In the mid-1960s, a classroom teaching approach called “Values Clarification” became very popular. Professor Louis Raths (1900 – 1978), at New York University, developed materials and teaching strategies to help his students think about what they prized in life and examine their understanding of ethical decision-making. In 1966, along educators Sidney Simon (1917 – 1997) and Merrill Harmin (1928 – 2022), Louis Raths published Values and Teaching: Working with Values in Classrooms.

The thrust of the “Values Clarification” approach was to help students identify their values and reflect on them in discussions, writing, and small group work where the values often came into conflict. In effect, to help students work through their positions on positive and negative values like loyalty, truth, trust, compassion but also dishonesty, denigration, lying, selfishness, etc.

In my first years of teaching as a high school religion teacher in Michigan, I regularly used values clarification techniques in my classes and, as head of the religious education department in my local Catholic high school, I encouraged and helped colleagues do the same. During a departmental values clarification discussion, in fact, we actually changed the name of our department from “religious education department” to “Christian development department” because our concerns were not only growth in religious understanding but promoting genuine Christian living.

In my now many years of university and ongoing adult education teaching, I have always stressed that it is not enough to just discuss values but to reflect and think about the meaning of lived-out values. Values are more than words. Values are displayed in concrete actions. Some people can be very good actors when speaking-about-values but very deceptive performers of lived-out values in real life. I can think, for instance, of some contemporary actor-type politicians and actor-type religious leaders. Their focus is nice sounding PR propaganda.

This past week, after reading more than enough reactions to the recent debate between Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, I started thinking about Winston Smith, the main character and protagonist in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four and written by Eric Arthur Blair (1903 – 1950) an English novelist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell.  Winston Smith was an employee at the Ministry of Truth and his task was promoting “doublethink.” Actually “doublethink” was a well-defined process of deception. According to Smith, the purpose of “doublethink” was: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

Well, this is not 1984 but 2024. But the issues and challenges are similar. Today we greatly need values clarification to critique values-words and values-actions. Nice words can indeed be values deceptive. One cannot make a genuine values judgment about a person, an institution, or political behavior without seriously looking at values-actions.

I prefer to speak about healthy and unhealthy values-actions and offer four values clarification observations:

1. Healthy values-actions help people live in contemporary reality, accepting its ups and downs. Unhealthy values-actions are anchored in lies and deceptive falsehoods. Unhealthy values leaders sing pleasant tunes but hope no one is hearing their lyrics. They encourage anxious people to simply close their ears and eyes to what is happening around them and let someone in authority take control.

2. Healthy values-actions help people connect and build bridges with other people. Unhealthy values-actions create barriers that divide people by validating hatred, racism, misogyny, and homophobia.

3. Healthy values-actions empower people to take responsibility for their lives and the lives of others. Unhealthy values-actions are narcissistically self-focussed and stress over-powering other people in demeaning ways through abuse, control, and repression.

4. Healthy values-actions promote love, compassion, and collaboration.

We, the people of today, have quite a challenge ahead of us. But there is no reason to give up. We can collaborate and strive to be well-informed thinking people. But ACTIVE thinking people! As the famous Russian medical doctor, playwright, and short-story writer, Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904), said: “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”

I have always liked Anton Chekhov, and he remains a prophetic example for us today because of his strong opposition to brutal authoritarian governmental repression. Chekhov’s key values were health, intelligence, love, and as he wrote “the most absolute freedom imaginable: the freedom from violence and lies.”

But I will round off this week’s reflection with the memorable words of Paul the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

– Jack

 

Dr. John A. Dick – Historical Theologian

Email: john.dick@kuleuven.be