The importance of teaching values to young learners

Katharine Scott
Two Young children high fiving one another

Values in education

The long years children spend at school are not only about acquiring key knowledge and skills. At school, children also learn to work together, share, exchange opinions, disagree, choose fairly, and so on. We could call these abilities social skills as they help children live and flourish in a wider community than their family circle.

Social skills are not necessarily the same as social values. Children acquire social skills from all kinds of settings. The tools they use to resolve problems will often come from examples. In the playground, children observe each other and notice behavior. They realize what is acceptable to the other children and which strategies are successful. Some of the things they observe will not reflect healthy social values.

Part of a school’s mission is to help children learn social skills firmly based on a shared set of values. Many schools recognize this and have a program for education in values.

What values are we talking about?

Labeling is always tricky when dealing with an abstract concept such as social values. General ideas include:

  • living in a community, collaborating together
  • respecting others in all of human diversity
  • caring for the environment and the surroundings
  • having a sense of self-worth.

At the root of these values are ethical considerations. While it may seem that primary education is too early for ethics, children from a very young age do have a sense of fairness and a sense of honesty. This doesn’t mean that children never lie or behave unfairly. Of course they do! But from about three years old, children know that this behavior is not correct, and they complain when they come across it in others.

In the school context, social values are too often reduced to a set of school rules and regulations. Typical examples are:

  • 'Don't be late!'
  • 'Wait your turn!'
  • 'Pick up your rubbish!'
  • 'Don't invent unkind nicknames'.

While all these statements reflect important social values, if we don’t discuss them with the children, the reasoning behind each statement gets lost. They become boring school rules. And we all know that it can be fun to break school rules if you can get away with it. These regulations are not enough to represent an education in values.

School strategies

At a school level, successful programs often focus on a specific area of a values syllabus. These programs involve all members of a school community: students, teachers, parents, and administrative staff.

Here are some examples of school programs:

Caring for the environment

Interest in ecology and climate change has led many schools to implement programs focused on respect for the environment and other ecological issues. Suitable activities could include:

  • a system of recycling
  • a vegetable garden
  • initiatives for transforming to renewable energy
  • a second-hand bookstore.

Anti-bullying programs

As,many schools have anti-bullying policies to deal with bullying incidents. However, the most effective programs also have training sessions for teachers and a continuous program for the children to help them identify bullying behavior. Activities include:

  • empathy activities to understand different points of view
  • activities to develop peer responsibility about bullying
  • activities aimed at increasing children’s sense of self-worth.

Anti-racism programs

Combating negative racial stereotypes has, until recently, relied mainly on individual teacher initiatives. However, as racial stereotypes are constructed in society, it would be useful to have a school-wide program. This could include:

  • materials focusing on the achievements of ethnic minorities
  • school talks from members of ethnic minority communities
  • empathy activities to understand the difficulties of marginalized groups.
  • study of the culture and history of ethnic minorities.

As children learn from observed behavior, it’s important that everyone in the school community acts consistently with the values in the program.

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    5 of the strangest English phrases explained

    By Steffanie Zazulak

    Here, we look at what some of the strangest English phrases mean – and reveal their origins…

    Bite the bullet

    Biting a bullet? What a strange thing to do! This phrase means you’re going to force yourself to do something unpleasant or deal with a difficult situation. Historically, it derives from the 19th century when a patient or soldier would clench a bullet between their teeth to cope with the extreme pain of surgery without anesthetic. A similar phrase with a similar meaning, “chew a bullet”, dates to the late 18th century.

    Use it: “I don’t really want to exercise today, but I’ll bite the bullet and go for a run.”

    Pigs might fly

    We all know that pigs can’t fly, so people use this expression to describe something that is almost certain never to happen. It is said that this phrase has been in use since the 1600s, but why pigs? An early version of the succinct “pigs might fly” was “pigs fly with their tails forward”, which is first found in a list of proverbs in the 1616 edition of John Withals’s English-Latin dictionary, A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners: “Pigs fly in the ayre with their tayles forward.” Other creatures have been previously cited in similar phrases – “snails may fly”, “cows might fly”, etc, but it is pigs that have stood the test of time as the favored image of an animal that is particularly unsuited to flight! This phrase is also often used as a sarcastic response to mock someone’s credulity.

    Use it: “I might clean my bedroom tomorrow.” – “Yes, and pigs might fly.”

    Bob’s your uncle

    Even if you don’t have an uncle called Bob, you might still hear this idiom! Its origin comes from when Arthur Balfour was unexpectedly promoted to Chief Secretary for Ireland by the Prime Minister of Britain, Lord Salisbury, in 1900. Salisbury was Arthur Balfour’s uncle (possibly his reason for getting the job!) – and his first name was Robert. This phrase is used when something is accomplished or successful – an alternative to “…and that’s that”.

    Use it: “You’re looking for the station? Take a left, then the first right and Bob’s your uncle – you’re there!”

    Dead ringer

    This phrase commonly refers to something that seems to be a copy of something – mainly if someone looks like another person. The often-repeated story about the origin of this phrase is that many years ago, people were sometimes buried alive because they were presumed dead – when actually they were still alive. To prevent deaths by premature burial, a piece of string would supposedly be tied to the finger of someone being buried – and the other end would be attached to a bell above ground. If the person woke up, they would ring the bell – and the “dead” ringer would emerge looking exactly like someone buried only a few hours ago! Other stories point to the practice of replacing slower horses with faster horses – “ringers”. In this case, “dead” means “exact”.

    Use it: “That guy over there is a dead ringer for my ex-boyfriend.”

    Off the back of a lorry

    This is a way of saying that something was acquired that is probably stolen, or someone is selling something that’s stolen or illegitimate. It can also be used humorously to emphasize that something you bought was so cheap that it must have been stolen! “Lorry” is the British version – in the US, things fall off the back of “trucks”. An early printed version of this saying came surprisingly late in The Times in 1968. However, there are many anecdotal reports of the phrase in the UK from much earlier than that, and it is likely to date back to at least World War II. It’s just the sort of language that those who peddled illegal goods during and after WWII would have used.

    Use it: “I can’t believe these shoes were so cheap – they must have fallen off the back of a lorry.”