Education teaches how people should conduct their lives. All schools, whether public or independent, teach values. None is value free or value neutral. Schools transmit a whole range of values and beliefs to students through educational content as well as teachers' attitudes and overall environment. Schools communicate what they consider important in life through their curricula and required textbooks.
Public schools function with the assumption that commonly accepted community values exist.
Certain values from our nation's traditions are considered necessary for citizens to live in a modern democratic society. There is, for instance, community consensus that citizens should know and practice the virtues of respect, tolerance, honesty, common decency, self-discipline and responsibility. Public schools, it is understood, are accountable to the community to teach these common values. Where different beliefs exist in the community, public schools are expected to refrain from taking sides and teach students how to live with these differences. Some historians argue that in teaching common values, public schools have been instrumental in giving civic unity and social cohesion to our diverse nation.