The notion of explicitly teaching values in schools causes uneasiness for many people who worry about infringement on personal values. Persons from both political extremes object to any potential interference with the Constitution's “establishment clause” through the infusion of values into the curriculum. In recent years, all personal values have been expected, in a sense, to be “checked at the door” of the schoolhouse. When Pennsylvania tried to introduce a state educational reform program that included a values component, an explosive public reaction threatened to undermine the entire reform. Despite the best intentions of those seeking to address the need for ethical behavior and social responsibility, terms such as ethics and values became dirty words when associated with education.
Why Values in OBE
Pennsylvania's Outcome-Based Education (OBE) program began in the spring of 1989 when members of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education began revising three sections of the state school code. Committees of teachers, administrators, and university professionals recommended a shift from Carnegie units—based on “time spent in the classroom”—to “student learning outcomes”—a demonstration of what students actually know. This shift was expected to better prepare students to be capable, self-supporting, and responsible citizens.
The values component in Pennsylvania's OBE program began as “Outcome #6, Appreciating and Understanding Others” but became known in public arguments as “teaching values”: (i) All students explore and articulate the similarities and differences among various cultures and the history and contributions of diverse cultural groups, including groups to which they belong. (ii) All students relate, in writing, speech or other media, the history and nature of prejudice to current issues facing communities, the United States, and other nations. (iii) All students develop skills of communicating, negotiating, and cooperating with others to solve interpersonal and intergroup problems and conflicts. (iv) All students work effectively with others, demonstrating respect for the dignity, worth, contributions, and equal rights of each person.
The recommendation to include a values component in the curriculum grew from two concerns: increasing disregard for personal and societal responsibility and students' future survival in the workplace. Over the past decade, violence toward teachers and other students and disrespect for rules and authority have made teaching and learning increasingly difficult. As a result of weapons being brought to school, metal detectors and uniformed guards have appeared on some campuses, changing the school climate from that of safe haven to one of fear and apprehension. These extreme circumstances seemed to justify including values as a part of the curriculum.
By including a values component in the curriculum, Pennsylvania educators were also responding to demands of the workplace. Workplace survival depends upon understanding certain values. Employers expect their employees to behave in an ethical manner and to be able to work in cooperation with people of different religious, cultural, or socioeconomic backgrounds. They demand not only that new workers be able to read and write, but also that they have the necessary skills to get along with others and to produce high-quality work.
In trying to meet these expectations, educators in Pennsylvania were not alone in incorporating values into the curriculum; many educators contend that schools do and should transmit values (for example, Charney 1992; Damon 1988; Lickona 1992; Ryan 1989, 1993; Wynne 1989). Norms of ethical behavior, moral values, and characteristics of citizenship are transmitted both implicitly and explicitly within all classrooms, subject matter discussions, and teacher-student exchanges (Dewey 1966; Hansen and Jackson 1992; Bricker 1989; Jackson 1989; Ryan 1986, 1988).
Educators at many levels are weaving ethical issues into policy, curriculum, teacher education, and evaluation. For example, the Carnegie Council Task Force on Education of Young Adolescents proposed educational goals of producing a student who is “a good citizen” and “a caring and ethical individual” (1989). A panel on moral education, convened by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, urged the teaching of values in public schools (1988).
Objections to OBE
The explicit teaching of values and the anticipated measurement of values outcomes sparked the Pennsylvania controversy. State educators presented 57 core outcomes to the public through hearings held across the state from July to October 1991. Outcomes were intentionally left vague so that each school district could define its own community-generated set of standards to meet the outcomes.
Negative reactions to the outcomes were diverse and intense. Some people objected to change of any kind; some to an unproven OBE research base; some to possible implementation costs; some to the difficulties of measuring and testing the outcomes. The most vocal opposition group spoke out against outcomes that were perceived as the teaching of specific “behaviors and attitudes.”
Citizens for Excellence in Education, a well-organized special interest group, interpreted Outcome #6, the goal of “appreciating and understanding others,” to mean the promotion of a value system different from the students' own, rather than an acceptance of other value systems as well as their own. What state educators interpreted as “tolerance of differences” and “respect for diversity,” opponents interpreted as promoting alternative lifestyles. “To opponents, `others' means homosexuals and approval of a lifestyle the Religious Right considers abhorrent” (Watson 1993). The special interest groups claimed that outcomes were based on behavior modification. They particularly objected to the term tolerance.
Although most educators and employers find students and workers benefit from the teaching of tolerance, tolerance was not an agreed upon value for explicit teaching. If values or ethical behavior are to be taught explicitly in the schools, a distinction has to be made between those values that are considered to be absolute and those that are considered to be relative. Controversy surrounds this distinction. Many researchers in the field of character education have tried to identify absolute values with which the majority of the population agrees. While respect and responsibility seem to be agreed upon moral values, tolerance was not.
Opponents of tolerance argued against the acceptance of diversity by maintaining that, instead, we should teach children “commitment” to certain stances. Yet, accepting diversity and being committed to certain values are not exclusive concepts; one can do both. The distinction between teaching tolerance and teaching approval seems to have been lost on those opposing the outcomes. It seems unlikely that state officials decided en masse to promote a single position; however, their endorsement of Outcome #6 was seen as an attempt to establish singular, statewide values that would have to be “mastered” by every student in order to graduate.
The Battle Over Values
The clash between providing the greatest good for the greatest number and respecting deeply held religious beliefs of a minority would have been better addressed through rational dialogue and explanations. Instead, the dialogue became a battle. Several examples of the opposition's arguments were expressed in letters to the editor of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette: I keep hearing that OBE is necessary because parents are failing to teach values in the home. This is not true! Parents are just not teaching your values. OBE would allow state values to be a requirement for graduation (Gates 1993).As a parent, I do not want my children being taught morals and values that may differ from ours.... Since when is it up to the state to decide what is morally right? (Dean 1993).This outcomes-based education format is garbage! People have tolerated Christian teachings being removed from our schools, and the state wants to replace them by teaching about AIDS, atheism, drugs, homosexuality, safe sex, and many other personal and ethical subjects (Stoessel 1993).
Opponents of the Pennsylvania OBE program focused their arguments on three areas: (1) that OBE is nothing more than a re-introduction of 1960s reform efforts; (2) that they had successfully fought a values component 30 years ago, and it now appears that no one attended to their misgivings; and (3) that in the current legislation, values would be measured.
In 1963, a legislative mandate in Pennsylvania, Act 299, required the State Board of Education to develop evaluation procedures that would objectively measure the adequacy and efficiency of public school educational programs. In response to this mandate, the State Board adopted a policy in 1965 called “The Ten Goals of Quality Education: The Foundation for a Learning Outcomes Curriculum.” Consequently, in Pennsylvania, the term outcomes has been around for more than 25 years.
- the greatest possible understanding of himself [sic] and an appreciation of his worthiness as a member of society.
- understanding and appreciation of persons belonging to social, cultural, and ethnic groups different from his own.
- the habits and attitudes associated with responsible citizenship (Russell 1975).
Not only was the wording of the 1965 mandate almost identical to that being proposed today, but several officials from the State Department of Education who were involved in the original “Goals of Quality Education” were key players in the drafting of the OBE program. This continuity of personnel suggested to OBE opponents that present-day efforts were not a restructuring, but instead, that the same people were trying once again to implement regulations that were developed and opposed decades ago.
Unlike the outcomes explored in 1965, which were developed to comply with a legislative mandate, today's reform was guided by a desire to restructure state education. Although the goals are similar to those from the mid-1960s, the present restructuring effort addresses the mastery of academic skills as well as focusing on the concept of transmitting certain values.
Assessment was another concern of OBE opponents. Beginning in 1970, quality education outcomes were assessed through the use of an instrument referred to as the Educational Quality Assessment. This scale represented “an attempt to appraise various aspects of cognitive and human interaction skills together with those attitudes, values, and beliefs thought important in helping our young people adjust to the demands of today's society and tomorrow's world” (Russell 1975). In the late 1970s, the assessment tool, in response to opposition, underwent changes much like those made in the present reform (for instance, at both times tolerance was removed as a construct to be assessed). Opponents consider regulations that appraise attitudes, values, and beliefs as “tampering with attitudinal development”; they allege that the regulations were found to be illegal in the past (Riggle 1992), and they believe that OBE is a direct reinstatement of the revised Educational Quality Assessment test.
Where Pennsylvania Went Wrong
Proponents of the state's OBE program erred on two levels: in tactics and in content. Tactical errors included the failure to publicize and promote the positive aspects of the reform and the miscalculation of the strength and organization of the OBE opposition group. Content errors included the intentional presentation of vague outcomes and the use of the language “attitudes and behaviors” in the list of outcomes to be achieved and measured.
When OBE came up for passage, most parents, teachers, and school administrators expressed ignorance of what it meant. Citizens for Excellence in Education capitalized on the public's lack of information by widely promoting its interpretation of the reform, attacking the values component and maintaining that, rather than restructuring and reforming education, the state was merely reinventing those programs that had caused problems 30 years ago. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that They have produced videos, newsletters, and even a 1-900 telephone number that announces the latest protest dates. They tell parents the plan would allow educators to teach New Age occult beliefs and force youngsters to learn about homosexuality. Neither is found in the regulations, but the state has failed to spread its message (Watson 1993).
Only after the controversy became public were community meetings held throughout the state on the subject of outcome-based education. The meetings brought together State Department of Education proponents of OBE, university experts, and opposing special interest groups to debate the issues. The proponents held fast to the “values” language and advocated that “most good curriculum is a merger between content, behavior, values, and attitudes” (Longo 1992). Opponents argued that “outcomes that deal with ethical considerations in science, environmentally sound decision making, cultural values, aesthetic positions, and family living elicit strongly held responses from political and religious beliefs” (Staible 1992).
The opposition came to the meetings with its homework well done. Opponents attacked OBE from the historical perspective. They used audiovisuals selected to elicit an emotional response and articles from national educational journals and newspapers quoting the latest developers of OBE. They had groomed their speakers and aligned themselves with state political figures supportive of their stance.
On the other hand, the proponents generally came with index cards and notes, unprepared to debate their philosophy with anything more than logic and their own individual understanding. No central spokesperson had prepared an offense or was ready to supply a defense. Proponents had been relying on the strength of their position within the educational policy framework. They had not foreseen the need to support their argument through the use of visual material, nor had they prepared for the emotionally charged tactics of the opposition.
As for content, proponents of the reform failed to explain to the public how the vagueness of the outcomes was a positive, locally-controlled feature. Pennsylvania school districts had been moving toward a strategic planning approach in which a community evaluates its strengths and weaknesses, writes an educational mission, and draws up action plans to achieve its goals. Community education goals are based on what the community desires as “products” from the schools. For example, in one plan, the community identified an ideal vision of the world, one in which “there is peace, no drug addiction, no welfare requirements, no disease, [and] no crime” (Kaufman and Herman 1991).
The vagueness of the outcomes on the state level allowed opponents to interpret the outcomes in a way that bore little resemblance to their wording. Rather than seeing them as a means of giving local communities control over values, opponents used misinterpretation and inflammatory rhetoric to convince many who did not understand OBE that this form of education would play with the minds and hearts of youth by taking away from parents and churches the responsibility of teaching values.
The second content mistake that the State Board of Education made was adopting OBE before having a viable testing instrument in place to measure the outcomes. According to the structure of the OBE program, each school system would determine its own instruments of measurement, but the opposition attacked the unknown methods that might be used to measure an affective outcome. Most people wanted to know how their children would be tested to display mastery of “values” before they would approve of the plan.
As a result of public opposition to Outcome #6, in January 1993 the reform package failed to pass. In response, Outcome #6 was eliminated, the words “attitudes and behavior” were removed from all sections of OBE, and goals such as being high academic achievers, lifelong learners, and responsible citizens were separated from the student learning outcomes to be measured. With these changes, the reform passed in June 1993.
The battle over values displaced the real issues of educational reform in Pennsylvania. State policy officials were trying to redesign education to fit the needs of the 1990s; tolerance of others and a respect for diversity would seem to be important concepts for survival in tomorrow's world. Most people were willing to have understanding and appreciation of others taught explicitly, but when the explicit teaching became an outcome—a measurable hurdle to be crossed for graduation—the word values became an expletive. State officials discovered that teaching children an appreciation for others is quite different from forcing that concept into an outcome.
