THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 15, 1994 TAG: 9412150453
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
People want to talk about values, all right. When local educators tried to get a group of 30 or 40 people together Wednesday night, nearly 50 showed up.
Two hours later, they were still talking. Even after the meeting's organizers had left the building at Regent University, people kept talking. When the press left, they were talking: about dysfunctional families, about the schools, about whether casino gambling might come here.
They were bunched around classroom tables in an otherwise quiet brick building off hectic Indian River Road. And rather than rushing home, they were just excited to be talking, even with people who had been strangers, about something other than sports and the weather.
``I think we could discuss this all night,'' said Leonardo Langford, 44, a computer science instructor at Tidewater Community College. Langford drove from Suffolk in rush-hour traffic to take part in the discussion, organized by the local chapter of Phi Delta Kappa.
The educators' association is running a series of meetings across the nation on values, trying to answer three questions: Are there values on which we can all agree? Who's teaching them? Should they be taught in schools?
More on that later. Listen first to some people who showed up, and why:
``It's one of those things people just don't talk about,'' Langford said. ``They'll talk about football and baseball, but when you bring up values, they get real sensitive.
``My feeling is, as long as you go in with an open mind, even if you don't come to a consensus, that's still good.''
Steve and Annie Smith, who are in the lighting business in Virginia Beach, said they wondered if the session would be different from some of the public hearings at local city halls.
``Being heard mostly is a farce,'' Steve Smith said. ``In the end, they're going to do what they wanted to anyway, and they can say they've had public input.''
Annie Smith said, ``What's interesting is, where do you go from here?''
The discussion opened with remarks from Pat Nash, principal at Great Neck Middle School and a member of Phi Delta Kappa.
``I don't want you to give me your snap opinions on something,'' she said. ``I want you to approach this with some thoughtfulness.
``We're not looking for decisions on values. We don't want a consensus. We're looking for thoughtful response.''
Phi Delta Kappa expects to achieve diversity from the whole set of 120 to 150 meetings held nationally. The organization intends to produce reports on the national and local findings by September.
The local chapter will hold another meeting next week in Portsmouth, with a very different group.
The participants Wednesday night were not very diverse: Most were white, Protestant, over 40 and had at least one college degree.
Thus, when they split up into small groups to talk, their conversations didn't appear to produce any deep divisions. They spent a lot of time getting common gripes and beliefs off their chests:
``No matter what you do, it gets back to the individual.''
``The problem is, too many of these families are just dysfunctional.''
``What I'm saying is, you've got to look for a foundation of values underneath all of these issues.''
``The government can't fix it.''
Langford said later, ``I heard a lot of, `Well, when I was growing up,' and, `I remember when.' Look at this group, it's in the 35-plus, 45-plus group. These are all values we grew up with. So we didn't really disagree on those, we just found some different priorities sometimes.''
The small groups also didn't have time to delve deeply into the topic. Each exercise organized by Phi Delta Kappa produced conversations of no more than 15 minutes.
``I wasn't completely satisfied,'' Langford said. ``But that's not a negative, though. One of the objectives was to stimulate us to think. A lot of people will leave thinking about it, and that's good.''
Others were more critical, especially of the last exercise. They were asked whether each of 45 values - ambition, tolerance and self-discipline, for example - should be taught in the home, church or school. Some said the exercise seemed almost predestined to produce the answer ``home.'' And many participants did mark ``Home'' No. 1 all the way down the answer sheet.
``It seems that the whole purpose of this was to produce a report that says, `People overwhelmingly think values should be taught in the home and not in the schools,' '' said Stephanie Stetson, a Virginia Beach freelance writer who has organized discussions herself under the auspices of a group called the National Issues Forum.
Stetson said Wednesday's meeting ``is an opening of the conversation. It at least does that. . . . But I'm afraid they're trying to rank things, things that can't be ranked.
``My personal philosophy is that we're all in this together as a society. We are all responsible and we all have to work together on a solution.'' MEMO: The next discussion sponsored by Phi Delta Kappa will be held at the
Portsmouth school administration building on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. If you
wish to take part, call Pat Nash at 463-2434. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PAUL AIKEN, Staff
Trudy Wright, a teacher at Great Neck Middle School, addresses
children's values in a discussion at a conference sponsored by Phi
Delta Kappa on Wednesday.
by CNB