Teaching values, an educational mission

The adolescent subject learns, through education and practical interaction with the material and social conditions, that it is most important to assert oneself within them. The subject takes this assertion as its own – regardless of whether its own goals can be realized through these conditions at all.

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Not only the Hessian Ministry of Education now demands an »Offensive for Value Transmission«[1] at schools, but also quite generally, it is increasingly recognized: »Children need more values«[2]. Many here believe in the stupidity that people need moral standards and high values to guide their actions and compare them to high principles.

Most people – from right to left – agree that values are a wonderful thing. In the name of morality, especially critical people tend to blame everything that bothers them on lack of equality, justice, freedom, or even disregard for human dignity. The last resort is often to blame politics – and to call for doing better, fairer, more just in the future; including in schools.

Accordingly, one fundamental aspect is rarely questioned: the very basic structure of society and the purpose of state institutions. Because advocates of morality, high values, and ideals are mainly convinced that violations of equality and justice always reveal failure and sinfulness of those in office in their true duties.

The Stupidity of Friends of High Values

Bremer author Freerk Huisken describes in his text »Why? How? Why? Is School Making People Dumb?« a stupidity that does not mean that someone hasn’t learned something – but rather that they have learned much of what is commonly taught. Because these stupidities are needed by all – for exactly the achievements that citizens here must produce daily. The achievement of these stupidities lies in the fact that one voluntarily submits to the (factual) constraints of society and recognizes them as if they were set up for one’s own individual purposes.

This is accompanied by the idea that, for example, school, university, and the working world are there so that I – through decent behavior – can realize my individual interests. That should be the case – simply because I have to manage in all these areas of society anyway. The stupidity of morality is a central means that motivates people to go along with the constraints – as a service to the community. »Stupidity is the sum of partisan thinking, with which the educated person manages to process all political and economic restrictions of their own interest & stay obedient.« [3]

Values Education

Looking at how things go in schools and how people in schools are doing, one might think that the mentioned stupidities, which are taught there, are hard to get into people’s heads. Because most of the experiences people have in school contradict the ideal that it should be about a communal, equal, tolerant togetherness. That’s why teachers (especially the well-meaning ones) are increasingly recognizing the high need for transmitting the values of coexistence. But the fact is: primarily, school is about performance competition. The primary societal function of school is to pre-sort each grade through performance learning and appropriate assessment for the hierarchy of professions.
• For students, school means learning in competition against everyone. Even group work and cooperative learning do not eliminate the need to constantly prove oneself against others. This often results in cooperation needing to be specially rewarded.

• For teachers, teaching in competition also means that explicitly promoting a cooperative school culture is as necessary as continuous appeals to collegiality, team spirit, and a constructive error and feedback culture. What becomes clear in pedagogical days and countless training offers is that training these attitudes is desperately needed.

Diagnosis: Decline of Values

In September 2024, Hessian Minister of Education Armin Schwarz saw the time come to launch an »Values Offensive«. »Despite the efforts of many responsible people in our society, we are experiencing a growing loss of respect and appreciative interaction. Yes, even more, violence to enforce one’s own interests is spreading – in word and deed.«[4] An analysis – that is, a real critique of why this is happening – is missing here, as well as factual, objective evidence whether it is actually as claimed.

Instead of criticizing the reasons for disrespect and demeaning interactions, an ideal is presented that claims legitimacy from an external, content-unrelated standard: a call to morality and values – »for a respectful and appreciative togetherness and the preservation of a liberal democratic society«. What the Ministry of Education provides here is exemplary of how society operates: all questions are moral. All actions and decisions are judged from the standpoint of morality. It is not seen as strange that conflicts are not critically addressed and resolved in substance. Even more, it is not strange that the world is full of moral obligations; pardon: full of self-commitments.

Why Morality?

When we think about coexistence in society, we consider values essential and indispensable – on the one hand, because they provide us with »orientation for our own actions«. On the other hand, we need values like respect, tolerance & justice »to solve societal problems of social interaction«[5]. One might wonder why in all these cases an external standard is necessary. Because I get orientation for my actions simply by considering my own interests and needs. And if I want to achieve something, I think about what I need to do. If I find that I constantly have to relativize my purposes to values & principles in the name of the common good, then that is remarkable.

If the society I live in had the purpose of helping its members’ interests succeed, then the necessary question would be what means are available and how I use them. A reference to a value or a general law would not be part of such interest pursuit. But if the demand for such a reference to a value or law is considered mandatory, that indicates that societal conditions cannot be aligned with the interests of the people. Societies where values and moral principles are necessary point to systematic, conflicting interests.

Value Needs

It is an insoluble contradiction to assume a community whose members are simultaneously constantly overstepping their interests! Such a community indeed needs a regulation separate from interests and above them, which determines to what extent which interest is served and which is not; as well as the understanding of community members to subordinate and justify these rules. Such a society genuinely has a significant need for comprehensive value transmission – in schools overall and especially in ethics classes. If the Kultusministerium emphasizes: »[e]s are the shared values that hold our society together«[6], then this is correct. But this statement should urgently lead to a fundamental questioning of society itself!

The advocates of high values and ethical reflection claim that systematic conflicting interests are of vital importance. This, in turn, is based on the ancient deception of mankind’s hostile nature, which is, for example, part of school curricula in the form of Thomas Hobbes.

But once you understand that competitive behavior does not stem from an alleged human nature, you should bring the fundamental question onto the table: where do the conflicting interests that bring about the entire value need come from?

Values Education

In response to complaints that the German school system is bringing more and more performance pressure instead of fair chances, the common question is: Why is school so unfair? – but this is not meant as a question. Because instead of truly understanding this question – to develop a concept of the education system and its purposes – no engagement with the factual content is intended here. The question is more an accusation, a value judgment, an outrage that the school system does not meet the supposed true purposes. Those who learn to measure everything by the standard of high values do not need factual engagement. Because from this moral perspective, it is already predetermined that everything – especially the state – is committed to the good / a higher purpose. Nothing and no one on earth aligns with this, but at least any interest can be perfectly embarrassed by it.

The fans of morality and high values, when raised this way, constantly discover that their interests or the interests of the majority do not quite work out. From the standpoint of the assumed, content-unrelated value standard, everything is judged and condemned. The result is always that the matter has not yet realized its true, good purpose yet and that someone (usually politics) must have failed. The consequence is mere outrage over violations – e.g., against equal opportunities and social justice. Anyone who thinks they deliver criticism this way is mistaken. Because criticism would consist of explaining the matter and comparing it with one’s own purposes & needs!

Value Transmission as an Educational Mission

That values are a wonderful thing, most people from right to left agree on and gladly demand their concerns in the name of high values. That one should also measure one’s own interests & purposes strictly by the standard of higher values is learned both at home and at school. And one also learns why: values are crucial for…

• coexistence – equality, freedom, and solidarity are the basis for a functioning democracy.
• personal development – values are important not only for society but also for personal happiness.
• and a just society – without shared values, there would be chaos, injustice, and conflicts.

It’s strange, though, that many people, despite value-oriented actions, do not realize their personal happiness or are not in a good society. For supporters of high values, this is the moment of outrage – they discover violations of the (or failure at the) high ideal and call for improvements and reforms of exactly the system that has caused the fundamental conflicts in the first place. In such a society, it is essential that schools »are invoked politically as value transmission agencies to promote social cohesion«[7]. Therefore, teachers and schools are always striving to promote a whole range of usable moral attitudes and values of coexistence and cohesion.

Thinking of the world always in terms of high values and moral principles leads to imagining politics and competition as institutions that are actually – through high principles – obliged to serve the interests of the people. Accordingly, in school, one learns that everything here could run harmoniously and to everyone’s satisfaction – if only everyone adhered to law and morality. If only people (especially teachers, politicians & managers) behaved properly.

Those who idealize capitalist society and state institutions in this way are – in the sense described here – foolish. »Why these stupidities belong to the educational mission of the state and private education systems is thus easy to see: They are the mental lubricant of democratic capitalism, with which the free citizen is equipped. It is not determined why they persist in people’s minds, where every concrete experience that people pursue their life plans in this society contradicts them.«[8]

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[1] https://kultus.hessen.de/schulsystem/wertevermittlung

[2] https://bundesforum-familie.de/kinder-brauchen-werte-das-wissenschaftscluster/

[3] Cf. Freerk Huisken: „Why? How? Why? Is School Making People Dumb? 2009 at: https://www.fhuisken.de/loseTexte.html

[4] KuMi Hessen: State-wide Initiative for Values Transmission in Hessian Schools. 09/2024. The fact that the current political situation mainly focuses the letter on values education for refugee and migrant children is no coincidence, but based on discrediting non-Western cultures as non-democratic.

[5] Core Curriculum for the Upper Level of Gymnasium Ethics, 2024, p. 10.

[6] Core Curriculum for the Upper Level of Gymnasium Ethics, 2024, p. 10.

[7] A. Weilert: Values Transmission as an Educational Mission? at: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/heied/article/view/24907

[8] Huisken: „Why? How? Why? Is School Making People Dumb? 2009.