WHAT IS VALUES EDUCATION?

Brian V. Hill
Emeritus Professor of Education, Murdoch University

I have been asked to address the question: “What is Values Education?” On the face
of it, that is easy. The term “values education” is a tautology, since by definition,
education is the process of passing on things considered valuable. But I doubt this
brief answer will suffice!

Yet if weare not going to treat this term as a tautology, then what is it? It has
recently become quite fashionable to talk about values education. That is quite a
contrast to the previous era where you could not talk about it, at least in the public
sector, because officialdom said that public education must remain value-neutral
while getting on with the job of developing knowledge and skills.

Now had that been possible, we would have been saddled with an oxymoron. But it`
is “value-neutral education” that’s the oxymoron. Which areas of knowledge? What
skills? Who values them? Why should students be persuaded to value them? All
education promotes the value of what is being taught.

Certainly the people calling for better “values education” do not regard it as either a
tautology or an oxymoron. So what is their agenda? Why has it become a talking
point? I am sure you could all cite a number of reasons, but, let me highlight just
two.

First, the foundations of our pluralistic society are shifting. Old values, once taken
for granted like the air we breathe, have been challenged by competition from altern-
ative value frameworks which previously were not prominent in our culture.

Second, to add to the value hiatus, runaway scientific advances have prompted some
people to claim that the old core values no longer apply. If, in the ‘sixties, “the pill”
caused a seismic shift in our morés, genetic technology is now showing us how to
change our very natures – surely a potential tsunami!

What a change from the years in which I myself grew to adulthood. A notable
advance in that era was the 1957 Wyndham Report, which transformed education in
New South Wales. Wyndham1 started his chapter on educational aims, by asking:
“What constitutes a worthwhile life?” "This question", he said, "is asked at the risk of
becoming involved in a discussion of personal philosophies of life." Correct!

1
Wyndham (1957). See also Hill (1993).
 2

In the event, he did not take the risk. The most he was prepared to do was to hint
that the community would probably agree on the importance of "spiritual values"
(undefined) and the ultimate significance of a "relationship with God." But if the
spiritual context was vaguely defined in the Report, the social context was even
worse off. Apart from one passing use of the adjective "Australian" - ironically in
reference to the pursuit of leisure – you would not have known that the chapter was
written in and for an Australian context! As for the word "democracy", it was not
mentioned at all, though the plausibility of the whole chapter rested implicitly on
acceptance of the value system of a western liberal democracy strongly influenced by
old Christendom and new science, though not yet the Marxism and Existentialism
which were shaking postwar Europe. We must do better than Wyndham.

The question “What is Values Education?”, then, is symptomatic of the feeling most
people have that the values on which the education of the young rested in the past
must now be made explicit, and where necessary revised. Competing value
frameworks must be confronted, and a new educational mandate must be negotiated
between all the stakeholders in good faith.

There are still some people who think the problem only affects the state school, since
it is obliged to meet the expectations of the whole pluralistic community, whereas by
contrast the independent school – especially if it nestles in a hallowed religious or
grammar school tradition – knows where it is going and need not address the
question. I commend the Dialogue Australasia Network for realising that the
question must be addressed in all sectors. All our traditions need to be revisited in
the light of massive social change and value hiatus.

It could happen, of course, that after wide consultation we will actually be led to
reaffirm many of the old values. I personally think that is very likely. But we will
nevertheless have to disentangle them from some residual morés that are no longer
viable. Similarly, our teaching of values will need to move on from some entrenched
traditional approaches that are still followed in some schools. That in fact is my
springboard today.

I want first to lead you through a number of the different modalities that are
involved in teaching values. I will then address the thorny question of how we
identify and ground core values.

VALUES TRANSMISSION
The first teaching modality I want to mention is “Values Transmission.” Here, the
emphasis is on content – the received corpus of beliefs and values – which is to be
transmitted with dogmatic confidence to the young, from whom we may expect a
 3

response of obedient conformity. For centuries, this was the primary mode of values
transmission.

In the Western world, the hegemonic narrative was that of Christendom. This came
under siege from the 18th century Enlightenment, which generated alternative frame-
works such as Marxist materialism, scientific humanism, and philosophical atheism.
Under the skin, these were all indebted to the Western heritage, but other countries
evolved under different meaning systems. Nevertheless, they too, in the modern era,
have been forced to respond to the same challenges. The writing is on the wall for
closed societies and fundamentalist movements.

One alternative position promoted in the late nineteenth century, was Liberalism,
which tried to stand aloof from hegemonic value systems by espousing the supposed
objectivity of public rationality. A spin-off from this position was John Dewey’s
pragmatism, supposedly banishing ideology from the curriculum.

A new twist has been imparted to these views by postmodern advocates of

“resistance education” who tell us to give students the tools to examine everything
rationally and scientifically, leaving them free to evolve their own values for life.
They add that this will also enfranchise minority groups who were formerly
excluded by our hegemonic narratives.

Poor youngsters, each obliged to be their own Socrates and invent their own frame-
work of values! It is reminiscent of the agnostic colleague who said to me in the
swinging ‘sixties that he wasn’t teaching his daughters anything about religion and
morality, because he wanted to leave them free to make their own decisions on such
matters. He should have said, “Leaving them in free-fall”!

Two points need to be made in opposition to such laissez-faire attitudes. One, child-
ren are born into an existing cultural matrix, which today accommodates, albeit
uneasily, most of these meaning systems. At the least, students need to be helped to
understand this matrix in its diversity. Second, if they are to achieve a measure of
critical distance from it, they deserve to be informed of the resources for refreshment
and reform available in the great traditions.

So there is still a place for the transmission of inherited values. But whereas it once
tended to stop there, at least so far as the masses were concerned, now we must
regard this as merely the baseline from which to develop higher order capacities.
Cultural conditioning alone will simply perpetuate prejudices and enclave cultures.
 4

VALUES CLARIFICATION
For all these reasons, the teaching of values must therefore include the modality of
values clarification: that is, the development of skills in identifying and clarifying
one’s own values, and the values to which our fellow citizens are committed. In this
respect most schools are starting behind the eight ball. While there are now moves to
bring values issues into the curriculum at various points, they face two obstacles.
One is the tendency among many of our contemporaries to regard values as merely
private wants, about which little can be said except, “That is where you’re coming
from. Fine. I’m coming from a different place.”

Philosophically, though most would be unaware of the link, this attitude rests on the
emotive theory of ethics which attracted some scholarly support in the 1960s. 2 It was
then said that reference to values is simply a way of labelling value statements “Boo”
or “Hurrah” according to personal taste. I will return to this issue later.

The second obstacle we have to overcome is the consequent neglect of values

discourse, not only in classrooms but in teacher training. Large numbers of teachers
trained in the era when values talk in state schools was embargoed, have no idea
how to guide student discussion constructively. And those in teacher education who
now see a need for it are overruled by market-driven priorities. It is time that we
took more seriously the need to give priority to developing the requisite skills of
ethical enquiry and negotiation.

The first step is to distinguish between “beliefs and “values.” These are words we
tend to use interchangeably in ordinary usage. An experience I had some years ago
with an able doctoral student exposed a problem with this usage. The student was
wanting to obtain some idea of where older adolescents had been led to their current
beliefs and values. To this end she drafted a questionnaire which contained a num-
ber of belief statements. Her intention was to ask which of these they considered true
or false.

It was soon clear, however, that this would not enable her to tell whether their beliefs
actually affected their daily behaviour. We had to develop a series of probes for each
statement (see diagram 1).

2
See, in general ethics, Stevenson (1963). Specifically in philosophy of education, O’Connor (1958).
 5

Awareness Belief Value

valuing X
believing (being disposed to act
on X or treasure it)
that X is true
under-
stand-
hear- disvaluing X
ing X
ing X believing (being disposed not to
act on X or treasure it,
that X is even if we believe it to
false be true)

Diagram 1: From Hearing to Commitment

First, had they heard of this idea before? (If not, there was no point in pursuing the
question further; “go on to the next one”). Second, did they understand its meaning?
If so, did they believe it to be true or false? And finally, they were asked to indicate
on a simple attitude scale how much this belief influenced their daily decision-
making and lifestyle choices.

This produced some intriguing findings, though, of course, the researcher also had to
use other forms of enquiry to probe further into this primitive data. There are
nevertheless lessons in it for classroom teachers, obliging them to guide students
beyond rote learning to real comprehension, and beyond that, to evaluating truth
claims and beyond that to considering their relevance to their own lives.

At the least, the exercise highlighted the need to tighten up the way we refer in
ordinary language to beliefs and values. Intellectual belief does not automatically
translate into commitment to live by that belief. This is where the philosopher
Socrates got it wrong, and the Apostle Paul got it right. There can be a monumental
gap between knowing and doing. We are not usually motivated only by reason, but
also by emotional set and prior cultural conditioning. In fact, as I have suggested
elsewhere, values not only have cognitive, but also affective and volitional
dimensions.3

I can illustrate the point by saying that I believe, on what seems to me to be good
evidence, that there is a football team called “Collingwood.” I must also confess –
though never when I am in Victoria – that this belief has no effect on my value
system at all. By contrast, I am equally convinced at an intellectual level that a
catastrophic tsunami happened last Boxing Day. But in this case I have been
motivated to make a sacrificial donation through my favourite non-government aid

3
Hill, (1994) 4.
 6

and development agency. The disaster activated my value system at a deep level,
resulting in matching behaviour.

Suppose I say, “Bill is an honest person.” It would take observation over the long
haul to justify such a statement. One swallow does not make a summer, and one
behavioural act does not confirm commitment to a particular value. That is one fact
that is often overlooked in “outcomes-driven curricula.”

Conversely, if we were to catch Bill telling a lie, that wouldn’t necessarily make us
retract our ascription. The classic example is that of a person lying to protect a loved
one from a violent attacker. In this instance, other values, such as the preservation of
life, overrode a habitual disposition to tell the truth.

Consistent with this, I like to define values as “the priorities which individuals and
societies attach to certain beliefs, experiences, and objects, in deciding how they shall
live and what they shall treasure.” 4. When we describe our priorities in words, the
result is what philosophers call “value judgments.”

These comments illustrate some of the ways in which we need to practise values
clarification. You may be aware that the expression “values clarification” is often
associated with a particular teaching approach developed in the early 1970s. The
procedure involved identifying and clarifying the values held by students (and the
wider society) and then guiding the class in discussion aimed at achieving value
agreements.5

That was an important step forward from mere indoctrination. But because it was
heavily indebted to American pragmatism, it did not encourage ethical discussion so
much as political negotiation. And votes, or weight of opinion, do not necessarily
guarantee rational justification. When the rubber hits the road, it may even result in
the suppression of minority rights. What the approach needed was a strategy for
developing in students the ability and disposition to examine the reasons given by
participants for the values they were advocating. I will return to this point in a
moment.

EMPATHY
But first, let me add to the emphasis on developing skills of clarification a require-
ment for the development also of the more whole-person capacity of empathy. Here
again we need to make a distinction. In ordinary usage, the terms “empathy” and
“sympathy” tend to be used interchangeably, but they have different root meanings.

4
Hill (1994) 7.
5
Raths et al. 1978.
 7

“Empathy” literally means “feeling into.” It is properly used to refer to a capacity:

the capacity to sense what is going on inside another person’s awareness. People do
not just have outsides, which we can observe externally. They, like ourselves, have
insides which respond to motivations as well as cognitions. We all have some ability
to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, and this is a capacity that can be further
developed through interpersonal experiences such as those engendered by social
interactions, good literature, drama, and role plays. “Sympathy” – literally, feeling
with – implies an inclination or disposition to care for the other person, to take their
side.

One can have one without the other. For instance, one can act sympathetically
towards another person, with little real understanding of how they feel. Joe says to
Jan, whose brother has just died, “Don’t worry, you’ll get over it.” Full of sympathy
he may be, but he clearly lacks real empathy with Jan’s likely state of mind.

Alternatively, one can grasp what makes another person behave the way they do,
without necessarily approving of them. For instance, I think I have read enough
about Hitler to empathise with why he did the things he did, but in no way does he
enlist my sympathy or support. Empathy only strengthens my conviction that he
was an evil man.

In short, I recommend the linguistic practice of regarding empathy as a capacity;

sympathy as a disposition. The distinction between the two terms is serviceable in
another respect. If empathy is a capacity, enlarging the individual’s freedom of
action, then it is something we may legitimately assess. We may test it and report on
it. Sympathy, on the other hand, is a commitment, of whatever strength, which lies
in the gift of the autonomous self. Teachers – and parents – may hope the one leads
to the other; but we exceed our brief if we try to insist that it shall.

At best, coercion or indoctrination can only guarantee behavioural conformity, not

disposition. Indeed, in the area of values education, they are likely to prove counter-
productive. Church schools in particular have sometimes been guilty of using such
tactics, at the risk of provoking more independent-minded students to pretend agree-
ment until they escaped the boundaries of the school’s control. More submissive
students, on the other hand, often emerge from such regimes moral cripples, rigid in
their judgment of others yet paradoxically more compliant when tempted.

JUSTIFICATION
So then, equipped with the skills of cognitive and empathic clarification, we are now
in a position to encourage students to consider how justified are the values, or
human priorities, that press upon them. Values do not just lie around like fallen
 8

walnuts waiting to be added to our private hoard – I’ll take honesty but you can have
chastity; Or, you can have Shakespeare but I’ll go for Barbara Cartland. There may
be a debate about whether values are universal or culturally relative, but few would
argue today that they are purely idiosyncratic.

Most of us are prepared to grant that the question “Why do you value x?” is a legit-
imate one, requiring us to provide reasons that the questioner will perceive to be
relevant and plausible. The great traditions may differ in detail about the summum
bonum, or even as to whether there is only one rather than several, but they endorse
the quest. Similarly, open and respectful discussion in the classroom of the reasons
why individuals and traditions prioritise certain values has great significance for self-
development and constructive fraternity.

It begins with our tolerating the incessant “Why?” of young children rather than
suppressing it. Thereafter, teachers willing to encourage enquiry in students of all
ages find that they’re more able to feed in valuable insights from religious, philos-
ophical, and social scientific sources: insights which enlarge both understanding and
sympathy in students, and widen their value horizons. The curse of the schooling
model, by contrast, is classrooms which focus on dogged information input and recit-
ation, and question students mercilessly while disallowing any questioning of the
teacher’s own views.

The demand for justification therefore cuts both ways. Teachers may reasonably ask
students to justify their assertions, but they may ask the same of the teacher – and the
school. Some schools – particularly some that are religious in foundation – put the
querying of their own value framework off-limits. This is a betrayal of the values of
the person, and of rational discourse, to which they’re supposedly committed.

It is much better to make the school’s value charter a subject of study and critical
inspection in the classroom, in the hope that students will perceive it to be rational,
humane, and worthy of adoption. They may even be able to suggest improvements
to it! You see what I am advocating: not a spurious neutrality in the name of
tolerance or pluralism, nor a transmission of ethos which brooks no challenge, but a
confessing curriculum which invites critical evaluation and comparison.

NEGOTIATION
At this point I return to the modality of negotiation. Having first established the
educational relevance of the modality of justification, the chances are now greater
that values negotiation will be rational – comparing reasons – rather than merely
political – jostling for a power advantage. And when I talk about reasons, I don’t
 9

just mean those related to intellectual ideas alone, but also those related to actual
experiences of interpersonal goods.

There is a growing literature today of ways in which we can establish a classroom

climate appropriate to these intentions. These ways include the use of drama, role
plays, simulation games, forums, student councils, and, perhaps less usefully, formal
debates. These are meant in part to help students achieve some objective distancing
from personal feelings and forestall ad hominem argumentation.

In present company I do not need to spell out Peter Vardy’s fiveNo doub t you are
also familiar with Edward de Bono’s “six hats” strategy, where students are invited
to preface their contributions by identifying which hat they are wearing at that
particular moment.6 A red hat, for instance, signifies that the speaker is expressing
emotions or hunches; a white hat signals information-giving, and so on. The conven-
tion of nominating a particular hat is meant to enable speakers to distance them-
selves from the implication of personal commitment to the viewpoint expressed,
since they could just as easily make a contrary point later wearing a different hat.

One of the most accessible manuals for teachers looking for such strategies is still the
book edited by Lemin, Potts and Welsford, entitled Values Strategies for Classroom
Teachers.7 It has the special merit of showing how such discourse impacts on a
variety of learning areas across the curriculum.

Another useful guide I like to quote comes from the work of the Religious Education
Curriculum Project team in Queensland in the late 1970s. 8 They contrasted what they
called “presumptive” language with the techniques of “owning” and “grounding.”
Presumptive language is where the teacher speaks in a way which co-opts students
into a particular value framework, as when a teacher might say: “What does God say
about the way we should treat people?” The question demands an answer which
presupposes a communicating God. There’s no space for student doubt or dissent.

“Owning” language is where a student may choose to preface a remark with words
like “I feel” or “I believe” which allows them to declare their position without imply-
ing that all must agree. Conversely, of course, students are not obliged to use own-
ing language if they do not want to.

“Grounding” language, on the other hand, is where a remark is preceded by words

like “the Bible says” or “Buddhists believe”; words which put the content of the
remark out there in cool 3 rd person language for consideration in its own right. This
6
De Bono (1985). Example: “"That is good black hat thinking; now let us switch to some yellow hat thinking.
. . ." In this case the term black hat describes thinking that seems to be cautious and seems to point out possible
difficulties, but the main intention is to ask for a switch to the yellow hat direction (benefits, values, and so forth).
7
Lemin, Potts and Welsford (1994).
8
Mavor and others, 1982).
 10

again minimises the impression of dogmatism and makes discussion and negotiation
more tolerable.

PARTICIPATION
The final modality I wish to mention is “participation.” Learning in the classroom
setting is notably inhibited at this point. Even when styles of teaching include
activity methods and open discussion, they usually continue to operate within a
paradigm of teacher-directed responses. It takes most teachers considerable effort to
break out of the traditional mindset and to create a climate of genuinely co-operative
and collaborative learning, let alone a mode of discourse which enfranchises the
honestly held opinions and questions of students.

The pity of it is that, as we noted earlier when distinguishing between believing and
valuing, that there is a yawning gap between correct knowing and appropriate
doing. Moral philosophers often bemoan it, and moral educators agonise to find
ways of bridging it. Equally, we are obliged to concede that valuing, as an aspect of
self-definition and self-expression, cannot be neatly confined in the container we call
the formal curriculum, much less in a single subject such as ethics or religious
education. Wherever human persons interact with each other, values education of
some kind is automatically occurring.

It spills over into informal relationships within the classroom group and the adminis-
trative style of the school community. Supremely, the teacher’s personal approach to
life bursts through the professional role, however carefully he or she might try to
conceal it. And students draw their own conclusions from it.

I often quote the disappointment of two of the researchers who worked with Law-
rence Kohlberg in the 1960s on his cognitive-developmental model of moral educ-
ation. They were dealing with what they described as “relatively mature high-school
students.” Their hope was to develop in students respect for the Kohlberg concept of
the school as a just community.

Reporting on this work at a Canadian conference, they lamented that while students
often developed good reasoning skills in appropriate classroom discourse, there
seemed to be little carry-over into their conduct around the school. 9 Oliver and Bane
suggested almost shyly that “perhaps” what they called “significant happenings” in
freer environments beyond the school – such as “summer camps or vacation schools,
when group members are free from other responsibilities” – might better cater for the
emotional and relational aspects of values education than the classroom.

9
Oliver and Bane (1971) 252-271.
 11

They need not have been so apologetic about making this suggestion, given the
abundant anecdotal evidence of value change in such settings, not to mention grow-
ing empirical support in research relating to areas such as “outdoor education.” But
even within the school community itself, most schools could do much more at this
level. Both within classrooms and in the wider community, we need to be providing
opportunities for students to gain experiences in making decisions and taking
personal responsibility for them, participating in the values negotiation and policy-
framing of the school itself, and utilising elective opportunities within the school
timetable to explore alternative paths of self-development and community service.

Unfortunately, there is continuing pressure from policy makers at both State and
Federal levels to centralise curriculum content and to move towards a common
assessment regime. Along with this goes a tendency to seriously overload the com-
pulsory core curriculum, minimising opportunities for reflection and self-definition
through elective studies and extra-curricular activities. Schools which try to resist
these pressures run the risk of being marginalised in the competition for public
regard.

VALUES OUTCOME STATEMENTS

This is perhaps the moment to touch on the current attachment to “outcomes-driven
curricula.” The rhetoric requires us to frame lists of “learning outcome statements”,
which specify precise end-behaviours that lend themselves to quantitative measure-
ment. Now while admitting that this paradigm has the commendable effect of
focusing on what students learn, rather than on what teachers think they have
taught, it can also have the effect of belittling longer-term frameworks of understand-
ing which are not amenable to such behavioural descriptors. When a TAFE colleague
informed her class of the performance outcomes that were centrally prescribed for
their course, one of her mature-age students snarled, “A pile of crumbs doesn’t make
a loaf of bread.” Fair comment!

However my criticism doesn’t excuse the opposite tendency of basing claims to be

doing values education on speech night platitudes and unsubstantiated claims in
glossy brochures. Even while recognising that some of the more holistic and dispos-
itional outcomes we want to achieve are not amenable to the outcomes-driven para-
digm, it is nevertheless possible to suggest some expectations – in terms of desirable
capacities – which it is possible and ethical to specify in this way.

To illustrate the point, diagram 2 provides some samples for each modality. No
doubt curriculum technicians could massage my wording to fit more closely with the
conventions of outcomes-discourse, but they suffice to illustrate my point.
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Description and Transmission

• Is able to identify the value traditions and world-views which have had the most
impact on our culture to this time..
• Can outline the core beliefs and values of the major ethnic and religious groups in
Australian society.
Clarification
• Can explain what values are, and the main ways in which individuals acquire them.
• Can identify and describe the leading ethical ideas inherent in the Australian form of
liberal democracy.
Empathy
• Is able to empathise with how people of backgrounds other than their own are
motivated by their values.
• Shows ability to understand the feelings of people subject to political oppression and
various forms of discrimination.
Justification
• Is able to evaluate value-judgments in terms of the adequacy of the reasons given in
support of them.
• Exhibits awareness of the values which have influenced his or her own upbringing,
and a capacity to critically examine them.
Negotiation
• Demonstrates both social and ethical skills in conducting values negotiation in groups.
• Is capable of engaging in non-defensive dialogue on values issues with people of
different persuasions.
Participation
• Can participate constructively in co-operative activities in the classroom and school
community.
• Can deduce levels of need from involvement in service provision in community caring
agencies and issues affecting the human rights.
x

Diagram 2: Sample Learning Outcome Statements

At the same time, we have wider hopes for values education than the sort that can be
squeezed into a formal assessment regime. It is proper for such hopes to feature in
our teaching objectives. That is, we should not be limited by what is formally
testable, but should also be aiming to exercise the kind of educative influence which
will give rise to longer term dispositions in students: dispositions to embrace and live
by worthwhile values. Whether that happens or not will be up to them as choosing
selves, but as far as the ethics of human relationships allows, we will have done our
best to commend the good life.
 13

IDENTIFYING CORE VALUES

I have spent most of the time available to me discussing these modalities, because I
have been trying to move beyond the platitudes so often associated with values
education to suggest some practical criteria for teachers wanting to evaluate their
own classroom practice. In much less detail, I now propose to touch on two aspects
of the more substantive side of values education – the identification and validation of
core values.

As regards the identification of core values, several attempts have been made in the
last two decades to develop appropriate lists of values. I will not try to enumerate
them all now. But one of the most recent has been the charter developed by the
Values Study Project which the Federal Government started funding in 2002. In the
pilot stage, seed grants were made to 70 schools. The project was extended in the
Budget last May by an allocation of $2.97 million dollars, and notices went out earlier
this year, inviting schools to form clusters and bid for sizeable grants to undertake
further action research.

One outcome emerging from the pilot stage was a list of nine “values for Australian
schooling” based on wide consultation with participating schools and other groups.
The values are: Care and Compassion, Do Your Best, Fair Go, Freedom, Honesty and
Trustworthiness, Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Understanding Tolerance and
Inclusion. I suspect we will be hearing a lot more about them. It is not a bad plat -
form on which to start building the school as a moral community,

But it is still a collection of walnuts, not necessarily all off the same tree. And in
most cases, the devil’s in the detail. When does freedom become licence? How far
should tolerance and inclusion go? The other point to be made is that this is mostly
a list of moral values. In the business of education, our remit encompasses a much
more extensive spectrum of values, as shown in diagram 3.
 14

Religious/
Spiritual
Interpersonal Ethical-
-relational Moral
Cognitive-
Aesthetic
Self- intellectual
concept Technical-
Physical-
Recreational vocational
Socio- Political
cultural
Economic

Diagram 3: The spectrum of Values

It is important to give full weight to this range of value domains, because an exclus-
ive concern with moral values smacks of a desire to domesticate growing learners
rather than to liberate them. Moreover, by taking account of the ubiquity of values in
all areas of life and learning, we deprive those subject specialists who try to say it is
someone else’s business of their last refuge. Like it or not – values education? –
they’re standing in it!

This becomes even more apparent when one takes into account the values we
associate specifically with education, the transmitter of such values. This is another
domain again, associated with the features of a social institution charged with
facilitating formal learning. All these domains of value need to be accommodated in
the so-called “values of Australian schooling”, otherwise the response of busy people
in schools will be minimalist.

But we still have not addressed the fallacy of thinking that values are scattered
walnuts, waiting to be selected according to the individual’s fancy. It is a fallacy per -
petuated by many values education packages available through education depart-
ments and commercial outlets. Where do the values listed come from? What would
motivate an individual to include them in his or her priorities for living? We need to
progress beyond identifying values that people find appealing to the reasons why
they appeal, and why people prioritise some and not others. And that takes us into
world-view territory.

GROUNDING CORE VALUES

Take the value of “respect for persons.” One can imagine an atheist, a Muslim, a
Christian, and a Buddhist reaching practical agreement on this as a public value.
But both the reasons which led them to do so will have sprung from different roots,
and it is problematic whether they will treat all persons in the same way.
 15

So the nomination of such values is not the end of the story; it is only the beginning.
Thereafter we must bring out the frameworks of meaning that animate them for the
individual, with a view to achieving through respectful dialogue a deeper sense of
common purpose and humanity.

The lesson for us is that values education is “a headless chook” unless complemented
by the study of people’s frameworks of meaning. The intention is not to domesticate
students by teaching only one framework, but to equip them to understand them-
selves better, through study of the framework within which they have been nurtured,
and their neighbours better, through studying the frameworks within which they
have been nurtured.

People are sometimes frightened to open the windows of the mind in this way,
thinking that the consequence will be to relativise students’ values. As I said earlier,
this does not necessarily follow. Our hope is that their motivation to live by the
values commended to them will be the greater, grounded on adequate foundations –
owned and not merely inherited – and also will reduce the notorious gap between
knowing and doing.

One danger of not putting the study of world-views or frameworks of meaning on

the table is indoctrination by default. For example, a number of schools have recent-
ly adopted two particular commercial packages promoting values education. One
identifies 12 values of significance; the other 52. The first is called Living Values, and
has UNESCO endorsement. It was produced by an organisation called Brahma
Kumaris, a Hindu group originating in India. The second, known as The Virtues
Project, had Bahaí authors, and is notably indebted to that world-view. Commen-
tators from alternative world-views such as Christianity can quickly identify omis-
sions that matter to them, even in the list of 52. That in itself should warn us that
mere shopping lists of values are not enough.

I mention these examples not to denigrate them as useful curriculum packages, but
to emphasise the need to include explicit examination of their underlying world-
views, just as one would want to ensure the study of frameworks of meaning which
have been more central than either of them to the development of Australian culture.
This implies a new role for what has traditionally been called “religious education.”

I have tried to spell this out in my most recent book, published last year, called
Exploring Religion in School10 And as you would know, the five-strand approach of
Peter Vardy addresses similar concerns. I would also like to commend to you two
Australian books published in the ‘nineties: Chaos or Clarity: Encountering Ethics11 the

10
Hill (2004).
11
Elliott and Engebretson (1996).
 16

second edition authored by Kathleen Engebretson and Ray Elliott, and Creating
Meaning: Essays in Belief12 also by Kathleen Engebretson.

I am also enthusiastic about another one, published in Melbourne last year: Teaching
About Worldviews and Values by Julie Mitchell.13 Her summaries of some leading
world-views of our time are masterly and student-friendly. Her advice on “scoping
a world-view” is clear and will draw students beyond stereotyped answers into
probing reflection. She also provides a variety of practical suggestions and sample
lesson plans for classroom use.

CONCLUSION
I conclude with two anecdotes which underscore the agenda I have been proposing.
First, at the beginning of last month (March 2005), Channel 4 in Britain ran a program
headed The New Ten Commandments. They had polled the public to obtain what in
fact were twenty supposedly new guidelines. Number one blazed a trail with the
strikingly original “Treat others as you would have them treat you.”

Other prescriptions appearing in the list were “Be honest”, “Don’t kill”, “Respect
your father and mother”, and “Don’t commit adultery”, while two others – “Live
within your means” and “Appreciate what you have” – could be regarded as useful
exegesis of “Do not covet.” The evidence hardly provided sufficient grounds for
saying that Moses had been trounced, even if the God who undergirded the rules
was ignored. Aberdeen professor of moral philosophy, Gordon Graham, com-
mented:

“Strictly speaking, you can’t have a commandment without somebody to issue

it. People . . . want strong clear guidelines but they don’t actually know how to
get them. The truth is they can’t get them if they ditch the religious context in
which they originally found them.”14

Another sign of our muddled postmodern culture was a comment by actress Nicole
Kidman in 2001, “I believe in a bit of Scientology, Catholicism, Judaism and the
Eastern philosophies. I take a bit of each, I am a hybrid.”15

Well, hybrid or hydra – whatever; this sets our agenda.

12
Engebretson (1996).
13
Mitchell (2004).
14
LICC (2005). More details can be found at <www.channel4.com>. The full 20 were Don't kill, Look after
the vulnerable, Respect your mother and father, Enjoy life, Nothing in excess, Be true to your own God, Treat
others as you would like to be treated, Be true to yourself, Protect your family, Look after your health, Try your
best at all times, Don't commit adultery, Live within your means, Appreciate what you have, Never be violent,
Protect the environment, Protect and nurture children, Take responsibility for your own actions, Don't steal.
15
Quoted in Alexander (2001) 54.
 17

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