1. Chapter 21
Values Education
Because man is a rational being, the quest for beauty, goodness and
truth is never-ending. He is relentlessly in pursuit of values which he regards
with a high degree of importance in so far as they influence his thinking,
form his attitudes, shapes his principles and philosophical orientations to
qualify his decisions. Values are fundamental and important to an
individual’s existence for, in effect, they define what is desirable and
meaningful to him as social being.
Values actually guide man’s behavior and action as he relates himself in
most situation in life. Every individual has his own personal values that he
uses on a great number of decisions he is confronted with as he lives.
Values, as an emotional response exist in everything – whether in
people, ideals, customs, institutions, places or ideas. It is referred that no
society will ever exist unless some value standards are maintained. The
foundations of all human organizations hinge on values that are desirable
and useful. Values are essential experience and undertaking.
Values have social functions; e.g., to unite families, tribes and nations.
They are essential attributes to the democratic way of life, which puts a high
premium on freedom and the rule law. In building a nation, the formation of
values among the citizen is essential. Values are vital for productivity and
progress, for social justice and stability. All efforts aimed at socio-economic
well-being will never be productive if we are wanting for a moral upright
citizenry. A nation can only be as strong as its people, and its people can only
be as strong as the system of values that they uphold.

2. Values reflect man’s aspirations for himself, the society he revolves in
and the greater environment which he belongs to –the world.
Definition of Value
Value has been defined by various philosophical thinkers. Professor
R.B. Perry defines value as the “peculiar relation between any interest and its
object; or that special character of an object which consists in the fact that
interest is taken in it.” For him, anything becomes valuable when it is the
experience known as fulfillment of desire, or satisfaction, or explicitly a
judgment regarding an object to the effect that it is capable of serving desire.
The object then receives the predicate “valuable” or is said to “have value.”
For Rokeach, value is an “enduring belief that a specific mode of
conduct or end - state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an
opposite or converse mode of conduct or end – state of existence. “He
assumed value as enduring because, though it may change, it is “sufficiently
stable to provide continuity to personal and social existence.” It is believed
that value, as an emotional response , becomes the basis as a means or as an
end of action judge as desirable. Value is the quality of anything that renders
it the best among a set of theories.
G. E. Moore, an eminent British realist, believed that value is a concept,
which cannot be defined. This view is premised on the understanding that
value such as beauty and goodness are attributes of human experience.
Spinosa said that, “We do not desire a thing because it is good; it is
good because we desire it.” Spinosa leads to the position that riches, fame
and sensual pressure are not inherently worthwhile. They are not worth
acquiring for their own sakes, but only as means to making human life
happier. When these things affect men in desirable ways, they are good; but

3. when they affect them in undesirable ways, they are bad. He concluded that
“There are men who suffered persecution even to death for the sake of their
riches, and of men who in pursuit of wealth have exposed themselves to so
many dangers that they have paid their lives as a penalty for their folly.”
Other Concepts Related to Value
Ethics. This is the study of human conduct. It is a part of our everyday
life. Ethics is the practical science of the morality of human behavior. Human
conduct is free, knowing and deliberate human activity. Such activity is either
an agreement or disagreement with the dictates of reasons. The relationship
of human activity with the dictates of reason is called morality. Ethics studies
human activity to determine what stands in harmony with the dictates of
reason. Ethics ultimately deals with the morality of human conduct. Etjicsis
derived from the Greek word ethos, which means “a characteristic way of
acting.”
Value Judgment. This concept refers to the appraisal, evaluation or
assessment of the desirability and usefulness of objects or things, ideas,
situations and places that are considered important. It is an expressed,
manifestation of one’s feelings or desires such as approval or disapproval or
satisfaction or dissatisfaction, on matters affecting one’s life.
Norm. This is the rational or model of what ought to be; it is a mental
guide or pattern by which, ideally, we control and evaluate our action and
that of others. A norm or measure; it is something fixed with which we can
compare something else whose nature, size or qualities we doubt. Thus, a
norm of morality will be a rule, standard or measure by which we can gauge
the morality of an act, its goodness or badness. It will be something with
which an act must agree to be morally good.

4. Value System. This concept refers to independent values which are
systematically arranged in a hierarchical order and are subject to reciprocal
variations. Rokeach said that the value system is an “enduring organization of
beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct or – states of human
existence along continuum importance.”
Axiology. This concept deals with the study of values. Some
philosophers explain that a thing or experience has value of it fulfills a desire.
In education, the question of values is of great importance. The aims of
education are determined by the values which society adopts. These aims, in
turn, determine the method and the curriculum.
Aesthetics. The concept deals with the study of value in art in relation
to the sense of beauty, which elicits the intense feeling of enjoyment and
appreciation.
According to Lewis W. Breck and Robert L. Holmes, values may be
classified in various ways, such as:
1. Biological Values. These values are inherent aspects of human life as
biological facet and these relate to food, drink, sex, health and safety
for survival.
2. Economical Values. These values are attached to material things used
for exchange for goods and services to satisfy human needs and
include, money, personal service, property, tools and equipment.
3. Affective Values. These values are parts of human experiences as a
result of particular encounter; e.g., play, sex, excitement, euphoria and
delight in food and drink.
4. Social Values. These values are experienced in social interaction, social
relationship and social processes and these relate to cooperation,

5. 5.
6.
7.
8.
competition, accommodation, conflict and compromise resulting in
friendship, power, prestige and status.
Intellectual Values. These values are experienced as a result of
curiosity, scientific inquiry and the use of the human mind resulting in
knowledge.
Aesthetic Values. These values are experienced in marveling and
appreciating natural artistic creations in our environment, examples of
which our beauty and “good taste,” artistic talent, the sublime and the
magnificent.
Moral Values. These values are experienced in individual conduct and
are characterized by goodness and uprightness.
Religious Values. These values are experienced in religious devotion,
praise and worship to a Supernatural Being to whom one owes respect
and allegiance. Religious values cannot be segregated from man’s life
because it is an integral part of existence and experience for it is felt,
lived and translated into action.
These values inevitably make human existence more meaningful and
worth living.
The Good as Value
The term seems to have its origin in economics, but long before
the rise of axiology to various aspects of life. There are applied
analogously to various aspect of life. There seems to be no agreement on
the definitions of good, but in practice, we are all aware of what value is.
One thing appeals to all us in some way; whereas, something else
does not. What appeals may supply a need, satisfy a desire, arouse an
interest, estimate an emotion, provoke a response, motivate a deed, or

6. simply draw an approval. The existence of subjective values – valuations
or value judgments, as some prefer to call them – is a matter of
experience. We make value judgments, whether these judgments are
satisfying or not.
General Characteristic of Values
1. Values are bipolar, with a positive and negative pole: pleasant,
painful, easy, difficult, strong, weak, rich, poor, one is
preferred; the negative pole is better not called a value at all
but a disvalue.
2. Values are not homogenous. This is the reason why the
construction of a complete scale of values is very difficult;
there are many crosscuts.
3. Values transcend facts, in the sense that nothing ever wholly
comes up to our expectations.
Existence of Values
Social and personal values can be subjected. Polls, opinion
surveys, popular votes and other forms of opinion – gathering are personal
values of individuals and do not necessarily prove that there is an objective
basis for the widespread of preference. Many values, like the values of
reputation, of academic degrees or of artistic masterpiece are created by
human convention.
In line with the existence of values, some questions may be asked:
Do values really exist or do they belong to the domain of thought? Do we call
a thing valuable because it possesses some real property in it or because we
clothe it with a value by our attitude toward it? The subjective philosopher
subscribes to the latter view.

7. How extensive objective values are can be seen from death, we
value heath and disvalue sickness, we value poverty, we value intelligence
and don’t value stupidity, and value beauty but we don’t value ugliness.
How do we come to recognize these values? The difficultycan be
raised that all values are only abstractions and therefore subjective, because
they exist only in the mind that conceives them. Most abstractions, however,
are not formed arbitrarily and therefore, have their basis or foundation in
way things really are. Those who admit a realistic basis to universal ideas will
accord the same realism to values, values called objective. Values, like other
universals, are drawn from the data of experience that have concrete
fulfillment in existing persons, things and actions. It is a fact that we evaluate
goods to buy, person to employ, students to rewards, candidates to vote for,
and friends to accompany with. We do so because we see some objective
qualities in them that make them deserving.
Moral Values
Many values are understood to be those that make a man good purely
and simply as a man. They are not external objects, though they may help a man
to become the kind of being he ought to be, is is not the man himself but outside
his control, such as having good health, or long life, family status and prestige or a
bodily beauty, mental acumen, artistic talent or a magnetic personality. These are
all values, but no one can command them. Moral values are personal, not only
because anindividual has them, but also because they are innermost center of his
being, as manifested in the act of choice. Moral values, therefore, reside both in
the acts man chooses to do and in the results of those acts on the character of the
man.
There are certain characteristics of moral values that are distinct from
any other value.
1. Moral values can exist only in a free being and his voluntary or human
acts. By willingness to be morally good, a man becomes good. It can

8. happen accidentally. It is done deliberately and intelligently in the
sense that the person knows what he is doing.
2. Moral values in universal in the sense that what holds for me holds for
all in the same conditions and circumstances. The reason is that it
seems the worth of a man as his human being.
3. Moral value has preeminence over other value. We think that a man
simply must be true to himself as a man, no matter how much else he
might lose in the effort.
4. Moral values implies obligation. Man may disregard all other values;
and consequently, we may call him foolish, stupid and ignorant; but we
can still retain respect for him as a man; however, not so, if he loses his
moral integrity. The absolute good is the ultimate end that ought to be
sought because of its supreme value:
It is quite impossible not to form a scale of values in which there is top
values or the highest good. In such a scale, moral value claims the highest
place.
Values Education in the School System
Values are the basis for judging what attitudes and behavior are correct
and desirable and what are not. Values education is, therefore, of crucial
importance. There should be an appropriate framework as well as a strategy for
providing the context and operational guidelines for implementing a value
educational program. The value education is designed to translate values from the
abstract into the practical.
Values education, as a part of the school curriculum, is the process by
which values are formed in the learner under the guidance of the teacher as he
interacts with his environment; but it involves not just any kind of teaching –
learning process.
First, the subject matter itself, values, have direct and immediate
relevance to the personallife of the learner. Second, the process is not just

9. cognitive but involves all the faculties of the learner. The teacher must appeal not
only to the mind but to the hearts as well, in fact, the total human process. Third,
one learns values the way children learn many things from their parents. Children
identify with parents and this identification becomes the vehicle for the
transmission of learning, be it language or the values of thrift and hardwork.
The Department of Education Values
Education Framework
The Department of Education Values Education Framework aims to provide
and promote values education at all levels of the educational system. Its goal is
the development of the human person committed to the building of a “just and
human society” and an independent and democratic nation.
The objectives are directed towards the proper implementation of the
program that will develop Filipinos who:
1. Are self-actualized integrally developed human beings imbued with the
sense of human dignity;
2. Are social beings with sense of responsibility for their community and
environment;
3. Are productive persons who contribute to the economic security and
development of the family and the nation;
4. As citizens, have a deep sense of nationalism, and are committed to the
progress of the nation as well as the entire world community through global
solidarity; and
5. Manifest, in actual life, an abiding faith in God as a reflection of his spiritual
being.
Values education, pursued at the national, regional, local and institutional
levels, are guided by the following general principles:

10. 1. It must be oriented toward the total person of the learner – mind, heart
and the entire being.
2. It must take into consideration the unique role of the family in one’s
personal development and integration into society and the nation.
3. In the school context, more important than lesson plans and listed values
are the teachers themselves who have the proper sense of values,
awareness of the inner worth, and utmost respect for the person of the
other
The overall strategy is to make regions, localities and institutions
construct their own values map, with clearly defined priorities suited to their
peculiar context and needs.
This DepEd framework should be of help in these tasks. Classroom
teachers, syllabi constructors, and curriculum planners may use it to identify
which values are to be targeted in specific courses and programs.
The DepEdframework may also serve as a frame of reference in the
reformation and revision of operative Filipino values. For instance, against
the backround of the framework, “pakikisama” should be seen as something
to be prized, but not at the expense of personal integrity; likewise, as a
Filipino value, it should be compatible with the much-needed productivity
and should even become a bridge to national solidarity. Similarly,
“utangnaloob,” should have a wider application in society, so that it can
propel other values such as concern for the common good and social justice.
Philosophy of the Values Education Program
The human Person
The Values Education Program Framework is based on the rational
understanding, philosophy of human person. More specifically, it is grounded

11. on a grounded understanding of the Filipino as a human being in society and
his role in the shaping of society and the environment. It may be
reconstructed from the various statements of the Constitution and expressed
in the following manner:
The human person is the subject of education; he is a human person
learning and being taught. The human person is also the object; the human
person is at the center of the curriculum and of the entire program. The task
of education is to help Filipinos develop human potential, contribute to the
growth of Philippine culture, and by controlling the environment and making
use of human and non-human resources, build appropriate structures and
institutions for the attainment of a just and humane society.
The human person is multi-dimensional (Figure 6). There is, first of all,
the distinction between the person as self and person in the community. In
real life, however, there are two distinct and separate aspects: the person as
self grows precisely by developing his facilities in contact with the world and
others in the community.
The human person is an individual, self-conscious being of incalculable
values, who cannot be a mere instrument of the society and of the state. His
physical, intellectual, moral and spiritual well-being is recognized by the
State.
As a physical being, the human being has material needs. He is
equipped with an intellect whose activity is to know, with a view to
transforming himself, society and the world. As a moral being, he is endowed
with a free will which searches for the good and whose motive force is love.
The individual’s personhood is oriented to God from whom he derives his
spiritual nature.
The human person does not live in isolation but in community with
other persons also endowed with physical, intellectual, moral and spirituals
attributes and capacities. The human person is inevitably social.

12. He belongs to a family, the “foundation of the nation,” as well as to a
wider and more complex society of men and women. Being social, the
human person participates in defining the goals and destinies of the
community and in achieving the common good.
He is also economic. Life in a community involves the concerns of
livelihood, sufficiency, production and consumption.
Lastly, the human being is political. Like other peoples, Filipinos have
constituted themselves into a state-nation to pursue the goal of “social
progress” and “total human liberation and development.”
Core Values
On the basis of the forgoing philosophy of the human person, the
supreme and overreaching value that characterized education is human
dignity; the human person is of infinite value (Figure 7).
As a physical being (made of matter), one must maintain health and
harmony with nature.
As a spiritual person (capable of higher concerns and rising above the
material), one must cultivate a sense of spirituality in consonance with his
nature and respond to God in faith.
ECONOMIC
MORAL
POLITICAL
SOCIAL

13. As an intellectual being (gifted with mind the faculty of knowing), one
must constantly search for the truth and must seek that which will transform
society and the world.
As a moral person (endowed with the faculty of freely choosing and
loving), one must go out with others, and in fact, to all humanity, in love.
As social being (living in community), one must cultivate the sense of
social responsibility, aware of his unique participation in the pursuit of the
welfare of the family and the common good of the larger society, so that
society can, in turn, look after the common good and well-being of the
inhabitants.
As an economic being (bound to the concerns of the livelihood), one
has the obligation to help achieve economic efficiency for the community.
As a political person (member of the nation), one must foster the sense
of nationalism and patriotism by which he can identify with the people and
join hands with them in the pursuit of common goals. As a member of the
world community, one must cultivate a sense of global solidarity because the
emerging concerns and problems can no longer be isolated.
Related Values
1. Health implies physical fitness and cleanliness. The physical nature of
the human being calls for harmony with the material universe. One
perceives his affinity with the world and sees beauty in the forms and
shapes of nature and of human artifacts. One develops the appreciation
of art and beauty.
2. Truth implies the tireless quest for knowledge in all its forms.
Furthermore, it is not enough to discover data and facts, one must
develop creative and critical thinking to meet the challenges of the

14. modern world. The objective is a creative understanding and
imagination that will transform the environment , develop a cultural
expression of the ideas and highest aspirations of the people, and build
structures and institutions in the pursuit of a “just and humane
society.”
3. The moral nature of the human being places primacy in the value of
love. It also implies the quest for personal integrity and the
development of self-worth or self-esteem, honesty, and personal
discipline, which are marks of a mature person and a useful citizen.
4. Human love and suffering points to reality beyond one’s experiences.
This indicates the dimensions of the Infinite, which religious believers
call by the name of God. The response to this transcendent spiritual
dimension is the surrender of faith. The cultivation of faith is what is
meant spiritually. This calls for the daily growing love, repentance and
reconciliation.
5. Social interaction among individuals and groups must be characterized
by concern for others and common good, the love of freedom, the
democratic principle of equality, and respect for human rights. Recent
historical experience underscores the need for popular participation in
the determination of social policies, the conduct of public affairs, and
the shaping of the nation’s destiny.
Society sets up structures and organization. Justice which should
be fostered in the human heart, must be built into social structures
where all have an equitable share not only of duties and obligations but
also of power, material resources, essential services such as health and
education, ownership specially of land, and the other benefits of
growth and development. Peace is also the common aspiration of
human beings in society; it is likewise, intricately related to justice and
freedom. All too often, police force, military might, armed struggled
and violence are overvalues in national defense, the redress of wrongs,

15. the attempt to change unjust social structures and the perennial
pursuit of peace.
6. Mastery over the resources of nature and creative imagination in the
solution of complex problems. In this regard, the objective of the
Filipino today is the attainment of a “self-reliant and independent
national economy.” The work ethics is imperative, particularly in the
depressed economy. People must produce food, basic commodities,
the goods for the survival and well-being of the community.

16. Table 4. RELATED VALUES
DIMENSIONS
A
S
VALUES
PHYSICAL
HEALTH
Physical fitness
Cleanliness
Harmony with the material
Universe
Beauty
Art
TRUTH
Knowledge
Creative and critical thinking
LOVE
Integrity/Honesty
Self-worth/Self-esteem
Personal discipline
SPIRITUALITY
Faith in God
INTELECTUAL
S
E
L
F
MORAL
SPIRITUAL
SOCIAL
Family
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Mutual love/Respect
Fidelity
Responsible parenthood
Concern for others/Common
Society
good