Download Values/Character Education: Traditional or

Values/Character
Education:
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Traditional or Liberational
Brought to you by: Two Chicks and a Guy!
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+ Position 1: Teach Traditional
Values
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Primary Argument!

“Schools should provide a firm education in ethical
principals that help youth sort, analyze, and evaluate
behaviors and values expressed in popular culture. This is
character education, designed to instill and inspire good
character-morally grounded behaviors and attitudes.”
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Supporting Points

Students still need to learn right from wrong NOT the fact
that it “depends” on a persons religion or upbringing what
behaviors are acceptable and what are not.
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Students need to receive solid messages not mixed ones
regarding behavior.
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All of these different liberal view points only confuse
children.
+ Liberation Through active
value inquiry
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The Basics
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Everything schools do and decide not to do reflects a set of
values
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Schools provide values and character education through a
variety of forms whether intended and thoughtful or not.
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Students come to school with a collection of values and
opinions on what is good and bad
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Liberation = Education

Educations primary purpose is liberation. Liberation from
ignorance is the foundation beneath freedoms from slavery,
dictatorship, and domination.
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Knowledge is the basis for:
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Participation in a democracy
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Justice and equality
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A healthy and satisfying lifestyle
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Providing the same opportunities to others
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Inquiry requires freedom

We cannot impose traditional values on schoolchildren and not
allow criticism of those values.
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School Decisions About Values
Education

The question is not whether schools should teach values, but
rather what kind of values.
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Should Produce Thinkers
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Current materials are devoted to producing docile, passive
students who will be unlikely to challenge the status quo or raise
questions even in the face of unreasoned authoritarianism.
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Liberation Education and Critical
Pedagogy: Values Inquiry
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Examine social problems and conflicting values
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No teaching techniques, lesson plans, or textbook

Liberation is the emancipation of students and teachers from the
blinders of class-dominated ignorance, conformity, and thought
control

Students inquire into basic moral concepts, apply them to
disparities in society’s values, examine alternative views, and
arrive at a valid and usable set of ethical guidelines.
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What Should be Taught
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Engage students in critical study of society and its institutions
with the dual purpose of liberating themselves from blinders that
simply reproduce old values that continue such ethical lights as
greed, corruption, and inhumanity
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Ideology – the study of ideas
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Strip away layers of propaganda and rationalization to examine
root causes.
Using a dynamic form of dialectic reasoning opens topics to
examination.
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Reactionary Indoctrination and
Cultural Reproduction
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Conservatives and liberals expect indoctrination (instruction in
biased beliefs) and impose their dominant views through schools.
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Cultural Reproduction (each generation passes on to the next the
dominant cultural ideology) in the US:
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The positive beliefs that the US is a chosen country, with justice
and equality fro all and the best economic system.
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The negative belief that any view raising troubling questions
about American values is automatically anti-American.
Majority of students never come across radical materials or
automatically reject them because school has effectively sealed
their minds to new ideas.