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I wrote the article
below in response to John Howard's (the
Prime Minister of Australia) criticism
that Australian Public Schools are too
politically correct and are value-neutral.
He says that is why more and more parents
are sending their children to private
schools.
The very notion of any
school being value-neutral is nonsense. It
is impossible for people to live life
without some form of expression of their
values.
Values are like the
settings on a plane’s autopilot.
Changing the settings (values) changes the
course the plane takes. When all is well,
the autopilot is left to guide the plane
in a particular direction, however, when
weather conditions change for the worse,
it is necessary to override the settings
(values) to steer a different course. For
example, if a pilot observes that there is
a severe storm ahead, the passengers would
not be very happy with the pilot if she
didn’t change the values (settings) of
the autopilot to steer around the
storm.
So it is with peoples'
values. Peoples' values are like the settings
on our personal autopilot, our values
steer us on a particular course through
life - changing our values changes
the path we take. If we say, there is
only one set of values that should guide
all children - i.e. the traditional values
taught by private schools - as John
Howard, Peter Costello and others seem to
suggest, then our children could run the
risk of heading down a path that may not
be appropriate for their wellbeing or that
of society.
The key skills that
schools ought to be teaching children
are:
-
how to identify the
range of value choices that are
available,
-
how to determine
what values are important to them as
individuals,
-
how to explore why
these values are important,
-
how to change their
values if they believe a change will
create a better life for them and
others, and
-
how to explore the
consequences of living their values to
the full, given that their values
shape those of society.
The last point is very
important, as Stephen Covey says in Seven
Habits of Highly Effective People,
"even thieves have values, it’s how
we live our values that matters."
It seems appropriate to
finish with one more quote:
Teaching
values, recently a political theme,
can’t be done.
So, while the candidate for office
declares, "We need to teach our
kids family values!" the fact is
that our
children form their own values. Most
often, they have very good values.
What they need to learn is how to use
their true values as a basis for making
decisions.
Let’s adjust our political
candidate’s talking point to say,
"We need to teach our kids how to
organize their lives around their own
values!" While this doesn’t sound
as good on the stump, and our candidate
may lose the election by a landslide, at
least our politician was honest. (Robert
Fritz)
Or as I like to say
myself, "Being forced to live someone
else's values is tantamount to
slavery!"
* Paul
Chippendale is Fellow in Values &
Ethics at the International Management
Centres Association. He is also
coordinator of the Minessence Group, an
organisation dedicated to helping people
and organisations create contexts for
success though identifying and living
their values to the full. |