Where can you find a school with a foolproof formula for producing morally good persons? Nowhere. But can that kind of learning environment exist? Yes. But its administrators will have to get through the difficulty of answering first the philosophical question, “What does it take to be a morally good person?” before they decide what and how to teach to turn out morally educated — not only in thought but also in deed — persons.
It would be naïve for an education system to suspend its operations until such basic questions have been answered and tested to the satisfaction of the significant majority of stakeholders. Perhaps the answers to the matters raised, even if they are not fictitious ghosts, are ultimate solutions our unimaginably complex and perplexing social and cultural realities will never permit us to find and put into practice.
What, then, is our best option? There are many answers to this issue, but I will focus on the philosophy I used to determine the contents and pedagogies of the BSE Values Education degree program of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Education.
Twenty-eight years ago—yes, I remember the period and surrounding circumstances clearly—I ruminated, as a professor of philosophy of education, over the question, “What specialization should keep me busy till I reach my retirement age?” I decided to dedicate a considerable portion of my professional life to the study of Values Education, as its dominant proposed goals, contents, and pedagogies at the time, unlike in other stable subjects like Math and Science, were all contested answers to fundamental curricular questions. The substance and form then of Values Education basically consisted of the tacky but strangely popular doctrinal prescriptions on what and how to teach it. While Science and Math were teaching critical thinking, Values Education was busy getting the students to imbibe a pre-selected set of moral and doctrinal values, with the hope that the students would faithfully enact the values taught as codes of automatic responses to real-life problematic situations. Values Education then was nowhere near the type of education (e.g., learning how to think in science and math) in which regular critical thinking or problem-solving exercises sharpen students’ intellectual abilities.
In 2000, a Health Education colleague asked me to teach a course called “Approaches to Values Education,” as their pre-service majors needed it. As early as this period, I had already resolved the fundamental issues of Values Education in my head.
The main goal of Values Education, I conceded, and I still do, is the production of a morally good person. However, there is something more to the concept of a person than meets the eye. Many Values Education scholars overlook the importance of the dual sense of “person.” Like every Filipino, a person is both a citizen and an individual. Therefore, a good example of Values Education develops students into good citizens and individuals. Citizens here roughly means workers or members of the society, and individuals are the persons outside their future works. It is crucial to articulate the conceptual nuance of person to craft a well-balanced Values Education curriculum designed to produce good citizens and good individuals effectively.
I have no issue with the notion that good citizens are workers or persons who give their best to contribute to societal development. But one can be a productive citizen and at the same time a mentally broken, therefore unhealthy and unhappy, individual. A good case of Values Education can’t be too hooked on producing good citizens at the expense of the mental health of individual persons. Education about values related to good citizenship is vital, but equally important is education about values associated with the development of mentally healthy and happy individuals, the persons outside the world of work of the citizens in them. Otherwise, it should not baffle us to see the nation encumbered by too many Filipino individuals suffering from avoidable mental issues if the education system will sacrifice the welfare of the individual in favor of the production of the good citizen. Certainly, this is not the intent of the Values Education curriculum. However, when it is unwittingly poorly crafted, it could contribute significantly to the formation of an unfortunate crisis.
Values Education should be faithful to the meaning of the term “education,” which is significantly different from training. Just like humans, dogs can be trained to perform specific tasks, but only humans can be educated. To be educated is to be inhabited by a mind that is sincerely open to conversations about possibilities, has a broad understanding of the world and things in it, and finds delight in the prospect of deeper learning. This intellectual state can’t be attained without cultivating the learning environment into a fertile ground for the growth of students’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. This view of education is a vital component of my philosophy of Values Education.
The rope that should run through the gamut of values education for the citizen and the individual is critical thinking, which is a value in itself. Critical thinking is an intellectual value whose worth resides in its inherent power to enable the valuer to find the best possible answers to stubborn moral, ethical, aesthetic, practical, political, economic, cultural, and social problems that fall within the category of value issues. Some examples of these value issues are the following: death penalty, abortion, same-sex union, shift to federalism, use of nuclear energy, transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, human cloning, indiscriminate truth-telling, euthanasia, pre-marital sex, and divorce. Many of these examples are highly sensitive issues, but I don’t lose sight of the age-appropriacy criterion for selecting issues to be addressed at various grade levels in secondary schools. Such matters and other exercises that would require Values Education students to deploy their abilities to analyze, identify relevant issues, formulate a stand, premise a thesis, evaluate and challenge an argument, and draw tenable conclusions are only some of the elements of higher-order thinking whose habitual use will increase the likelihood of Values Education being able to contribute significantly in the production of good citizens and good individuals.
The morally good persons Values Education should produce are morally educated persons, ones with the intellectual capacity to deal with moral or value issues effectively.
I’ve been studying and teaching Values Education at UP for more than 16 years when I told Prof. Maricris Acido, a colleague in the Philosophy of Education area, that it was time to propose a degree program in Values Education at the UP College of Education. Guided by the critical thinking and problem-solving philosophy of Values Education, I promptly drafted the preliminary parts of the proposal. I prepared the initial list of courses to offer. Assistant Professor Abigail Thea Canuto eventually joined Dr. Acido and me in bringing the project to fruition. It took our small team two years to address all the comments, questions, and suggestions of the faculty members from other disciplines to their satisfaction.
When the BSE Values Education degree program proposal was finally institutionalized as a UP Diliman course on 20 January 2020, our team was oblivious to the fact that RA 11476 (GMRC and Values Education Law) was also in the works in Congress. Its approval, to our delight, as it was a huge unexpected bonus, on 13 July 2020 was an instant solid affirmation that we did the right thing in proposing the BSE Values Education degree program. Values Education will permanently stay in the basic education curriculum as mandated by the law.
Rightly, the framers of RA 11476 state that critical thinking and other intellectual values are essential components of Values Education (and GMRC). The fact that the Values Education and GMRC program developers tapped by the Department of Education did not neglect to include the promotion of intellectual values in the new subject areas was a most welcome finding. Being a new addition to the basic education curriculum, the contents and pedagogies stated in Values Education are by no means perfect, but after inspecting them, I’d say that they are a promising work in progress. I must add to this account of recent developments that the openness with which some well-placed DepEd personnel in Values Education and GMRC area have established a strong line of communication with the UP faculty of Values Education has led to partnerships that facilitate the steady and well-guided evolution of the discipline.
It is evident that the form of Values Education in view here inevitably responds to the standards of the PISA, especially in reading comprehension. However, the ability to understand texts is likewise vital in Math and Science, not only in the reading comprehension part of the test; otherwise, the student will do poorly in the entire PISA test.
I don’t mean to suggest that Values Education should sell itself as a PISA reinforcement discipline. The kind of Values Education before us is holistic or very broad in scope, as it requires analysis of key values or concepts in issues, reasoning, evaluative argument assessment, and the education to act according to the essence of a well-informed decision. The significant role this form of Values Education plays in our students’ PISA preparation can’t be helped. Therefore, its introduction to the curriculum should be welcomed with open arms.
