Values-based Education… What Could Be Wrong With That?

[DrBlackbird]

Attended a talk at my uni by the new Pro VC Education whose vision for our education strategy is that it must be ‘values-based’. Caveat is our uni has swallowed the kool aid.

Got me thinking that not so many years ago, I’d have interpreted this vision in a positive light. That having and promoting ’values’ was a part of education. Admittedly, the values in my head would be tolerance, free speech, rigorous debate base on evidence and critical thought.

Now… I’m wondering if having a values based strategy was wrong all along? If ‘inclusive’ values has lead to the erosion of women’s sex based rights and neglect of consideration for some religious observances, not to mention the breathtaking lack of safeguarding for children and young people, should we avoid values as on objective?

Am thinking out loud here. I was going to post this in the academic common room threads, but thought FWR posters might have more to say on this question. Has anything value based always been contentious or is it increasingly contentious because of where we have got to with these putatively inclusive debates?

Yet when you enter the political world (small p) so much critical thinking and knowledge is thrown out, expertise dismissed, and it all replaced with ‘lived experience’

The trouble with 'values based' is that as a standalone phrase it is completely meaningless.

Yes. It means the same as "good-things-based" (assuming evil is not the aim of education). Vapid. A slogan.

When asking questions is "phobic" (unless they are of the "how can I be more kind?" type), however, slogan-based education is what you get.

There is nothing about ‘values’ per se that require them to be ‘good’

That's what they mean though. They are assuming the values are good.

Now if you'd all had nice values-led education, you wouldn't be here worrying everyone with this nasty argumentative critical thinking. You'd be smiling and clapping along like proper ladies. Share the values, girls! Get with the feely messages!

first you would need to define "Values-based Education" is it value for £ or value for as in behaviours and skill sets etc ?

They are definitely assuming that a value led education is a) good and b) we all share them. In part possibly because universities are being called to educate students to be aware of and learn to help respond to the ‘grand challenges’ facing the world. Does defending democracy have to be based on values? Perhaps if we can’t run away from values we ought to have an open conversation. Though I’m not convinced SMT are looking to listen.

Does defending democracy have to be based on values ?

yes because those values are the core of a democratic society

But reason and secularism are ideologies as well. IMO, it's the refusal to see this that has got liberal Western society into the convoluted position it's now in.

Defending democracy depends not only only given high value to democracy but also on accepting that people subscribe to a range of values, and that there is benefit in this.

Dictatorships tend to revolve around a single set of values that are imposed on others

Truth, integrity and justice are all values as well though.
Not just the "be kind" stuff.

Inventing our own values is exactly what has happened. Judah-Christian values have been progressively undermined. Despite this for a long time we still had a cohesive national identity subscribing to things like ‘fairness’ and ‘duty’ - perhaps a hangover from the war. The last wartime generation has more or less died off so for the last 20 years or so a void has been deepening: no Christian values. No wartime values. What comes along? Identity, inclusion, kindness. People need something to believe in and in the absence of a more sophistication religion or philosophy, this is what they’ve gone for.

But ‘kindness’ rarely actually is. When people call out ‘be kind’ it is typically one directional demands that you sacrifice something to others with higher ‘value’

"Be kind" fails because in practice it means "go along with what someone wants", so it's not a viable strategy for narcissists, cluster B types, or just plain malicious actors.

The Christian golden rule, "do unto others as you would be done by" is better designed, because it doesn't demand that normal personalities submit to unreasonable demands from disordered ones. You don't have to go along with things you would not expect yourself.

I'd never really grasped that nuance previously, until realising exactly how badly the "be kind" formulation worked.

This is what I originally thought too. And sort of happily and blindly went along with that. Until, admittedly, the ‘inclusion’ values stretched to including biological males in female sex spaces. Made me pause to reflect on all ‘values’.

For example, what does justice mean? Whose justice? Maybe the problem is that these abstract values are more nebulous than a value of, say, academic debate and research. The latter may not even be values, more aims and objectives (though the commitment to them could be a value?).

I appreciate all these comments giving me food for thought.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

aka The Law of Unintended Consequences.

Democracy could be interpreted as mob rule. It only works while a significant chunk of voters cares about everyone, not just themselves. My brother said that of course he’ll vote for the person that will leave him better off. He’s had children since and I wonder if that’s changed him at all.

There are no such things as universal values. Judaeo Christian are often thought to be, but that’s because of 2,000 years of people promoting them.

In other cultures, marrying within the family to consolidate power and keep bloodlines pure has been a value. Sacrificing children to preserve the wisdom of elders has been a value.

Years ago I was in favour of prison for rehabilitation rather than punishment. But who decides who has been rehabilitated? Political prisoners staying in until they’ve reformed? Scary. Punishment was defined- 3 years, ten years, not ‘until I think you’ve reformed.’.

Motherhood and apple pie.

King and country.

Blood and soil.

All values. Of a sort.

Christian values have changed too. It used to be ‘God is Just’ but then ‘Justice’, ‘Power’, ‘Wisdom’, ‘Omniscience’ were discarded from many mainstream churches. It is now often just ‘God is Love’ and from that we have moved to accepting of all things because a loving God wouldn’t say ‘no’ would they? And then that fades into vague niceness and God becomes unnecessary - which is where the Church of England and the Church of Scotland now find themselves as they wonder where their followers went…

That’s not my experience, @SaffronSpice , but I guess we all notice different things.
Love your neighbour as you love yourself is social justice rather than being nice. Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength (?) rather than simply God loves you, Sin no more etc.

Justice is the Lord’s, and do not judge…

Sadly people always find what they look for, in the bible and each other.

I am not talking about the Bible, I am talking about churches and the way they express Christian values. And yes I know there are churches that don’t follow this. But there are a lot that do and a lot within the church hierarchy of the CoE.

I also dispute that social justice is ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Much of the SJ movement these days is about hierarchies of worth.

Secularism is an interesting one, because it's really about stepping back from any particular ideology, rather than a proper belief system as such. I think some of the confusion we see now about these issues is because people think secularism means maintaining non-religious belief systems, but it really doesn't mean that at all.

t's a political tool for mediating a society with more than one belief system. Not something that an individual can believe in as a foundational view of reality.

A real question though is, how dissimilar can those belief systems be for secularism to work?

An article about the decline in Scottish Education. I thought it interesting and relevant to this discussion that they compare the awful ‘curriculum for excellence’ based on skills and wellbeing, with those based on knowledge. And how it is the poor and lowest achievers who suffer more from a lack of knowledge

https://reformscotland.com/2023/12/pisa-2022-in-scotland-declining-attainment-and-growing-social-inequality-lindsay-paterson/

Just realised my son's school uses values, and uses the term, as a basis for their discipline system; 'resilience' is one. (Much needed as the system is often unreasonable.)

But it feels a tad coercive, as they have a big focus on different values and hand out prizes and sweets etc for pupils who show good examples of what ever value they're focussing on.

There's also trend for schools to have a set of words that describe what their pupils will be like or what they want for their pupils. Which can go in all sorts of directions.

Now I’m beginning to worry about values full stop.

Thinking about that road to hell. But we obviously need - positive - values to live by… don’t we? Even then, I’m not convinced that an educational strategy ought to be values based. That feels high risk in how quickly values become a cloak for something dark including Warrior’s DS school and esp when people don’t admit or can’t see their more negative impulses.

Definitely the value for a university is not truth but perhaps questioning. And that’s not because I see truth in a post modernistic relative live my truths kind of way. I do believe in gravity and that the earth is sphere-like, but because our understanding is so limited by our cognitive abilities and scientific capabilities.