. When I started this series of postings, I cited Maurice P. Hunt and Lawrence E. Metcalf's work and their conception of value assertions – I used their outline of three possible forms of value assertions to organize these postings. They go on to offer their own approach to values education. They combine both Raths' and Oliver and Shaver's ideas. Hunt and Metcalf's approach is similar to these two approaches in that it has the students (1) know the nature of the problem presented to them in class, (2) know the consequences of the problem and/or decision alternatives, (3) bring out the relevant student values, (4) justify value choices according to some philosophy of life. Their criterion for choosing value conflicts is to choose values that students already hold and devise a lesson that presents them with contradictory value assertions. This, in turn, causes dissonance and motivates the students to engage in defending the values they hold. By so doing, the student clarifies his/her values which might lead to strengthening those values or, upon reflection, changing or modifying them. In any event, the student will be more conscious of what he or she believes to be the good. I will not rehash Raths' and Oliver and Shaver's models to explain the overlap among their efforts and that of Hunt and Metcalf – you are invited to read the last two postings which will make it quite clear where the concepts of these models are similar. I will leave this concern with a call for educators to breathe new life into values education – no matter what the approach. Even with the shortcomings of the Lickona approach, it is better than what is currently more in vogue: an abandonment of dealing with value issues in the classroom.

1Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. New York, NY: Bantam Books. For a shortened version of Lickona's ideas, see http://www.Scholastic. com/teachers/article/ect-interview-thomas-lickona-phd-talks-about-character-education .

2Lickona suggests honesty, compassion, courage, kindness, self-control, cooperation, diligence or hard work .

TRUE VALUING

I am in the midst of presenting in this blog a set of postings that addresses the question: what does it mean to say a person should have the right to do what one should do? In terms of federalist thought, this question is important because it reflects how that view of governance and politics views liberty, at least as an ideal. Such a view of liberty places, for educators, guided by a federalist perspective, squarely in what is known as values education. That is, by emphasizing what one should do, as opposed to what one wants to do, this view of liberty brings to the fore an analysis of values and valuing. In that light, I have over the past two postings presented three assertion statements that model the possible ways a person can express a value. They are:

• P likes X, because X leads to state Y;
• P likes X, because X is entailed in Z; or
• P likes X, because he/she simply likes X

In the last posting, I reviewed the second of these assertion types. I want to now focus on the first assertion type.

The more utilitarian assertion type points to those value statements in which a person seeks or favors an object or action that leads to some other desired object or action. For example, I like writing this blog because by doing so, among other reasons, it stirs in me my love of teaching; it reminds me of my days in the classroom. That doesn't make you my students; I wouldn't impose that role on you, but the very act of explaining something is enjoyable to me. Therefore, the blog is a vehicle to some state of mind or emotion. I believe that an instructional model in values education that is amenable to this type of assertion is the model offered by Louis E. Raths and his collaborators.¹

Raths' model for clarifying values does not offer questions that teachers might ask of students so that they might inquire into what it is they should value – it presumes that students have already formed values or dispositions favorable to some object or action – nor as a way to solicit the students' interests in the topic of specific value issues. The emphasis, instead, is to have students consider certain ways in which they think and feel about the likes they have. That is, they learn to form true values that they can accept for themselves and that they, in turn, are happy with their related choices.

As such, Raths' approach can theoretically include the first value assertion type outlined above. By categorizing it under the first type, I am not claiming that it dismisses value assertions that are derived from philosophic, ideological, or religious beliefs. A value assertion can seek to reflect those types of concerns, but the distinction is that the value in question does not need to be entailed in one of those conceptual systems. Raths' approach allows for value choices that lead to satisfying the demands of a conceptual system instead of being, of necessity, entailed to some aspect of a conceptual system. Here is an example: if I behave in a loving way toward my neighbor, my motivation can be entailed in my religious beliefs, let us say Christian beliefs. But what if my true motivation is that I want the people I know to think of me as a Christian? This latter motivation reflects a means to an end; that is, how I am perceived. As such, the value choice, acting in a loving way, is not entailed in an overarching value, Christianity, but in a way to seek a valued goal or objective, a Christian reputation. In this way, Raths' approach is more open-ended and does not necessarily lead a person to a predetermined value orientation. In turn, as I hinted above, the approach can be more utilitarian and relativistic. Again, Raths' approach does not preclude value assertions based on an overarching value system, but it does not depend on such a commitment.

Part of the appeal of this approach to values clarification is that it can in no way be considered a method by which to indoctrinate students to a set of beliefs. His written account of his approach voices the concern that so many institutions in our society are geared toward indoctrinating others. When one reviews a lot of the communication that occurs around us, we can detect some form of “selling” something to customers, clients, patients, or, I'm afraid, students. This is not necessarily a nefarious practice – the attempt to indoctrinate might be motivated by altruistic motives. The problem is that by being influenced in this way by others, we have become more prone to avoid developing a true sense of self or a sense of commitment to self-defined principles or goals. By taking a more generic view of values, a teacher who applies Raths' model is implementing a strategy aimed at getting students to learn how to form his/her own values. How does his model do this?

First, Raths defines a value as the product of a process. In turn, that process consists of the following steps: (1) choosing freely without any form of coercion; (2) choosing from alternatives; (3) understanding available alternatives by identifying and evaluating the consequences of each; (4) cherishing and prizing the choice one makes; (5) affirming the choice; (6) acting upon the choice; and (7) repeating the action when confronted with similar situations. Taken seriously, such a process places a stringent standard on what can be considered a value. When a person goes through such a process honestly, then we can say that person has a value – or stated more descriptively, he/she has formed a value. This is more meaningful than to merely state that P likes X.

Raths views a person's ability and willingness to value in this way as an element of psychological health. Short of this, a person lacks values about those things in which he/she is concerned. So while Raths does not have much to say as to what those values should be – the “Z” factor brought out in my last posting – he does have a challenging approach about what it takes to form a value, even if that value is something most of us see as unworthy of the designation.

In terms of my concerns with liberty, this model gives us insight into what a person needs to do, both psychologically and behaviorally, in order to decide what “one should do.” To speak of some “should” without consideration of the value(s) involved is meaningless. I believe the value of Raths' approach is to give us a language by which to judge whether students are truly valuing the positions they claim on any issue. The approach can be used in developing value questions. For example, students can judge how much a politician values, a la Raths, those things he/she says he/she values. Is the politician willing to act in accordance with some proclaimed value? How about in terms of the politician's consistency in times when the choice is favorable to the politician and in those times when it is not? With this type of analysis, students can study an array of politicians and perhaps begin to make generalizations about what motivates them or, at least, motivates most of them.

So, while Raths' model does not exclusively relate to the first type of value assertions, it does accommodate them. As such, for more pragmatic discussions over value choices, this approach to values clarification can be of great utility. What remains in my treatment of values discussion in the classroom is some theoretical attempt at melding together the treatment of overarching values, as provided by the Oliver-Shaver model, and the intensity of valuing, as provided by the Raths' model. My next posting will address this topic.

1Raths, L. E., Harmin, M., and Simon, S. B. (1966). Values and teaching. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Co.