THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 12, 1994 TAG: 9412120066
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
Don't steal. Respect your parents. Work hard. Play fair.
Americans probably agree on most of the lessons children should be taught. But we have an awfully hard time talking about it.
``To tell you the truth, I can't remember the last time I discussed my values with someone,'' said Susan Vaughan, a substitute teacher in Franklin. ``In most social conversations, everything's surface; nothing goes into any depth.''
Starting this week, a group of educators from Virginia Beach will try to help.
In a nationally organized project, members of Phi Delta Kappa will sponsor town meetings in Portsmouth and Virginia Beach to talk about values. The first will be Wednesday night at Regent University in Virginia Beach.
The meetings are designed to look for answers to three basic questions:
Are there values on which we can all agree?
Who's teaching them?
Should they be taught in schools?
These seem like reasonable questions, but the Kappans admit theirs is an ambitious task. Bringing up ``values'' is an easy way to start an argument in America's politically polarized atmosphere.
As Chesapeake minister Reginald Woodhouse put it, ``Sometimes in little groups of people who know each other well, they might voice their opinions. But not out in the community. They're a little afraid to do so.''
Some people say they feel left out of values discussions because only those with the most extreme views get public attention.
``People are afraid to get themselves into a situation,'' Vaughan said. ``They're afraid to be labeled. Maybe even more nowadays than it used to be.''
Phi Delta Kappa hopes to produce a series of calm, reasoned discussions about these highly charged topics.
Pat Nash, principal of Great Neck Middle School in Virginia Beach, was trained by the national Kappa organization to run the town meetings. ``We're looking for what we can agree upon, not what we don't agree on,'' she said.
Alan Arroyo, associate dean of the school of education at Regent, steadfastly believes that reasonable people can sit down and talk about values.
``It's not being talked about in the kind of forum that PDK wants to create,'' Arroyo said. ``It's being talked about over lunch, in the coffeehouse, maybe in the teachers' lounge. But I don't think groups are getting together.''
He acknowledged that the very word ``values'' is loaded.
``With some people, if you say the term `values,' all of a sudden they think of `values clarification' programs, and on the other end of the spectrum there are people who immediately think religious values,'' he said.
Yet Nash and Phi Delta Kappa think there is a large, common set of values worth exploring.
``There are certain values,'' Nash said, ``that if you believe in them, you teach them just by how you act - honesty, tolerance, the Golden Rule, if you will.''
She's curious to see what will happen at the town meetings. Phi Delta Kappa prepared a list for discussion that includes such seemingly basic attributes as: ``ambitious, hard-working, aspiring''; ``broad-minded, open-minded, tolerant''; ``capable, competent, effective''; ``cheerful, lighthearted, joyful''; and ``clean, neat, tidy.''
Organizers say they are seeking diverse views through the whole series of meetings and believe they will be successful.
The flashpoint for teaching values is the schools. It is so hot a potato that Phi Delta Kappa decided not even to attempt putting the values survey in front of students. Instead, a survey of teachers will ask what they think students would say.
It was the only method Kappa could think of to get the information about students without directly asking them.
``The feeling was, `We're gonna stir up a hornet's nest if we try that,' '' said Jack Frymier, one of Phi Delta Kappa's national coordinators of the project. ``School people are constantly being battered by politicians or the media or citizens. So a lot of them are just hesitant to deal with very controversial things.''
However, Nash said, there's no doubt that some values already are taught in the schools. At her school, for instance, there is a ``zero tolerance'' policy toward cursing or aggression by students.
``As long as we have human beings in schools, we're going to have values taught in the schools,'' she said.
The hard part, she said, is finding a way to discuss and decide which values they should be. MEMO: The Kappa project will last a year, with other parts involving
teachers and local research. Local and national reports will be issued
at the end.
TOWN MEETING
Where: Room 228, classroom building, Regent University.
When: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.
To take part: Call Pat Nash, 463-2434.
by CNB