Values education has become a high priority in the Philippine educational system. It aims to develop students' social, moral, and spiritual values through curriculum changes and by making values education a distinct learning experience. Values refer to the priorities and principles that guide a person's actions and enhance their life and relationships. Values education focuses on transforming learners by starting with self-reflection and understanding one's own values as well as respecting others and living interdependently. It addresses the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development of each student with the goal of fostering growth and change.
Values education has become a high priority in the Philippine educational system. It aims to develop students' social, moral, and spiritual values through curriculum changes and by making values education a distinct learning experience. Values refer to the priorities and principles that guide a person's actions and enhance their life and relationships. Values education focuses on transforming learners by starting with self-reflection and understanding one's own values as well as respecting others and living interdependently. It addresses the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development of each student with the goal of fostering growth and change.
Values education has become a high priority in the Philippine educational system. It aims to develop students' social, moral, and spiritual values through curriculum changes and by making values education a distinct learning experience. Values refer to the priorities and principles that guide a person's actions and enhance their life and relationships. Values education focuses on transforming learners by starting with self-reflection and understanding one's own values as well as respecting others and living interdependently. It addresses the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor development of each student with the goal of fostering growth and change.
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.