ABSTRACT
The chapter begins by noting the importance of values and the seriousness of a failure to nurture the values needed for sustaining democracy. It discusses the confusion between cultural, legal and moral values. An important section then exposes the undervaluing of moral values by intellectual doubt that they are anything more than socially-constructed values – effectively evolutionary survival techniques. The input of philosophical positivism has further encouraged moral relativism. Nevertheless, a sense of moral awareness remains present in almost everyone, however unacknowledged it may be. The chapter argues that the values on which democracy depends can be summed up as a four-fold concern for truth, fairness, compassion and beauty. The chapter ends with suggestions concerning the transmission of values: how important it is that they are publicly articulated; the power of the home background; the crucial role of the school in supporting or correcting what children have imbibed at home, which is the focus of Part II of this book; and the role of the humanities and the arts in educating emotions.
