When I was much younger, one of the school subjects that I thought was useless in the Catholic school I was in was Values Education. Back then, I thought that the need to teach about values in a classroom setting was unnecessary because I assumed that most people already know the difference between wrong and right, and what should be valued.
So when I heard that the subject was no longer being taught in schools, I actually thought that would be a good thing because it seemed like a waste of time anyway.
However now that the world has turned out the way it has in the past few years, where people’s sense of priorities and values seem to have gone all topsy turvy, not just in the Philippines but even worldwide, things look so bad that a few lessons in values education would look like it could help.
Considering that the Americans have elected a convicted felon to be their president, and that there are Filipinos, who instead of being embarrassed, are defending their ex-president who is being accused of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, to the point of launching online attacks against the judges, it really looks like people these days either don’t have values or they don’t know what’s important anymore.
Having values, or simply knowing the difference between what should be right and wrong, should help us determine when something or someone is telling us things that raise red flags because it doesn’t align with what we should value. When someone says that they are cool because they have killed and that they will encourage the killing of thousands, alarm bells need to be ringing and we should be examining their statements, character, and history to see whether they are just joking or not. If it turns out that they are joking and you thought it was funny, then you should start examining yourself to see why that is so.
I don’t know if you need a few hours of values education classes or if it’s just common sense, but if you catch someone lying over and over again, you should never ever consider putting that person in a position of power and responsibility. So how come people all over the world are doing it these days? Is it because they lack the ability to determine simple truths or is it because their value systems are broken?
All the misinformation, disinformation, fake news and propaganda in the world wouldn’t be as effective if the target audiences only had a better value system. People should be able to see through the lies and manipulation if they weren’t enamored with cults of personalities because of the ability to make judgements based on facts and well established concepts of right and wrong. But because we don’t have values anymore, we have opened ourselves to con men and scammers.
As the saying goes: “Those who don’t stand for something will fall for anything.”
If you come to think about how so many people have been insulting their free will and right to choose leaders by making terrible choices, it would be fair to say that the people of China, Russia, and North Korea are the ones who deserve better at this point because at least they didn’t choose their dictators. These days, it is the supposedly free people of the planet who have wasted their votes on con men and monsters who absolutely deserve the government they vote for. They can put the blame on misinformation as much as they want, but the same weight should probably go to their lack of values that makes them so easily manipulated. That makes it difficult to sympathize with the Americans and their supposedly great again yet terribly tanking economy, because they should know better.
Values education is no longer available in schools. And news flash: it cannot be found on TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube. That means that the burden is on today’s parents and guardians to at least try to impart some values and principles on the next generation, so they can add it to their tools of discernment when making decisions or choosing better leaders that can change their world for the better, instead of recklessly making bad choices that end up making everything worse.*
