Gow’s article deals with the premises underlying the issue of Self Esteem as it was defined and taught by the Values Clarification Movement of the sixties and the Political Correctness Movement of the nineties. Both movements hold that it is improper for teachers to indoctrinate their students with certain values.
The purpose of the article is to show that a proper view of self as a whole person requires a moral vision, not merely a set of moral ideals. Gow emphasizes the difference between moral ideas and moral vision. Ideals are external concepts, objectives towards which one may strive. Vision indicates involvement and personal experience. An ideal can be dismissed as simply that. A vision cannot be dismissed because it is experienced, it is alive and personally compelling. Moral ideals can be taught, moral visions are ‘caught’.
Gow uses Math instruction to examine the role of methodology. She wants to show that the fear of indoctrination is usually based on misunderstanding of what accepting values and ‘doctrines’ really means. Math teachers set as their main goal the development of their students’ a math ‘sense’. This is the awareness that they are dealing with fundamental realities, that Math is a holistic endeavour. While the teacher realizes that basic mathematical theorems and truths are important, he will not present them to be learned by rote, rather he provides an experience by which the students begins to uncover and discover this reality by themselves. The Math teacher realizes that mere learning of rules will not help the student to use Math as an integral part of life. It is only as the students are given the opportunity to test these theorems, in the sense that they embrace and personally experience their reality that they may genuinely validate their truths and know why and to what end they may apply them meaningfully and creatively in problem solving. Emphases of this experience helps the students to move from a focus on getting the right answers to a connection with Math’s universal and holistic nature. It is important to stress the goal of developing this Math sense, because without it the students will become increasing disenchanted and disengaged from investing themselves in it as a serious endeavour.
The parallels with the teaching of moral values are clear. For students to validate and commit to a certain value they first has to have the opportunity to test and experience that value personally. Without that opportunity for testing the students will see these principles as ‘ponderous rules and abstractions’. They may be taught as ‘obvious fact’ but they will have no real meaning for the student because they have no personal connection.
Moral vision is taught, or rather, caught in relationships. It is in relationships that one knows compassion, not merely as a desirable ideal, but as a personal experience. One can therefore connect with it as having reality and intrinsic validity.
Now the matter of indoctrination becomes clear as well. I cannot indoctrinate someone with a value that has become part of me. It will be obvious that it is not just an external ideal that I want my student to adopt, but that it is part of my own experience. If, through experience and testing, I have adopted compassion as an important value, I will not teach it as an ideal but my students will catch it as a vision because I have become a compassionate person. I will be compassionate even when it is difficult. It has become for me a deep and consistent commitment of will and heart.
Gow’s comparison to Math instruction is a powerful metaphor that has the potential to convince readers of the need to live values more that teach them. Her article provides fresh insights that speak to the issues of value indoctrination. Her references to methodologies will be a valuable guideline during formulation of my research instrument.