Valuing Values
It is commonly agreed that respect, honesty, reverence for life, responsibility, self-discipline, and hard work need to be part of every child’s education. It is believed that these values will enable tomorrow’s citizens to live more successfully at home and with their neighbors. Sounds good. But before Christian parents and teachers jump on the Values Education bandwagon, there are questions that must be asked and answered.
What Are the Foundations for the Values?
An individual bases his values—the standards by which he judges the worth of an idea or action, whether something is good or bad, right or wrong1—on what he believes about himself and his world. If a man believesthat he is nothing more than the life form at the top of the evolutionary chain, then there is no outside authority to which he must defer. There are no absolutes.2
The Christian, believing that he is made by God and in His image, rests his values on God’s authority so that he may serve and please his Creator. Because God is unchanging, His values are absolute.
Why Teach Values?
In a December 2002 editorial, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declares that values underlie every area of human life and endeavor and so have a place in each academic subject.3 Values teach social skills that enable children to become better citizens, willing and able to contribute in ways that will make their society more caring.
Given the present state of our society, Christian parents agree that there is a need for values education. Indeed, the Bible provides a scriptural hierarchy of values: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).4 But the Christian student learns values such as duty, honesty, and responsibility as he learns to bring glory to his Creator.5
The goal of Christian education is the student’s full conformity to the image of God in Christ "perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (II Timothy 3:17; II Peter 1:5–7). Christian students not only understand the values but also have a personal commitment to upholding them; they will then care for the poor, take part in voluntary organizations, and care for their neighborhoods and their nation for eternal reasons.
What Values Are to Be Taught?
The choice of values taught to children often falls to public schools whose curricula are founded on humanism. The primary character trait the humanist desires to develop in the student is self-love. Self-love tells the student that he is competent to do good in and of himself. No one may be allowed to challenge that warm feeling of pride.6
The Christian knows that before accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior there dwelled within him no good thing (Romans 7:18). As an unregenerate individual, he could not overcome his sinful nature. As a child of God, he overcomes only through the power of the Holy Spirit. His worth is in Christ, and so he values himself appropriately, learning that he is to be Christlike in all his thoughts and actions (Mark 10:45).
Who Teaches Values and How?
Consistent, godly parents are the greatest teachers, each day modeling biblical principles in their lifestyle, attitudes, and actions. As an extension of the family, the Christian school also has a biblical mandate to educate and to direct students toward godliness of character and action. Teachers who have submitted their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and whose lives are guided by biblical principles can successfully offer values education to students.7
When the teacher is not teaching values directly, his life needs to be an example consistent with what he teaches.8 He must assume the responsibility of living "soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world." (Titus 2:12). His life must give evidence of the fruits of those values: "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" (Galatians 5:22–23).
When the state is responsible for education, it replaces Christian values with its own system of values. The Christian student attending a secular school can suffer great confusion. At home and in his church he is taught the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness of fallen human nature. At school he is taught man is his own standard. Soon a frustrated child is trying to live under mutually exclusive value systems, both of which have been presented to him as true. If there were ever a better argument for Christian education, it has yet to be presented.
What Is the Hoped-for Result of Teaching Values?
Secular educators believe the introduction of values, such as love, humility, responsibility, and honesty, into the classroom will cause students to believe that their feelings and being good lead to good actions and a sense of harmony with the natural and social world.9
Educators who wish to introduce values into education with these goals neglect a great truth. They continue to present man as nothing more than a product of his environment, without an absolute authority against which to measure human thoughts and actions. This values education leaves the student with nothing but society’s conflicting opinions of what is right and what is wrong.10
Secular values education may for a short while produce discipline and a sense of responsibility in the student, but deterioration soon sets in. As in past attempts to rehabilitate man, actions become more important than the values behind the actions. Pride replaces humility. The endeavor is soon bankrupt.
Christian values are more than a better means to that end. They are based on the biblical message that demands a commitment to scriptural truth. Only then does values education have lasting value.
1Christian Teaching and Learning, (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, [1980]).
2Guenter Salter "The Inconsistencies of Humanism," Balance, Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, (October 1984).
3UNESCO Editorial statement 12/13/02, www.News@LivingValues. net
4The Christian Philosophy of Education, (Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press,[1978]); Guenter Salter, "The Teaching of Values," Balance, Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, (May 1987).
6"The pupil is an explorer, a discoverer, whose one authority is himself. . . . no fact which challenges his sovereignty and autonomy can be permitted." John Dewey as quoted in Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum. (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1981), p. 17. "Fundamentalism or religious belief of any kind will find it increasingly difficult to survive in the secular culture. . . . Every nation that introduces a modern education system sets in train a process that undermines the kind of thinking that produces faith in supernatural authority." Keith Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past, (NY: The Free Press, 1996), p. 168.
7Christian Teaching and Learning; Christian Philosophy of Education; Rushdoony, Christian Curriculum, p. 3; Guenter Salter, "No Other Foundation." Balance. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, (November 1981).
8"Adolescents are especially tuned in to adult hypocrisy, and evidence indicates that they are right to believe that many adults display a double standard, their moral actions not always corresponding to their moral thoughts." John W. Santrock, Adolescence, 9th ed. (NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003), p. 389.
9Dr. Shirley Porter-Murdock, www.characterishigherthanintellect.com
10Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. (NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), pp. 145, 224; Rushdoony, Christian Curriculum, pp. 93–94.
Linda Hayner is Chairman of the History Department at Bob Jones University.