A Conservative Christian View on Values - little chat with Focus on the Family, an ultra-religious group that opposes anybody or anything that doesn't agree with their views

School Administrator, Sept, 1995 by Linda Page

Focus on the Family Seeks a Curriculum Based on Transcendent Values and Moral Absolutes

Editor's Note: The School Administrator asked Focus on the Family, one of the country's biggest and most influential organizations in the religious conservative movement, to describe what it considers important about a character education program. Four reactions from school district leaders and a character education authority follow, beginning on page 24.

Theodore Roosevelt once said that "to educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." A random search of lockers in any major urban high school today would reveal just how menacing an amoral student population can be.

Violence isn't the only concern. A recent survey found that one-third of high school students admitted they had stolen something from a store and 61 percent had cheated on an exam. Students are robbing themselves of an education.

So what's the solution? The New York City board of education tried a high-tech approach to suppressing violence, installing a $38 million computerized security system for 41 of its most troubled schools. The system failed because it tried to impose external restraints on what was fundamentally flawed behavior borne out of attitudes of the heart.

Can we expect character education in the schools to fare any better?

Consensus Reached

Thirty national leaders who otherwise act as cultural, political, economic and religious rivals met in 1992 in Aspen, Cob., to discuss character traits they believe should be taught in schools. Somehow these leaders managed to set aside their differences and agree on this list:

* Trustworthiness. Honesty, integrity, fidelity, moral courage, and keeping your word.

* Respect. Courtesy, decency, and recognizing and valuing all people.

* Responsibility. Diligence, hard work, self-restraint, accepting blame, and not claiming credit for others' work.

* Justice and fairness. Equity, due process, openness, consistency, impartiality, refusing to take unfair advantage of the mistakes or ignorance of others.

* Caring. The Golden Rule-do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Seek to maximize benefits and minimize harm to others.

* Civic virtue and citizenship. Duty that lies beyond one's self-interest. Voting, reporting crimes, public service, obeying laws, opposing unjust laws, social consciousness.

You may have noticed one thing about this list: few of these virtues explicitly serve a student's self-interest. Indeed, many students might ask, "Why should I put the concerns of others before my own? o has decided this for me? After all, it is terribly inconvenient, and I do 't want to do it."

Public school teachers and d administrators are prohibited by law from saying, "This is what God expects of us." Rather, the best answer the educator can give is, "Truth-telling is a shared value that has been time-tested by our community--a value that we agree is best for society."

In other words, social utilitarianism is the best moral argument available. But social utilitarianism is the kind of ethical reasoning that gave birth to such evil institutions as slavery, child labor, and ethnic cleansing. Therein lies the danger of that argument alone.

Rejecting Relativism

A second observation about the six items is an implicit acknowledgement that certain behaviors are "right" and others are "wrong" regardless of an individual 's justification skills. These traits reject social relativism, the misguided notion that whatever one believes is all right as long as one believes it sincerely.

The social relativism movement that has dominated public education for the past 30 years with its blatant rejection of moral absolutes while promoting social relativism has left thousands upon thousands of students adrift without a moral anchor or compass.

These children--without a solid foundation on which to build the values and practices of their lives--have grown up believing that whatever they think is right is right. The reality of this thinking is tragically played out daily in the violence and mayhem occurring in too many of our schools and neighborhoods throughout the nation.

We are reaping the sad results today of abandoning the teaching of fundamental moral absolutes. When we stopped telling our students that it is wrong to lie, cheat, steal, injure their neighbor--and instead let them decide whether or not it was wrong for them--we ushered in social and moral relativism, and now we have to try to figure out how to repair the damage. The Aspen group has outlined a starting point. But how will the character traits they've agreed upon be implemented?

Without question, the Aspen group's list of virtues form a difficult standard even for adults to practice consistently. And it is precisely this point for most Americans at which religious faith comes in. All the world's major religions teach their disciples to practice virtue. Posting a set of ethical standards on the bulletin board doesn't motivate people to tell the truth when it's costly, but religious belief does.