Ten good reasons why school should be making a clearheaded and wholehearted commitment to promote values and develop good character according
to Lickona 1991: 12 are:
1. There is a clear and urgent need
Increasingly hurting themselves and others, and decreasingly concerned about contributing to the welfare of their fellow human beings are the phenomena
found in the lives of young people today.
2. Transmitting values is and always has been the work of civilization
The values of education are needed in society not only to survive but also to thrive to keep their self intact and to keep it growing toward conditions which
they face in their lives that support the full human development of all members. 3. The school’s role as moral educator becomes even more vital.
In the time when millions of children receive little moral teaching from their parents and where value- centered influences such as church or temple are also
absent from their lives, the schools take the vital position as the moral educators.
4. There is common ethical ground even in our value-conflicted society.
Values can engage in public moral education and do not oppose the pluralistic society. Indeed pluralism itself is not possible without agreement on value.
5. Democracies have a special need for moral education, because democracy is governed by the people themselves.
In a democratic society moral values are needed to make people have awareness about the rights of others and the common good and be willing to know their
responsibility as a democratic society.
6. There is no such thing as value-free education.
Everything a school does teaches values, including the way teachers and adults treat students, the way the principal treats teachers, the way the school treats
parents, and the way students are allowed to treat school staff and each other. So, values as the control to make the school become the place where values built and
practiced at the same time.
7. The great question facing both the individual person and the human race are moral question.
