A friend of mine, in preparing his charges for Confirmation, was astonished when one young man in his class confessed that he saw nothing wrong with the values espoused by Adolph Hitler. “He was merely carrying out his dream”, said the soon-to-be confirmed youngster. Dreams may be beautiful, but they fall far short of that ideal when one man’s dream crushes the dreams of countless millions of other people.
This private view of morality is not altogether surprising after so many years of indoctrinating grade school students with an approach to ethics called “Values Clarification”. The aim of Values Clarification is to get students to look into themselves to discover what they value. The cardinal sin in the contemporary world of education is to impose values on students. In their freedom, students are encouraged to get in touch with their feelings and find their own values.
A Massachusetts teacher, an ardent proponent of values clarification, came face-to-face with the limitations of her method when she discovered that her sixth grade students valued cheating and wanted to be free to cheat on their tests. The students were simply being practical. Philosophy and ethics were furthest from their minds. Despite her commitment to values clarification, the teacher insisted that she would not abide cheating in her class: “I personally value honesty; although you may choose to be dishonest, I shall insist that we be honest in our tests here. In other areas of your life, you may have more freedom to be dishonest.”
A particular value, such as cheating, can hardly serve as a moral norm when it clashes with a more objective value, such as fairness. Children do get in touch with this more substantial and universal value when they notice that a playmate is cheating at cards or in sports. “Hey, you can’t do that, that’s not fair, it’s cheating,” they will clamor. On such occasions, children are being ethical and realistic. It is a sad commentary on values clarification that young students are asked to ignore their innate sense of morality and put practicality in its place. This is not education, but exploitation.
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