Importance of Values Education to 21st-century learners

Have you ever wondered why Values Education is included as one of the subjects in school? What is its importance in 21st-century learners?

As stated by P. Bakhati, Buddhism, and Australia, we now live in a globally connected world. We also now live in a material world that values material comforts, commercialization, and success in education as well as other sectors. Hence, students’ progress and success in school are frequently measured by their examination scores and ‘wins’ rather than demonstrations of moral ethics and values.

Promoting and prioritizing competition and success on a daily basis can degrade the values, respect, and morals of individual students and, by extension, of wider society. The evident lack of human values, combined with the misuse of technology, can contribute to undermining the morals and values of society. Thus, abuse and disrespect, carelessness, and self-interest become increasingly common phenomena.

The students in our schools today are intelligent, independent, and extremely capable. They are skilled with technology and comfortable with global and intercultural communication.

A 21st-century education, according to ThinkStrategic.com, is about giving students the skills they need to succeed in this new world and helping them to develop the confidence to practice those skills. With so much information readily available to them, 21st-century skills focus more on making sense of that information, sharing, and using it in smart ways.

However, education does not only focus on the skills and knowledge of the learners. The main purpose of education is to develop the holistic personality of the students, as well as, to develop all dimensions of the human intellect.

The importance of values education in our educational system helps develop committed persons to build a just and humane society which is stated in the Preamble. The 1987 Constitution Preamble expressed, “We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society, and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution.”

Values education was developed to make the student work with the right attitude and standards to face the outside world and was instilled with the core values of being Maka-Diyos, Makatao, Makakalikasan, and Makabansa.