Values acquisition and values education: Some proposals

Three proposals are made regarding values acquisition in schools. It is bel ieved that: (a) optimal conditions for the integration of values into schoo l-students' lives will include students' voluntary commitments; (b) values learning must lead to personally transformed relationships between students and topics considered worthwhile; (c) since values learning is, arguably, the core of formal education, there has to be some consistency between what is learned and the wider socio-political scene. It is argued that these co nditions are hard to fulfil via the prep scribed, performance-oriented curr icula currently on offer in English school classrooms.