Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 16, 1990 TAG: 9007160199
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At a recent hearing of the National Commission on Children in Washington, D.C., there was a broad consensus that schools aren't doing enough to teach values.
Schlafly attacked "value-neutral" schools through which "children are cut loose from the values and standards" they ought to live by.
Buchanan said schools are not adequately imparting values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This country, he said, places too low a priority on obligations of citizenship.
Both are right.
Some say the proper place for teaching values is in the family. Families are the best place for that, of course, and certainly the dominant influence. But, as one witness - Gary David Goldberg, creator of the "Family Ties" television series - noted at the Capitol Hill hearings last week: "We can't keep punishing our families for not being Ozzie and Harriet," the couple who headed the wholesome TV family in the '50s and '60s.
Americans rightly long for the days of strong communities, nurturing neighborhoods and traditional families. They should strive to revive them. Schools can never be a substitute family, never compensate for the deficiencies of society outside school walls. Even so, if young people today are to grow up strong and righteous, schools will have to play a larger role in helping to form their values.
Schools should not be afraid to do so explicitly. Court decisions correctly prohibit religious inculcation. And of course there is disagreement about which values should be taught. Schlafly and Buchanan might have different curricula in mind. Surely, though, most people can agree on some values: that crime, for instance, teen-age pregnancy and drug abuse are bad, that voting is good.
Beyond the obvious values, the most valuable lesson of all is the importance and practice of making judgments, of sifting values and arriving at reasoned decisions. Such teaching does not require the imposing on students of particular values, to which some parents might have objections. Nor does it require the tying of lessons to particular religions or ideology.
Trying to indoctrinate students with memorized commandments doesn't work anyway. Trying to teach them how to think critically, to think for themselves, to question what they're told, to resist peer pressure - that sort of education can prove more useful than anything else kids learn in school.
Barry Zuckerman, director of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Boston City Hospital and one of the more liberal members of the 36-member National Commission on Children, said at the hearings that while he agrees values are important, he fears that talk about them could become a substitute for direct services to children, such as improved medical care and nutrition programs.
Such programs are vital, but they are no substitute for values. As Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, a witness at the hearing, put it: "For young people growing up in otherwise unfavorable circumstances, values pave the road out of poverty and toward prosperity and fulfillment." Government largess won't suffice.
If schools can help teach values - especially critical reasoning, self-esteem and assertiveness - then youngsters will be more likely to assume responsibility for their own fates. And eventually, they'll pass along those values to their children. That's the American way - what Schlafly and Buchanan want, what everyone else should want, what the schools can help set in motion.
by CNB