THE IMPACT OF VALUES EDUCATION ON ADOLESCENTS’ CHARACTER

DEVELOPMENT

Aysun Yıldız
Curriculum and Instruction with Teaching Certificate, Bilkent University

Introduction

In the world of community, values are determiners of how people will live in harmony and
peace without hurting others, and they enable people to be virtuous individuals within the
community. Haydon (2004) claims that just as people live in a physical environment, there is
also an ethical environment around them and suggests that values education is necessary to
jointly contribute to the quality of the ethical environment. Thus, it is important that values
are inculcated to people at their early ages as much as possible when their character develops,
and these values should be maintained during adolescence so that young people can
appreciate themselves and others, and take responsibility for their own actions and for the
world around them. According to Ryan (1993), although the development of a child’s
character is not completely under the responsibility of the school, it plays a crucial role since
they spend much of their time in schools. However, in his recent study, Kenan (2009) found
that as modern education is intensively shaped by positivist knowledge and science, it often
fails to teach the realm of values.

Having diagnosed the situation, I present and examine several research studies that are related
to the importance of value education in young people’s character development as well as the
school’s place in teaching values. After reviewing the literature, I provide the results of two
interviews that have been made with the purpose of determining the current status of the issue
at hand. Interview questions have been selected to reveal the contributions of values that were
possibly taught in schools to the person’s character development and to receive the opinions
of interviewees on the values that are of the highest importance in one’s life.

Review of Literature

In his work of values education as an agent to sustain the ethical environment, Haydon (2004)
sought to offer insights into values education from a position that authors have not worked

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over many times. He quoted the statement of Simon Blackburn from his work on ethics
emphasizing that although as people, we have learnt to become sensitive towards physical
environment, we are not so sensitive towards ‘the surrounding climate of ideas about how to
live’ that he called ‘ethical environment’ (Blackburn, 2001). Then, Haydon suggested that it is
the values education that could promote the protection of this ethical environment. He also
stated that teachers hold special responsibilities to teach values by encouraging desirable
kinds of understanding and attitudes in their students. Finally, he added that if teachers are
engaged in activities to keep the ethical environment, their influence is definitely towards a
healthier environment.

Kenan (2009) studied on modern education in relation to values education. According to him,
modern society experiences serious social and moral problems that have never occurred as
such before, which is also obvious from the erosion of family and worsening situation of civic
culture and understanding. He criticized modern education as failing to lead societies to a
more humanistic future against these social and ecological changes. To him, quantitative and
mechanistic way of knowing that is forged by modern mindset is not enough to deal with the
higher qualities of human experience such as value, truth, goodness and so on. He suggested
that to solve the problem, we should become aware of the fact that learning does not only
comprise of mechanical way of knowing and we should seek to integrate values into modern
education so that they could enrich one another.

As to Ryan (1993), schools play a stronger role in young people’s learning to become
individuals of character. He argued that in schools, students should be provided with
opportunities to be prepared for being good private individuals as well as being citizens and
good workers. He stated that there are certain values, found by Lewis (1947), to become a
good person including honesty, loyalty to parents and family members, and obligation to help
the poor and less fortune, which he called “the Tao”. Over the years, Tao have become to be
used by curriculum specialists and teachers in order to guide students to be concerned about
less fortune, to become hardworking and responsible, to respect other people’s rights, to
become honest and friendly, and especially to decide what is the right act to take.

He believed that these values should be taught both under the formal and hidden curriculum.
As part of formal curriculum; stories, historical figures and events are beneficial to illustrate
the values and help young people to learn the good. As for the hidden curriculum, he stated
that, it is the way that provides the most profound and positive teachings. For instance, if

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schools can integrate fairness into all the building, students will become fair. Schools can also
teach self-control and self-discipline through homework assignments and various events. He
also listed certain practices for schools that wish to make a positive impact on the character of
young people. Such practices include comprehensive program of service activities that will
become more intense in the later years of high school, high level of school spirit and positive
intergroup competition, external charity to which all members of the school can contribute,
appreciation of academic effort and good discipline, and respect for others. And finally, he
implied that character education should be central to the curriculum issues to be handled by
educators.

The Results of Interviews

Two females (24 and 25 years old, respectively) were asked to be interviewed. Both went to
high school and graduated from a university in Ankara. The latter completed her high school
education abroad. The following four questions, which are open-ended, were asked to them so
as to determine the recent position of values education in schools, to assess their impacts on
student’s character development, and to receive their opinions for the most significant core
values that should be inculcated to today’s young people:

1. As far as your experiences during high school years are

concerned, were you subject to any values education
activity? Were values taught to you directly or more
implicitly under several texts or activities?
2. Were these acquisitions helpful to you in the relationship
with your peers and family?
3. Do you think that schools should be responsible for
teaching values? Why?
4. What do you think are the core values that should be
taught in high schools? Why?

The first interviewee replied that in high school, they once provided aid to the Child
Protection Agency by giving clothes, stationery and toys. She stated that before, she had
thought some people were necessarily helping those orphan children, and had not felt
responsible for helping them on her own. However, following this activity, she learnt to have
empathy and sharing feeling and felt responsibility for the community around herself. She
also told that they read Mevlana’s works in literature lessons, which explicitly taught her to be

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tolerant. She added that they performed poster activities with specific themes that were
hanged on the walls of the school. According to her comments, this activity taught her to
know her responsibility and to become self-confident when their peers saw and paid attention
to the posters. She also stated there was a teacher of hers who made no discrimination
between students and although she was a hardworking student, she got the same punishment
when she violated a rule within the school. She believed that this influenced her to develop
fairness.

She explained that the values that she gained in the school had implications on her
relationships with her social environment. As an example, she stated she learnt to share
responsibilities in household activities just as she did in the school environment. In time, she
reflected this fair attitude in the relationship with her friends because she understood that
fairness was vital for not being alone in the social world. She also told that she learnt to
respond with empathy and tolerance to the actions of her parents even if she objected
inwardly, which enabled her to maintain good relations with them.

She believed that school is the place where students spend most of their time. She stated that
schools should teach values so that all young people learn the same value, see their peers also
learn the same way, and share the same values with each other. She also added that otherwise,
they just learn a certain value at home and give up implementing it when he/she sees
differently in his/her peers.

When it comes to the main values, she specified responsibility, open-mindedness and honesty
should be basically taught to young people since they are in a critical period at these ages
when their responsibilities become greater, and if responsibility can be inculcated, they will
become better prepared for the next stage in their lives. She stated that open-mindedness is
important since they will meet different people from different cultures when they go to
universities. Finally, she emphasized honesty as the building block of relations with the social
environment and being honest means having inner peace in a person.

The second interviewee replied that in her education in Turkey, there were occasional
counseling activities in which teachers guided them to become patient, but she said that this
was mostly for the purposes of university entrance exam. However, in her education abroad,
they often collected garbage in the school gate. They also carried out activities outside the
school, which, she stated, made her more responsible in her own life, as well. She added that
she still tends to do so when she sees some garbage in streets. She also explained that they

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read several literary and religious texts that taught her to be tolerant, empathetic and open to
other ideas and especially to other religions.

She pointed out that by gaining self-confidence in the school, she could prove herself to her
family, which also increased her self-respect. She also developed empathy towards her
family; before, she tended to argue with her parent to make them accept her opinions, but as
she learnt tolerance, she behaved in a milder way toward them.

She definitely believed that schools should teach values because a young person spends all
his/her time within the school walls. She remembered that she saw her school as another
family, which she considered as another reason for the importance of the school in terms of
the said issue. She also added families may fail to spend time with their children to teach
values since they may have busy jobs, and therefore, the school should fill this gap.

She regarded honesty, self-confidence and tolerance as the main values to be taught in
schools, for she believed that academic skills are not enough if not complemented by self-
confidence in the way of being a whole person. She supported tolerance because she stated
that a person would face different ideas sometime in his/her life and thus, he/she should be
open to discuss and understand these opposite opinions with tolerance.

Discussion

It can be understood from the both interviews that values education is somewhat taught to
young people, mostly as part of hidden curriculum. The literature had also substantial effects
on the character development of interviewees. It can also be inferred that if taught and
implemented explicitly as in the example of the second interviewee’s service learning activity,
the values can be maintained in the long run and become the part of character within the
individual. Moreover, their experiences show that teachers’ behaviors and attitudes play a
crucial role in the formation of character in young people, which is also evident in several
studies (Haydon, 2004; and Lovat & Clement, 2008).

Contrary to the arguments of Kenan (2009), it can be seen that schools are usually successful
in conveying values although the main aim may not be doing so in some behaviors as in the
case where the teacher treated equally to all the students. This shows that modern education

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does not have to include certain activities that would explicitly teach values to young people
in all cases.

As can be seen in the statements of both interviewees, the school has a primary role in
teaching values due to the amount of time young people spend there. However, the reasons
why the interviewees think so vary. For instance, the second interviewee believes that families
may fail to teach values, which may be an indicator of her parents having a full-time job.
Moreover, there seems to be an overlap between the values the interviewees consider as
important. To illustrate, both interviewees see honesty as one of the most important values,
which shows that there are certain values being the building blocks of character formation,
and curriculum developers and teachers can mainly focus on them.

Conclusion

From the results of the interviews as well as the research studies, it can be concluded that it is
mostly under the responsibility of schools to teach values since students spend most of their
valuable time in schools and they need to learn what is good altogether and in the right way.
While teachers have the greatest power to teach those values to young people either explicitly
or implicitly, schools also may have something to contribute to this learning by, including but
not limited to, carrying out community service activities and exploiting the walls of the
schools to let students to represent themselves.

Besides, it can be seen that students tend to adopt the way their teachers treat towards the
students and hence, teachers should be sensitive and aware of their attitudes within the school
environment. They also should recognize their power over young people. If this power can be
utilized positively, teachers can model students in gaining the values that young people will
need during their lives.

References

Blackburn, S. (2001). Being Good (Oxford, Oxford University Press), p-1.

Haydon, G. (2004). Values education: sustaining the ethical environment. Journal Of Moral
Education, 33(2), 115-129.

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Kenan, S. (2009). The Missing Dimension of Modern Education: Values
Education. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 9(1), 279-295.

Lewis, C. S. (1947). The Abolition of Man. New York: Macmillan.

Lovat, T. J., & Clement, N. D. (2008). The pedagogical imperative of values

education. Journal Of Beliefs & Values: Studies In Religion & Education, 29(3), 273-285

Ryan, K. (1993). Mining the values in the curriculum. Educational Leadership, 51(3), 16.