The Australian Values Education Framework: No justification required?

Dr Sue Knight & Dr Carol Collins It has long been argued that education should be directed towards both individual and social ends.1 In the West, the social end has been identified with the development of a just democracy, so that the fundamental goal of education is seen as one of equipping individuals to function optimally as members of a just democratic society. Now however these social and individual ends are to be spelled out, it seems clear that optimal individual functioning, as well as just democracy, requires individuals to be disposed to exercise sound moral judgment. This finds expression in the 1999 Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling: National Goal 1 When students leave school they should (1.3) have the capacity to exercise judgment in matters of morality, ethics and social justiceto make rational and informed decisions about their own lives and to accept responsibility for their actions .

(http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/policy_initiatives_reviews/national_goals_for_schooli ng_in_the_twenty_first_century.htm )

In the Adelaide declaration then, we haven acknowledgement that moral (or values) education is a critical part of Australian education in the years of compulsory schooling. Subsequently though, governmental advisory committees have pointed to what they see as a values vacuum in our schools. They have suggested that a number of factors, particularly the move away from religion and the growth of multi-culturalism in Australia, have led teachers and schools to shy away from values education for fear of indoctrination. In 2002, in response to such concerns, the Ministerial Council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) called for a large-scale study to inform the development of a framework and set of principles for Values Education in Australian Schools. The study (which involved a literature review, and contributions

IntheWest,theargumentgoesbackatleastasfarasPlato.SeehisRepublic,translatedby H.D.P.Lee,PenguinClassics,1955.
1

from a range of consultants as well as surveys of school community groups) identified two main approaches to values education: 1. Character education, in which values education is seen as the teaching of societal values). & 2. A development of moral reasoning approach, in which students not only engage in values clarification exercises but are also are taught the skills required for making moral judgments or decisions. The study pointed to the possibility of employing a synthesis of both approaches, but importantly, it also identified a set of nine Common Australian Values (see below), and in so doing, set the direction for a common values approach to moral education in Australian schools. In response to the study, the federal government has provided funding of $29.7 million, to implement this common values programme.(
http://www.valueseducation.edu.au/values/ )

Nine Values for Australian Schooling 1. Care and Compassion Care for self and others 2. Doing Your Best Seek to accomplish something worthy and admirable, try hard, pursue excellence 3. Fair Go Pursue and protect the common good where all people are treated fairly for a just society 4. Freedom Enjoy all the rights and privileges of Australian citizenship free from unnecessary interference or control, and stand up for the rights of others 5. Honesty and Trustworthiness Be honest, sincere and seek the truth 6. Integrity Act in accordance with principles of moral and ethical conduct, ensure consistency between words and deeds 7. Respect Treat others with consideration and regard, respect another persons point of view 8. Responsibility Be accountable for ones own actions, resolve differences in constructive, non-violent and peaceful ways, contribute to society and to civic life, take care of the environment 9. Understanding, Tolerance and Inclusion Be aware of others and their cultures, accept diversity within a democratic society, being included and including others

While those of us who have been working in this area for many years welcome this emphasis on and support for moral education, we want to argue that the Australian Common Values approach has some serious shortcomings. We would argue that, as it stands, it cannot succeed in meeting the central goal of Values education, that is, the goal of developing in students the capacity and disposition to exercise judgment in matters of morality, ethics and social justice. We need to take a closer look at the set of Values for Australian Schooling, in order to make our point. In fact, well make a number of points. First, the values listed are vague to the point of being empty. It is this very vagueness which lends some initial plausibility to the claim that these are values held in common. But even a cursory examination is enough to dispel this illusion. The problem here is not that the values are described by very general terms. After all many very general terms are useful; terms like living thing or colour are examples of such terms, in that they distinguish fairly clearly, one set of objects from another (living from non-living things) or one set of properties from another (colours from shapes, eg). But the terms employed here to pick out the so-called values are not like this. Take, for example the term describing the third value, the term. Fair go, spelled out as treating people fairly for a just society. To be useful, the term must distinguish one set of behaviours from another. But now suppose we try to work out which ways of treating people fit under the descriptor treating people fairly, and which do not. This might well form the basis of a classroom exercise. Lets suppose now, that we set our students such an exercise. More particularly, suppose the task we set is that of deciding which, among a number of possible teacher behaviours would count as fair, and which unfair. Carol recently held such a discussion with a group of 6/7 students in a northern areas school. Some children claimed that it was unfair that a small group of students in the class received additional help in maths and English lessons, arguing that treating people fairly meant treating them equally. Other students disagreed, arguing that many of the students granted extra attention found English really difficult, so that they needed extra help to manage the work. Yet others argued that these students werent the only ones who needed help with literacy, and that what was unfair was that all those who needed extra help werent given it. Someone suggested that this would cost too much. This led another student to say that at a previous school her year 7 teacher

had simply ignored those who were not reading fluently, and concentrated on the clever ones -it was as though, she said, the teacher had just given up on us.2 In this discussion we see three conflicting ideas about what counts as a fair go; three different and conflicting ways of distinguishing fair treatment from unfair treatment. And each of these ideas has wide currency within the general community. 1. Fair treatment involves treating people equally; (We only have to think of Pauline Hansons One Nation party) 2. Fair treatment involves treating people unequally, with more resources going to those in greater need; (The Labour Partys now-abandoned education policy from the last election) 3. Fair treatment involves treating people unequally, with more resources going to those who are more deserving/ have more merit. Clearly, someone who holds the first, equal treatment view will consider that treating people in either of the alternate ways mentioned here would constitute unfair treatment, and so would not fit under the descriptor fair go. There is no common notion of fair go in the way in which there is a common notion of living things or colour. Similarly, the second value on the list, i.e. doing your best is defined as seeking to accomplish something worthy and admirable, but what achievements count as worthy or admirable is not spelled out. Does it include making money at the expense of others? Clearly, some members of our society would say yes, while others would say no. Again, it is doubtful whether there is a common notion of worthy achievement. Or what about the value (value 6) of Integrity, defined as acting in accordance with the principles of moral and ethical conduct. But what might these principles be? Are they religious principles? Are they principles handed down within the family from one generation to another? Are they derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Again, we find considerable difference, rather than common agreement,

SeeCollins,C(2005)Educationforajustdemocracy:theroleofethicalinquiry,Doctoral Thesis,UniversityofSouthAustralia,fordescriptionsofotherclassroombasedethical inquirysessions.

about what these principles are and why we should adopt them/ where they come from. To summarise: A number at least of the so-called common values are empty, open to conflicting interpretations. Yet, to prescribe one of these interpretations over another is to abandon commonality. Even were we to succeed in identifying a well-defined set of common values at a local level, that is at the level of a school community - and this is the task schools have been set in the second stage of the National Values Education initiative - two grave difficulties remain. The first is this: The Common Values Approach clearly depends on getting the set of values right. What we might expect then, is to find detailed statements purporting to justify the set of values we end up with. But we find little or no attempt at justification either within the government documents or their professional development materials, or at the local implementation level ie at the school level. Our concern here is that in the absence of justification, the Common Values approach amounts to no more than an appeal to a moral authority. The dangers of mere appeal to moral authority cannot be underestimated. And it is surely dangerous to model this practice to our students, to encourage them to adopt values without justification.

Now for the second and perhaps most obvious difficulty: Equipping students with a set of values is not in itself sufficient to develop their capacity to exercise moral judgement, just as equipping students with the rules of football is not in itself sufficient to develop their ability to play football. I guess it seems clear in the case of footy but to make the case for morals, lets turn to another classroom example. Suppose Im a year 5 teacher; that Im convinced of the worth of both the values Honesty and Care and Compassion and committed to working to develop an appreciation of these values in students. Weve recently been focusing on these values, and the children have been encouraged to put them into practice in their daily lives. Now Ali, has to make a moral decision. To her dismay, she is invited by a classmate to play after school. Understanding the value of care and compassion, she is about to respond with a lie, that she cant because she has a dentist 5

appointment. But then, she recalls their classroom activities on the importance of being honest and wonders whether she should simply say No thanks, I can think of far more interesting things to do. In this instance, the values of compassion/caring and honesty clash head on. To make a decision, Ali needs a principle or procedure to follow here, to help her work out which of these values to override in this particular case. But the set of values shes been taught contains no such principle or procedure. Here is another example. On the bus with friends, on the way to work, someone in your group loudly protests that we shouldnt allow Muslims to settle in Australia because they are too different from us violence is rife in their culture and so on. Sitting across from you, is a man you know to be a Muslim refugee in Australia on a temporary visa. Do you stand up for his rights (as the Australian value of Freedom directs you to do, or do you nod and say simply, Youre entitled to your point of view thus respecting his opinion as the Australian Value of Respect directs you to do? Again, we are faced with a clash of values, and no guiding principle or procedure for working out which value is more important in this case. The hard moral decisions are just those that result from a clash of values. This is why, in itself, no set of values is sufficient to deliver a moral judgement. If we want values or moral education to equip students to make moral judgements, we need to supplement the Common Values approach with a focus on a set of principles or procedures to guide us in dealing with clashes of values. We want now to consider what these guiding principles and procedures might look like. Of course, one line of thought has it that this is an impossible task. After all, people will disagree over whether or not Ali should lie, so saving her classmates feelings, or tell the truth, so hurting her classmates feelings. It is likely then, that different people use different principles to resolve value clashes, to decide what ought to be done. What should these principles be? And how are we to decide on them? Here, we are faced clearly with the problem that bedevils any approach to values or moral education: the fact of moral disagreement, both within and across cultures. I judge torture to be always wrong, but many others, including other Western governments, judge that it is sometimes justified. I make the judgement that abortion is morally right many others in this society take it to be morally wrong, tantamount 6

to murder. In our society, infanticide is judged to be morally wrong, while there are other cultures who have judged it to be morally right. Who is to say which of these conflicting judgements count as sound judgements, and which do not? On what grounds could we make this call? Perhaps we simply cannot say. If we disagree over a factual matter (say) whether smoking is harmful, we at least agree on the sort of evidence that would decide the matter: it is factual evidence about the effect of tobacco on lungs and blood vessels. But it is less clear what kind of evidence we could appeal to, to show (say) that abortion is sometimes morally right. Perhaps there isnt any evidence to draw upon here. And in the absence of evidence, perhaps we have to simply accept the fact of moral difference? Surely we cannot condemn another individuals or another cultures moral values, just because they differ from ours? Surely we cannot say that the customs of another society are morally inferior to our own, just because they are different? And indeed, the emphasis within current educational policy and curriculum, on being aware of others and their cultures, and accepting (even respecting) diversity and others points of view, make us wary of saying that some moral judgements are better than others. For example, we feel wary about holding that whaling is morally wrong, when it is considered right in Japanese and Norwegian cultures. We feel wary perhaps about holding that girls and boys should have the same opportunities and rights within the broader community, when this clashes with the cultural values within our schools. We are wedded pretty firmly to the notion of tolerance, of respecting all values. In other words, we are headed in the direction of moral relativism. Indeed the vagueness of Common Australian Values appears to reflect this relativist approach. But surely a focus on examples such as racism, slavery or bullying shows us what is wrong with relativism. Surely these are examples of situations in which we want to exercise particular moral judgements, and indeed, in which we want students to exercise particular moral judgements. We want our students to judge that racism or child abuse or bullying are morally wrong. Why do we feel confident about encouraging these judgements in such situations? Given this degree of confidence, it might be worth asking again whether there is any evidence we can point to, to justify our moral decisions? Can we find

evidence that for example, bullying is wrong? And surely we can; the evidence lies in the harm/suffering bullying causes. We can generalise from this example:

Morality is grounded in human good and harm (suffering), AND Human beings share common capacities for suffering and for happiness Other species have the capacity for suffering too consider all sentient beings. Sentient beings are beings that suffer, and humans form a special class of sentient beings.

These are the general principles which must underlie any set of values, the principles which must form the basis of a moral decision making procedure. They do not in themselves deliver a moral decision making process of course. But we can also draw on some other well established elements of ethical reasoning, such as considering as fully as possible the consequences of ones behaviour, taking circumstances into account and ensuring consistency between ones beliefs and between ones beliefs and actions. By paying close attention to such elements, we can identify a set of capacities which are necessary for the making of reasoned moral judgments. Such capacities include: Understanding others interests Being aware of ones own needs, both emotional and physical Caring about other peoples feelings, so that one has sympathy for others needs Considering as fully as possible the consequences of ones behaviours (taking all things into consideration before acting, including effect on others, on oneself, ones character and habits and the direction of ones life, as well as on the institutions of the society of which one is part) Distinguishing like from unlike situations, typical from a-typical situations3

And so on
3

MatthewLipmandiscussestheelementsofethicalreasoninginhisPhilosophyinthe Classroom(1980),TempleUniversityPress,Philadelphia.

Surely it is such capacities which any values education programme must seek to develop. And more than this, children must be given opportunities to practice and refine the use of these capacities and to understand and appreciate their value. It is only in this way that students will begin to develop a disposition to engage widely in reasoned moral decision making. It seems odd then, that this approach to Values Education has not been given more careful consideration given the strength of these theoretical arguments, the fact that we have at hand educational resources which would support teachers to implement the approach (indeed, that a dialogue-based ethical inquiry approach to Values Education is already being implemented successfully here and elsewhereremember our earlier example of Carols classroom work) and given also that there is a growing body of empirical evidence, including evidence from local studies, which indicates that such an approach is effective in developing individuals capacities and dispositions for moral reasoning. In summing up, we would argue that it is not too late for this ethical inquiry approach to Values Education to be taken up alongside the existing Common Values approach. Were this to happen, the teachers role would change from that of adjusting the child to society, to one of educating children in such a fashion that they can eventually come to shape society for the better.

This paper was presented as part of The Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies seminar on Values and Ethics across the Curriculum Three Current Perspectives, Wednesday June 7th, Mawson Lakes Campus, University of South Australia. Sue Knight, Carol Collins and Fred Dorr are currently working on a fuller version of the paper which will be made available in the near future.

Dr Sue Knight School of Education, Magill Phone: 8302 4550 Email: Sue.Knight@unisa.edu.au Carol.Collins@unisa.edu.au

Dr Carol Collins School of Education, Magill Phone: 8302 4106 Email: