VALUES EDUCATION

THRUST: A CHALLENGE
TO PHILIPPINE
EDUCATION

Jezzie Mae P. Pura

BEED – 3RD Year
Why Values Education?
 While speaking to a group of educators,
Pres. Corazon Aquino stressed that ,
“Educators are instrumental in the making and
breaking of national destiny.” She said that
through education, the nation can continue the
revolution started at EDSA in 1986. According
to her, it is the concern and intent of her
administration to reach out to the grassroots
and focus on the education of the youth. It is
time for the nation to keep up the momentum
of spiritual and moral renewal.
In the present administration of the
Department of Education, Culture and
Sports, “the major concern of the new
leadership in the DECS are teacher’s
welfare, upgrading of instruction,
reorganization of the Department , and
values education.”
 Moral recovery and the “building of
the Filipino people, and the rebuilding
of the nation” is also the subject of the
moral regeneration program of the
government as contained in a paper
entitled “Moral Recovery Program:
Building a Nation , Building a People”
submitted to Congress by Sen. Leticia
Shahani.
Senator Angara, chairman of the Senate
Committee on Education once stressed
following:

“We can only promise the development of

our nation on solid education. We will need
money, materials, and machine with which to
improve our nation.
However , we must have the most important
vital ingredient in any transformation
endeavor… and that means PEOPLE, people
with commensurate skills, people with
necessary values, people who are willing to
subordinate their selfish interest for the
common good, people who are guided by a
common vision, and people who are inspired
by a sense of mission.
Introduction to Values
Education
 Values Education has been introduced to the
educational system of the country. In fact , values
education now occupies one of the highest
priorities in the educational system. The New
Elementary School Curriculum deals with the
development of social, moral, and spiritual values,
while the 1998 Secondary Educational
Development Program includes Values Education
as a distinct cognitive-based learning experiences
for the values clarification and development .
Conceptual
Meaning of
Values
 As defined by Brian Hall in his book, The
Personal Discernment Inventory published in
1980, values refer to the major priorities that
one chooses to act on, and that creatively
enhances his life and the lives of those with
whom he associates with. It is, therefore,
something chosen from alternatives, is acted
upon, and enhances creative interpretation
and development of human personality.
 According to Brightman in his book
entitled Person and Reality: Introduction
to Metaphysics, values are ideals and
principles by which man lives. Value means
whatever is actually liked, prized, esteemed,
desired, approved, and enjoyed by anyone
at anytime. Hence, value is an exciting
realization of one’s desire.
 To sociologists and anthropologists, values
refer to those criteria according to which a
community judges the importance of person,
patterns, goals, and other sociological
aspects of the community. They refer to
those which people consider important and
worthwhile and according to which they lend
to standardize their behavior.
 It is a long this though that values, which are
created by the individual, must be
differentiated from morals, which are produced
by culture. Culture can be seen here as a system
of consensually validated social expectations
deriving from the social expectations diverse
individuals. Morals provide the social standards
differentiating the good from the bad, the
correct from the wrong, and the desirable from
the undesirable.
 According to Kingsley Davis in his book,
Human Society (1973), the source of values lies
chiefly on the sentiments, broad backgrounds of
feelings which make something seem valuable
and others not valuable. Such feelings arise
partly from internalized norms. The transition
from sentiments to value, to end, is of increasing
specificity. In this sense, the end is the particular
application of a sentiment or value to a given
situation as perceived by the actor.
 Values are seen growing from a person’s
experiences it is, therefore, expected that
different experiences would give rise to
different values. Any person’s values would
be modified as his experiences accumulate
change. Values are, therefore, not static.
They change with time.
Personal
transformation
Needed
Recently, I had the chance of participating in a training
and credited course on values education. On its last
day, we were asked to print in a poster our greatest
insight in life, or plainly, the greatest event that ever
happened in our life to be displayed in what the
facilitators called “Values Gallery.” after some
moments of reflection, I made the following:

At last, I’ve found my own self.

The old has gone and the new has come .
And this is possible because of my
Faith in the Lord.
In making this life statement, I recalled Paul, after being
converted into a life in Christ, gad to forget the past, but
had to face the present and the years to come. And this
reminds me of a close friends of mine who always says: “
Each day is a new day… Today is my chance to become a
better person. The change must happen just right in
me.” And he defines it this way:

As a teacher, I have to continue growing up;

As a administrator, I have to continue growing up;
As a parent, I have to continue growing up;
Really, life is continuous process of growing up.
 It is long this light that the school must serve
not only as a center of information where
information is conveyed (cognitive
development), or a place where the process of
formation happens (affective development),
but it must also serve as a venue where real
transformation is experienced by the learner
(behavioral, action-oriented development).
Random
Thoughts on
Values Education
 Due to the indispensability of the process of
transformation in values education, the learner
has to start from his own self.

1. Values education, therefore, starts from one’s

own self. As the old saying goes, “ Charity must
always begin at home” (although it should not
stop just there). As Leo Buscaglia aptly puts it in
his book Living, Loving and Learning, “ perhaps
the greatest statement of love is to be able to say,
‘I am becoming, not only for myself, but for
everyone.’’’
2. Values education deals with the study of
human life. At each stage of our lives, we will be
required to make personal adjustment
regarding our changing world as we engage
more and more in the active process of acquiring
it. It is in this way that each of us becomes a
unique patterned unit continually being
generated as part of a constantly changing
universe. Our main challenge in this process is
to uncover, develop, and hold on to our unique
selves.
3. Values education involves journeying back to
one’s own family. At times, we have taken our
family for granted. Oftentimes, we presume our
family member will understand us. Many of us
seem to forget that it is in our own family where
the journey begins. The F-A-M-I-L-Y (Father and
Mother I Love You) is the most fundamental unit
to which every individual belongs, and what the
1896 Constitutions describes to be the basic
autonomous social institution.”
4. Values education respects the view that man is
not only a being in this world, on this world and at
this world. He is a being through others, and
through God. Have you ever heard the sound of
one hand clapping? That is the sound of one man
in joyful celebration of himself. As some
sociologists put it, man is certainly the most
helpless being. You cannot live without the others.
You don’t need to do anything different. Just be
you. And you will realize, you cannot live alone.
And it is in living with others that man learns to
love and be loved.
5. Values education deals with the purpose of
human life. Have we ever asked: What is the
purpose of my existence? When we met a new
person, it is a chance to touch and be touch by
each other. This is the experience-reflection
cycle- the total person experience – reflection
cycle. Dr. Lourdes Quisumbing, former DECS
secretary, had the following to say concerning
values education:
- Loves begins with loving ourselves as the
greatest gift that god has given us.
- This is the virtue that each one should try to
possess. The virtue of being ourselves, the
ability to accept others not as perfect people,
but as people who are learners, people who
care, and people who are willing to grow.
- Mere knowledge is not the answer. Knowledge
must become enflamed with love. This is the
main concern of values edcation
Man, the
Factors/Center of
Values Education
 Any framework on values education has to
center on the human person. As accepted by
many, any undertaking on development must
center on the human person. Man, who is not
a simple organism, for he is a composite of
body, mind, and spirit. He has his needs in all
these levels of his existence. He has needs and
appetites that are physical, psychological or
intellectual, and spiritual. Frustration at any
one of these level can produce agony in the
whole organism.
 Man, therefore has to be respected as a
being who can THINK as a person, a being
who can FEEL as a person, and a being who
can ACT as a person. It is these processes of
thinking (cognitive or acquiring knowledge,
feeling ( affective or forming attitudes and
values), and acting ( psychomotor or
acquiring skills) that every teacher must
address herself to.
Values Education
Involves Change
Values education has to involve change.
Change radiates in every moment of man’s
being. This means other person engaging
you… with a contract that touches the
innermost relationship with the person.
This process starts with one’s personal
growth when he allows himself to be true to
himself, and to be genuine to others.