Models of values education and moral education in the era of the fourth industrial revolution

hey would not smoke, drink, 
or use any illegal drugs. They would refrain from 
promiscuous sex. They would succeed in school 
according to their ability, find meaningful work, 
vote in elections, and not cheat on their taxes. All 
we need to do is take a firm stand on behalf of the 
values that made this country great.
A second group of educators today recognizes 
that we need to do more than simply identify the 
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107Volume 8, Issue 2
“good” values, exhort young people to adopt them, 
and reward or punish them accordingly. These 
educators have students engage in discussions 
and activities that allow them to experience and 
internalize the desired values. 11 Rather than 
simply urge youngsters to care for one another, they 
arrange cross-age tutoring projects or community 
service projects, such as visiting senior citizens, so 
that the young people can actually experience the 
satisfaction that comes from performing acts of 
caring. Rather than simply tell students not to be 
cruel to one another, they have students talk about 
times they were teased and how they felt. Rather 
than advise students just say no to drugs, they add, 
“and say yes to healthy lifestyle.”
The “just say no” approach by itself, I 
believe, is even more simplistic than our own 
values clarification viewpoint of the Sixties and 
Seventies. The “just say no” to drugs/say yes to 
a healthy lifestyle” approach is better, but it does 
not go far enough. Human beings are not so easily 
programmed. We should do a much better job of 
inculcating certain traditional values in our young 
people. The new thrust in values education and 
moral education is very valuable in calling us back 
to that important task.
But, sooner or later, our young people are 
going to confront situations that require them to 
make decisions on their own. It is wonderful if our 
inculcation and modeling have nurtured them to 
be caring and respectful persons, but look around. 
Caring and respectful persons are both pro-life 
and pro-choice. Caring and respectful persons 
refrain from and engage in premarital sex. Caring 
and respectful persons anguish over religious and 
spiritual questions. Caring and respectful persons do 
and don’t smoke marijuana. Caring and respectful 
persons struggle with difficult choices over failing 
marriages, career dilemmas, and the meaning of 
personal success.
I could give many more examples. Unless we 
are completely cloistered from the pluralistic and 
changing world around us, the most successful 
inculcation does not free us from many difficult life 
decision that we, and we alone, must resolve. These 
choices do not begin when we leave home. Values 
choices and moral dilemmas over friends, family, 
dating, drugs, school, sports, money, and other 
issues confront elementary and secondary students 
as well. All the inculcating and modeling in the 
world do not make these difficult choices much 
easier when the time to choose arrives. So what is a 
parent or a values educator to do?
The solution, I believe, is not to return to the 
past - either to the permissive Sixties and Seventies 
or to the conservative Fifties and Eighties. Nor is 
the solution to discard our experience and search 
for yet another new method for tackling the old 
problems. As others have begun to suggest, there 
is much of value in both the traditional approaches 
and the new approaches to values education and 
moral education. 12 Why not take the best elements 
of each, synthesize them, and improve from there? 
I call this approach «Comprehensive Values 
Education.» It is comprehensive in for respects.
First, it is comprehensive in its content. It is 
meant to include all value-related issues - from 
choice of personal values to ethical questions to 
moral issues.
Comprehensive Values Education is also 
comprehensive in its methodology. It includes 
inculcating and modeling values, as well as 
preparing young people for independence by 
stressing responsible decision making and other life 
skills. All these approaches are necessary. Young 
people deserve to be exposed to the inculcation 
of values by adults who care: family members, 
teachers, and the community. They deserve to 
see models of adults with integrity and a joy for 
living. And they deserve to have opportunities that 
encourage them to think for themselves and to learn 
the skills for guiding their own lives.
Third, Comprehensive Values Education is 
comprehensive insofar as it takes place throughout 
the school - in the classroom, in extracurricular 
activities, in career education and counseling, in 
awards ceremonies, in all aspects of school life. 
The elementary principal who, during morning 
announcements, thanks the students who turned 
in a lost wallet; the 10th-grade teacher who uses 
cooperative groups in class; the second-grade 
teachers who spend a whole month centering their 
students› reading, writing, and other activities 
on the value of «kindness»; the school counselor 
who uses values clarification activities in career 
counseling; the social studies teacher who discusses 
moral dilemmas in conjunction with a unit on the 
Civil War; the teachers who are seen smoking or 
not smoking; the principal who has the courage to 
cancel the rest of the football season because his 
school started a serious fight at the last football 
game - collectively, these examples begin to suggest 
the meaning of comprehensive values education in 
schools.
Finally, Comprehensive Values Education 
takes place throughout the community. Parents, 
religious institutions, civic leaders, police, youth 
workers, and community agencies participate. To 
the extent that all these sources are consistent in 
their expectations, their modeling, their norms, and 
their rules, a comprehensive approach has a greater 
likelihood of succeeding in influencing community 
values and morals in youth and adults.
Comprehensive Values Education, in a sense, 
goes “back to the future.” It is both conservative 
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ 
108 JOURNAL OF ETHNIC MINORITIES RESEARCH
and progressive. It is conservative in that no new 
methods and techniques are proposed that have 
not been around for many years, some for many 
centuries. It is conservative in that the traditional 
approaches of inculcating and modeling values and 
morality are given validity and prominence within 
the overall model. It is conservative in its claims: no 
quick fixes for youth’s alienation or for winning the 
war on drugs are promised.
At the same time, Comprehensive Values 
Education is quite progressive. For one thing, a 
great deal of energy has been wasted in the past 20 
years, as educators, parents, and community groups 
have attacked one another and defended themselves 
over values education programs. I have worked 
with many school districts, particularly in the late 
Seventies and early Eighties, whose programs 
were being attacked as undermining traditional 
values. Today, many programs are being criticized 
as oversimplified, unrealistic, head-in-the-sand 
approaches to complex problems. A comprehensive 
approach offers the possibility of reducing 
misunderstanding and improving communication, 
of recognizing common goals and, yes, common 
values. A spirit of cooperation frees up time and 
energy to devote to the more important task of 
implementing effective programs in schools and 
communities.
A second reason Comprehensive Values 
Education is progressive is that it forces us to make 
progress in an area that I believe has been almost 
totally neglected in the history of values education. 
We have spent so much time arguing whether it 
is better to try to instill the right values in young 
people or to teach them to think for themselves 
that we have avoided the more difficult question 
of when each approach is appropriate. I believe that 
there is a time to moralize to our children and a time 
to listen to their wisdom. A time to model and a 
time to ask clarifying questions. A time to reward 
and a time to be neutral. A time to intervene and a 
time to overlook. A time to say no and a time to let 
go.
When is the time and place for each, and 
how can one choose effectively? How should 
values education be different with different ages 
and developmental stages? Must all parents and 
educators be inculcators, models, and facilitators 
of values development, or can we specialize, with 
some being better inculcators and others more 
effective facilitators? These are but a few of the 
questions we might explore and, in the process, we 
might see the field of values education progress in 
new and more sophisticated directions.
Finally, I believe that Comprehensive Values 
Education is a progressive model in the it actually 
offers hope for success. A number of studies on 
the effectiveness of drug education and character 
education programs suggest that a comprehensive 
approach offers the best prospects for the war on 
drugs. 13 We have already seen positive results 
in the area of smoking, where the combination of 
educational efforts and changing social norms and 
laws have interacted reciprocally to reduce smoking 
in many segments of the population, although we 
still have a long way to go. What alternative is there? 
Piecemeal approaches and superficial applications 
can be expected to produce only limited results.
I look forward to the next decade of American 
education as a period when we begin to implement 
a truly comprehensive approach to values education 
and moral education in the schools, a period when 
we are concerned less with the labels of the past 
than with the challenges of the present and future, a 
decade of building on three decades of experience 
in values and moral education. No doubt there will 
still be controversy. Principals and superintendents 
can still expect to hear periodically from concerned 
parents who will ask, “Why are you teaching my 
child morals when he should be learning reading?” 
“Are you using values clarification?” “Whose 
values are you teaching, anyway?” But this is 
the Nineties, the decade when the principal and 
the superintendent will have the confidence and 
historical perspective to respond: “Of course we 
still emphasize academics. At the same time, we 
believe it is essential for us to support the family 
in teaching our students a number of traditional 
civic and moral values that most parents, educators, 
and community members agree are essential for a 
democracy. Just as important, we teach our young 
people the skills to think for themselves and to 
make their own responsible decisions. Anything 
less would not be worthy of an education system in 
a democracy and in a changing world.”
References
Carl R. Rogers, On Personal Power (New York: 
Delacorte Press, 1977).
Douglas Superka, Values Education: 
Approaches and Materials (Boulder, Colo.: 
ERIC Clearinghouse for Social Studies/
Social Science Education and the Social 
Science Education Consortium, 1975).
See, for example, the “Responsibility Skills” 
programs disseminated by the Thomas 
Jefferson Research Center, Pasadena, Calf., 
or the programs developed by the Baltimore 
County, Md., and Pittsford, N. Y., public 
schools.
KHOA HỌC, GIÁO DỤC VÀ CÔNG NGHỆ
109Volume 8, Issue 2
NHỮNG MÔ HÌNH GIÁO DỤC GIÁ TRỊ VÀ GIÁO DỤC ĐẠO ĐỨC 
TRONG KỶ NGUYÊN CÁCH MẠNG CÔNG NGHIỆP LẦN THỨ TƯ
Howard Kirschenbaum
 Trường Đại học Rochester, New York, 
Mỹ
Email: howardkirschenbaum@gmail.com
Ngày nhận bài: 27/5/2019
Ngày gửi phản biện: 3/6/2019
Ngày tác giả sửa: 10/6/2019
Ngày duyệt đăng: 13/6/2019
Ngày phát hành: 21/6/2019
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25073/0866-773X/309
Tóm tắt: Có thể nói ngay rằng không có cách tiếp cận giáo 
dục đạo đức nào là đơn giản như những giá trị đã được nhấn mạnh 
rõ nét từ những thập niên 1960 và 1970. Giải pháp là kết hợp các 
phương pháp tốt nhất trong những thập kỷ qua. Mô hình Giáo dục 
giá trị toàn diện là tiến bộ và liên quan đến nội dung, phương pháp 
và ứng dụng trong trường học và cộng đồng.
Từ khóa: Giáo dục giá trị; Giáo dục đạo đức; Mô hình; Toàn 
diện.
Louis B. Raths, Merrill Harmin, and Sidney B, 
Simon, Values and Teaching: Working with 
Values in the Classroom (Columbus, Ohio: 
Charles E. Merrill, 1966). 
Most are described in the annotated bibliography 
in Howard Kirschenbaum, Advanced Values 
Clarification (La Jolla, Calif.: University 
Associates, 1977).
Sidney B. Simon, Leland W. Howe, and Howard 
Kirschenbaum, Values Clarification: A 
Handbook of Practical Strategies for 
Teachers and Students (New York: Hart 
Publishing, 1972; rev. ed., 1978; reprint, 
Hadley, Mass.: Values Associates, 1989).
Milton Rokeach, “Toward a Philosophy of 
Values Education,” in John Meyer et al., 
eds., Values Education: Theory, Practice, 
Problems, Prospects (Waterloo, Ont.: 
Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1975).
Howard Kirschenbaum, “Current Research 
in Values Clarification,” in idem, op. cit.; 
and Alan Lockwood, “What’s Wrong with 
Values Clarification?,” Social Education, 
May 1977, p. 399.
Howard Kirschenbaum et al., “In Defense of 
Values Clarification,” Phi Delta Kappan, 
June 1977, pp. 743-46.
Tom Lickona, “Educating the Moral 
Child,” Principal, November 1988, pp. 
6-10; idem, Educating for Character: 
How Our Schools Can Teach Respect and 
Responsibility (New York: Bantam Books, 
1992); and Jacques S. Benninga, Moral, 
Character, and Civic Education in the 
Elementary School (New York: Teachers 
College Press, 1991). See also references in 
note 4.
Merrill Harmin, “Values Clarity, High Morality - 
Let’s Go for Both,” Educational Leadership, 
May 1988, pp. 24-30; idem, How to Plan a 
Program for Moral Education (Alexandria, 
Va.: Association for Supervision and 
Curriculum Development, 1990); and Panel 
on Moral Education, Moral Education in 
the Life of the School (Alexandria, Va.: 
Association for Supervision and Curriculum 
Development, 1988). 
V. Battistich et al., The Child Development 
Project: A Comprehensive Program for the 
Development of Prosocial Character (San 
Ramon, Calif.: Developmental Studies 
Center, 1988); Nancy Tobler, “Meta-
Analysis of 143 Adolescent Drug Prevention 
Programs”, Journal of Drug Issues, vol. 
16, 1986, pp. 537-67; John Swisher, What 
Works? (University Park: Pennsylvania 
State University/Pennsylvania Office of 
Substance Abuse Prevention, 1989); and 
Connie Young, «Alcohol, Drugs, Diving, 
and You: A Comprehensive Program to 
Prevent Adolescent Drinking, Drug Use, 
and Driving,» Journal of Alcohol and Drug 
Education, Winter 1991, pp.20-25.
William H. Whyte, Jr., The Organization 
Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956).