Sunday 24 February 2008

Key Principle of Values Education

"Teaching values, recently a political theme, can’t be done. So, while the candidate for office declares, 'We need to teach our kids family values!' the fact is that our children form their own values. Most often, they have very good values. What they need to learn is how to use their true values as a basis for making decisions. Let’s adjust our political candidate’s talking point to say, 'We need to teach our kids how to organize their lives around their own values!' While this doesn’t sound as good on the stump, and our candidate may lose the election by a landslide, at least our politician was honest." [Robert Fritz]

The AVI (A Values Inventory) was designed to help people identify their values. It's false to assume most people know what their values are. In reality, most people are living the values of other's. Only when we undertake a conscious process taking an inventory of our values, identifying why these values are important to us, then committing to those we choose to commit to, are we able to live our own values.