A Lifelong Education in Values

The kind of values education which we envisage and advocate for all lifelong
learners – younger or older – requires much more than mere competence or “skill”
at procedures. It requires knowledge, understanding, and exposure to all the
opportunities for learning by a kind of osmosis in the appropriate values climates
and environments, the caring oversight, ministrations, and care of people further
“on the inside” of this particular form of life (Wittgenstein 1953). It also assumes
that there will be those working to help people to develop the settled disposition
to behave in ways that are life-enhancing and morally laudable rather than the con-
verse, and the provision of many occasions for engaging in such values activities
as moral deliberation, forming moral conclusions and practising conduct that is in
conformity with all the social and civil virtues – reticent, bridled, decent, civil,
respectful of other people, considerate of their interests, and hopeful towards the
future (see Krygier 1997).
That would then offer and confirm the vital and indispensable role of all those
who function as values educators. It would be through their modelling, guidance,
and assistance that students would rapidly realize that learning to recognize and
deal with values issues are matters that are fraught with complexity, ambiguity, and
difficulty. First, students have to learn that – in whatever realm one is operating –
very often one value clashes directly with another one and that the resolution of
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such clashes, even where it is possible at all, can only be gained at great cost to
one’s self and to other people. Second, they will learn that the making of value
judgements is a difficult matter, requiring the bringing to bear of a great deal of
factual knowledge, and the appeal to particular presuppositions of principled
behaviour. Third, they will learn that
the weighing of all these
various considerations
in such a way as to issue in conclusions that are prescriptive and generalizable – the
common conditions, as Hare (1952, 1981) reminds us, for any value judgement to
be objective, action-guiding and seen as normative for people generally, rather than
simply an expression of individual taste or subjective preference – is a matter
requiring the expenditure of time, energy, and considerable intra- and interpersonal
skills and competences.
For these reasons we would want to regard values education not merely as a
matter of adding to our existing cognitive repertoires or enhancing all the forms of
our own individual subjectivity. For all learners, we believe, there are certain prin-
ciples that underlie the various exercises, activities, and engagements that might
count as contributing to an education in values, and these will form the staple for
programmes and activities of lifelong learning. One principle for which we would
want to argue, for example, is that issues of values and the need for making or
criticizing value judgements arise and operate, in whatever setting in which one
might be placed: not only in the home, at school, in the workplace, or at sporting
and cultural institutions but also in the community more widely – including the
social, political, and judicial realms as well.
Acceptance of the interpersonal and social operation of such values, and their
prescriptivity, generalizability, and action-guiding character, helps to explain why,
for example, crowds at modern sporting contests judge it to be unacceptable and
deplorable, when some contestant or team, especially if operating at the highest
international level of aspiration and achievement, is proved to have been taking
drugs or cheating people; in such cases it makes the most obvious sense for us to
say “people ought not to behave in that way”. The universal character and applica-
bility of values and moral norms is also emphasized when, to take another example,
international governments express, in all possible international forums, their most
serious and concerned disapproval of the actions of countries unwilling to bind
themselves to the most widely accepted principles, policies, and enactments of
international law and diplomacy, such as, for instance, the Geneva Convention.
Without the notion of values being principles of overriding international and/or
cultural importance, public prescriptivity, and binding upon all people in civil and
decent societies, such judgements and conduct would be unintelligible.
It is to the growth and extension of this notion of intelligibility in values and the
realm of values that this book is devoted. We see it as making a contribution to the
opening out and increasing sophistication in the extension of this kind of values
intelligibility for all learners, during all periods of compulsory, post-compulsory,
required, and voluntarily chosen activities of learning. We seek to make an
informed contribution to the project of examining some of the principles, policies,
and programmes of values that we believe should be found in operation in the range
of lifelong learning activities and engagements. We seek to explore the ways and
Introduction
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means by which learners may be encouraged to become educated and grow, both as
individual beings and social agents, throughout the whole of their lifespan.
The book thus seeks to provide accounts and critical appraisal of some of the
different principles, philosophies, theories, beliefs, traditions, and cultures that
might form the basis of, frame and furnish the setting for values education policies
and programmes. We look at some of the main theories behind versions of values
in lifelong learning and we point to some of the key concepts and categories at
work in such theories. We provide reference to and accounts of some examples of
policies or proposals in various national contexts and a range of examples of good
practice in policies, programmes, and curriculum schemes from different schools,
school systems, and other educating agencies, institutions and organizations
around the world
n Chapter Four “Values Education in Context”, Ivan Snook considers the
renewed calls for values education in some countries but warns against an approach
which advocates “values that all can agree on”. He argues that an explicit approach
to values education in schools is unlikely to be successful (in fact may be positively
mis-educative) unless care is taken to set it in context. Teachers may contribute to
values education by classroom processes or lessons but are relatively powerless in
the face of the moral influence of wider social forces, including those which shape
the day-to-day work of teachers in schools.
Snook discusses some of the major wider contexts within which values education
must be conceived and delivered: (a) in regard to “globalization” he maintains that
values education is required to provide informative lessons on what globalization
means for people and a vigorous introduction to the ethical dimensions of it; (b) in
regard to “kinderculture” he believes that schools should help students analyse and
critique the actual values which children are bringing to school particularly com-
mercial and consumer values which impact on them from the media. Snook also
argues that any approach to values education cannot neglect the context of the school
as an institution or the character and nature of teacher’s work. The way a school is
organized, the policies of the Governing authorities or Board, and decisions of the
principal constitute powerful moral lessons not lost on young people.
In examining the changing nature of teachers’ work, Snook argues that in place
of the professional operating with a code of ethical behaviour, in recent times there
has been an increasing emphasis on the notion of a teacher as a skilled tradesper-
son. There has also been a transformation in the notion of accountability in teach-
ers’ work, placing greater emphasis on “external accountability” based on line
management rather than “internal accountability” based on professional responsi-
bility with an underpinning conception of moral agency. Only moral agents can
engender a sense of values in their students. Relationships within a school are
sources of and occasions for offering more powerful lessons on values than any
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explicit form of teaching. If teachers are to play a central part in values education
they must be valued as professionals and involved in the critical implementation of
programmes and in the necessary remodelling of schools.
Snook offers some suggestions as to how teachers can help to restore a moral
sense to schools and a moral dimension to education. In particular this will require
a reinterpretation of the task of teaching. Such reorientation will require changes in
the education of teachers and in the policies which govern their day-to-day work.
Snook concludes by arguing that while schools must engage with the realities of the
social and political world, there is equal need for practical strategies to develop
values. In principle there is no conflict between school strategies and political
realities for each must acknowledge and incorporate the other: values education
must be carried out in context.
In Chapter Five “Rational Autonomy as an Educational Aim”, Jim Mackenzie
points to the need to accept “rational autonomy” as an aim of lifelong learning. He
argues that “rational autonomy” has a number of advantages as an aim of educa-
tion, including its congruence with the democratically essential quality of dissent.
Recent arguments against the very possibility of autonomy, both conceptual and
empirical, are considered, but Mackenzie argues that they still do not affect its sta-
tus as an ideal. Mackenzie considers the development of autonomy and schools,
suggesting that in the development of “rational autonomy” as well as the formal
curriculum, the informal curriculum, and the hidden curriculum, we should be
considering the impact of the “adversarial curriculum”, that is the lessons learned
by students in the course of defying school authorities. He concludes by arguing
that there is little evidence to suggest that the democratic value of dissent is much
promoted in schools, even in democratic states.
In Chapter Six “Avoiding Bad Company: The Importance of Moral Habitat and
Moral Habits in Moral Education”, Janis (John) Ozolins argues that, without the
appropriate habitat to support good moral habits, especially in the formative years of a
person, good moral habits will not be developed and so the bad habits into which
young people might fall will rob them of a measure of autonomy in moral choice. The
moral virtues, practices, and virtues that persons acquire will bear the stamp of the
moral habitat of which they are members. Moral virtue and its practice require acting
in concrete situations. It is not learned abstractly. The importance of inculcating good
moral habits has a long history, stretching back to the Greeks, with Aristotle arguing
that without good moral habits, a person cannot move to the next stage of moral devel-
opment and not only come to understand the good, but also become committed to it.
Ozolins argues that there is, therefore, an important element in moral develop-
ment which is often overlooked and which he argues is crucial in moral education
and the development of moral persons and that is the moral environment in which
they are immersed. The kind of environment in which a child is raised will have an
enormous impact on the kind of moral individual he/she becomes and so it is evi-
dent that the practice of virtue is aided by the support of a moral community with
a commitment to that practice. Such a community will be committed to the pursuit
of virtue, and recognize that members of the community need to support one
another to strive to create a good and just society
and that the resolution of such clashes, even where it is possible at all, can only be gained at great cost
to one’s self and to other people.