Values in Education Values in Education GOAL To encourage and assist your group to discuss values in education and schooling, and their significance for the debate about educational choice. There is more to education than learning how to conduct a chemistry experiment or operate a computer. Education includes passing on to a new generation people's beliefs about what is true and good in life, and convictions about what is right and wrong. 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.