http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Core-values-said-to-skirt-real-world/2005/04/14/1113251739398.html
Core values said to skirt real world
By Linda Doherty, Education Editor
April 15, 2005
The nine values that Australian schools will study from this year were a
collection of "apple pie" words that would not help students analyse
current and emerging issues, a British values education expert said
yesterday.
Peter Vardy, vice-principal of the specialist theology and philosophy
Heythrop College at the University of London, said the Federal
Government's string of values now mandatory for 3.3 million students
needed to be developed into a wider educational setting.
Students had to grapple with complex issues, such as the war in Iraq,
refugees, sexual morality and genetic engineering, but schools were not
equipping them with the ethical and "thinking" skills to argue, identify
and critique their own values.
"These issues cannot be resolved by apple pie words like 'fairness' or
'tolerance'," Dr Vardy yesterday told the Dialogue Australasia
conference on values education at Sydney's Newington College.
"One in three Australian girls will abort during their life; one in 10
of them has chlamydia by the time they are 17.
"This is the real world in which young people live and if values
education is to mean anything, then this is the world that values
education needs to address.
"The Australian Government's proposals for values education lack almost
any rigour. The rhetoric cannot easily be challenged but the content
beneath it is remarkably empty."
Brian Hill, emeritus professor of education at Murdoch University, said
the Government's list of values were mainly moral values and should be
widened to include aesthetic, socio-cultural, economic, spiritual,
interpersonal and political values. Teaching moral values in isolation
"smacks of a desire to domesticate growing learners rather than to
liberate them", he said.
After a generation of post-modernism where every opinion was considered
valid, students had been left to become "their own Socrates and invent
their own framework of values".
But in some religious schools values were being selectively taught
because the particular doctrine was "out of bounds, off limits" to
critical discussion, Professor Hill said.
Dr Vardy said the habit of not letting students question their school's
religion "may be particularly a problem in Sydney".
The Federal Government last year allocated $30 million over four years
for values education studies schools. Learning the nine values is a
condition of federal funding to schools.
The parliamentary secretary for education, Pat Farmer, defended the
values list and the accompanying teaching framework, which was agreed to
by state and territory education ministers. He said it would allow
students to practically "develop an understanding of compassion, courage
and tolerance".
The core values
Care and compassion
Doing your best
Fair go
Freedom
Honesty and trustworthiness
Integrity
Respect
Responsibility
Understanding, tolerance, inclusion
Source: Federal Department of Education, Science and Training
--
Clayton The Lord Of The Eternally Changing Name
AA# 1861
EAC Executive Officer In Charge Of Squandering And Wasting Valuable
Resources
"Religion is like horse laxative....if you swallow it, you'll be left
feeling empty and have a huge pile of ***** to deal with!" - Clayton
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