Downward slide... arrested?

Is the state of blogging truly dead? Neither my nor any other blog I follow has been updated for some time now. Not that there haven't been opportunities to blog about. To date, I've missed potential reviews of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls and its whole system 2.0.x revamp and Captain America: The Winter Soldier; and even personal family milestones like the passing of Aunt L.

Could it be that my not blogging is due to subconsciously unfollowing a trend everyone else has already left behind, or that I've simply lost my love for it? In fact, it seems like I've lost love for a lot of things I used to enjoy doing, and now I'm just going through the motions out of routine or habit, following someone else's agenda instead of my own. Zombie is probably an appropriate description of how 2014 has been so far.

What's been behind this downward slide? Top of my list of demotivators is a sense of a loss of autonomy in designing my own curriculum because of a current mania for 'standardization'. It's a good idea to share best practices among experienced staff but a very poor one to take everybody's best practices and mash them together into a prescriptive SoP that everybody must follow. It is really a step backwards and will probably undo much of the good we have accomplished to date.

The second is the sense that the recent don't dos are the things I like to do, while the dos emphasize the things I don't like to do. We are building a risk-averse culture that frowns on experimentation and avoids uncertainty. Too much top-down control, too many reminders about things that don't need doing and too little encouragement towards what does need doing.

Perhaps it has always been this way, and I've only just woken up and smelled real-world coffee?

Or perhaps I've just let inconsequential things get in the way of what I love? Elsa from 'Frozen' may be right about some distance lending perspective to one's situation. A couple of days away from campus to attend iCTLT 2014 has brought me back in touch with other people who are visionaries in education, at the forefront of education reform and yet are juggling with old-school expectations and strictures, and rising above it to tell their stories to us who are supposed to be at the pinnacle of global education success.

It's great to hear how although we've done some things right, there are a lot of important things that we are doing wrong. I'll want to compile and digest what people here have been saying in another post, but for now it feels good not to be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness and that there are those who have waded through the same muck and have moved forward to where we want to go, even if some of us have to be dragged kicking and screaming to get there.

The ICT-grade correlation

Despite the inroads that have been made so far, Education and Info-comm Tech (ICT) are still rather uncomfortable with each other. On one extreme, a school district willy-nilly hands out iPads to each kid as a substitute for text books, but is embarrassed when the delighted recipients break board-approved security settings and play games on them instead. Obviously iPads are not books and if you have to cripple an iPad so badly so that it can only function as a book, you might as well just stick to books. Or be prepared to discover that kids are smarter than you (give them credit for).

On the other extreme are schools that believe ICT is nice to wave around as a publicity thing, but don't actually maximize its potential because old suspicions still prevail. This is especially apparent when school authorities strongly advise the kids to cut themselves off social media a month ahead of the final exams in order to concentrate on studying from books. Such pronouncements ultimately undermine the value ICT has for learning, and so once again we have a might-as-well-not situation.

The suspicion of ICT stems from the initial (wrong) assumption that the increased use of ICT will result in a commensurate increase in 'A' grades. When the number of 'A' grades doesn't rise, it is considered sufficient proof that ICT is not as effective a learning tool as 'they' claimed after all. Suspicion confirmed.

It is indeed true that ICT use does not increase 'A' grades, but it is a seriously flawed assumption that the two share a direct correlation. If we're chasing 'A' grades we expect to find evidence that ICT has an effect on learning. No evidence will be forthcoming because ICT has NO effect on learning.

Shocked? Does this mean that ICT is of no use, then? Obviously not, because in not seeing what you want to see, you are also not seeing what there is to be seen. ICT may have no e-ffect on learning, but it does a-ffect learning. ICT use does not make people smart in the way that a crippled iPad does not make people book smart. ICT affects the way people learn, if you use the array of tools available to encourage self-directed, collaborative learning. ICT use changes the learning game from solo play to co-op play, and co-op play gives learners the ability to learn better, faster and more meaningfully than solo play.

So if people using ICT correctly become smarter faster, then why does it not translate into a bumper crop of 'A' grades? Because when they return to the exam hall, they're cut off from their learning networks and they're forced to play solo once again. How they are tested is not reflective of the kind of learners they have become.

I don't foresee the end of the solo exam format anytime soon. So schools must ask themselves: given the cheap availability and potential of ICT to build strong, affective learning networks throughout the entire learning organization, is our primary goal to produce kids who know how to get things done by working together and managing a broad, diverse range of networked knowledge curated according to individual interests and tastes; or kids who are divided by their ability and lack thereof to score 'A' grades within a narrow band of knowledge that has no contextual application outside the exam hall?

Eat, sleep, work, plan

The big planning pow-wow for this year has yielded a new direction for the industry to take: make learning relevant to the lives of the students. Take their interests -- whether in music; astronomy; robotics; theatre; or whatever -- and use their interests to make their lessons come alive for them.

Sounds good in theory, but I can imagine my kids moaning in disbelief. 'You want us to pass ace our exams AND develop an interest in something TOO?' It seems the kids can barely keep up with their meals and exercise and sleep already, what with the different subject demands of preparation, revision, practice, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum. Ask them what their interests are and they stare blankly back, wondering what the politically correct answer should be. Then hesitantly... sleep? Eat? Sigh. Those aren't interests, they're bodily functions.

The end-of-year exam and the build-up to it is taking every shred of energy from the kids so they have none left to develop a sense of self beyond believing they are mere cogs in a machine that will continue grinding them down until they have reached the end of their usefulness... and we don't want to contemplate what happens to them after that. Their objective is to delay that eventuality for as long as possible. Every step up the academic ladder, every promotion they receive indicates that they are still useful, and that's what they live for. To feel that they have to deserve to exist can be quite demoralizing in the long run.

And we wonder why they seem so dense and naive; colourless and listless; and quite unwilling to think for themselves. Life isn't learned through rote, which is what is taking up so much of the kids' time and energy, life is learned by living it which, if we look at their daily schedules, many of them are not. There also seems to be a lot of guilt when they do admit to having one interest or another; almost apologetic as if confessing to grand theft tempus when they feel they should be keeping nose to grindstone instead.

Frankly, I don't blame the kids. What we have is a systemic problem perpetuated by ever-increasing academic success rates which keeps kids and their parents, and us in the industry as well focused on improving year after year. Our system encourages the study-now-develop-interests-later approach to academic qualification, so now the industry bosses have decided based on public feedback that it's time to reflect once again on what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Well, we aren't supposed to be preparing the kids for the end-of-year exam. We are supposed to be preparing them for what comes AFTER the end-of-year exam. We're not supposed to be manufacturing cogs in a machine but people who have a sense of self-worth and who see the value in working together so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. We're not making kids study subjects to pass exams, we're teaching them to understand life's little mysteries by supporting that understanding with subject knowledge that guides them to figure out answers to their questions about life and how they perceive it.

The exams don't have to change, though. What does need to change is how we appreciate their functionality. Exam questions don't ask 'what do you know?' Why we spend so much time on endless meaningless content drills is because we automatically assume that regardless of the question, it's always about the 'what?' Exam questions really ask 'given your knowledge about such and such, what would you do with that knowledge given new condition and context?' So, exam questions are mostly about applying subject knowledge to life experience. And the kids sweat bullets to answer that question because they haven't got much life experience to go on.

The industry's new direction is hardly new. It is a reminder to compare our roadmap with the terrain again and check if our current course is taking us where we really want to go. For us in the JC system, there doesn't seem to be any specific directive for us to do anything right now, probably because it's too late for the next couple of cohorts. But if in the next few years we're expecting a breed of kids that have grown up in the new learning environment the bosses are envisioning, we'd better start moving in the same direction to align with everyone else at the right time.

Education: one-dimensional no longer, we hope

Schools really do have to de-emphasize academic achievement based on test and exam scores while giving non-academic activities a big boost.

Co-curricula activities (CCAs) hone talent in sport and aesthetics; and provide experience in service-oriented project tasks. Community involvement (if not done in a too-contrived manner) lets kids experience and participate in the real world away from their sheltered, blinkered lives on campus or at home.

If we're worried about the kids' employability think about this: academic certification only ascertains which league a person is eligible to play in, but it doesn't guarantee that he or she will be picked to play on a team. A company in the real world wants an employee who can cope in the real world. Those with talents in multiple fields have the most opportunities as they are those most sought after.

Kids gunning only for academic achievement, your certificate can only prove one and only one ability you have to offer: that you can take a whole year to reproduce a chunk of text from memory. Wow. I'm so impressed. Let me Google up who else can do the same thing in less time...

Them's fighting words

Thanks to a visit from yet another motivational speaker, I've been thinking about what I would want to say to my graduating class on the last day of the timetabled curriculum.

As usual, this speaker's message is no different from the previous: it's all about delayed gratification. Kill yourselves for eighty days and enjoy life after.

I prefer a more realistic message:

Kids, you're going to look back upon these last two years and remember them as a holiday camp. Where you're going, life is going to suck so totally, sometimes you'll wonder whether it's worth getting out of bed and slogging it through yet another day. You may already feel like that now, but it's only going to get worse, not better.

You're in school now because you're in training. It's safe in here. Failure in training has fewer consequences than in real life. As long as you learn, you will fail; but as long as you fail, you will learn. The outside world is not so forgiving.

As it is in the military, you're going to cry for mommy while you're training in boot camp. But the reason you're being trained now is so that we can send you into the battlefield later. You're sheltered and protected when you're in training; out there in the rain, muck, blood, fuel, flames and cordite, you screw up, you die or get limbs blown off or worse, get someone else killed. You're being trained to go to war, not Club Med, so don't expect too much when you leave this safe haven of Junior College.

Why then should you bother to train so hard now, when there is so little to look forward to, out there? Look at it this way: would you rather go out there without adequate training? Because one way or another, you'll end up there anyway. If you weren't attending Junior College, you could be out there right now.

Training hard and training well means you're building instincts that just may help you survive another day. Knowing how to survey the lay of the land; learning skills, tactics and strategies for survival and victory; and developing the stamina, resilience and resourcefulness to see your plans to fruition; these are your rewards for working hard now, so that when you eventually take to the field you're not just cannon fodder, but rather in a position of command (even if the only squad you have to command is yourself).

Like it or not, in whatever career or vocation we find ourselves in out there, we all have one singular objective. To achieve it, our personal survival is a prerequisite. The end of the world is coming. Every passing day brings it a little closer. Our job -- I mean everyone's job -- is to fight on and delay that inevitability for one day more. Together, we're going to hold out until we hear the declaration, "Today we are cancelling the Apocalypse!"

Only then will we even think about "enjoying life" as a personal entitlement.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but better to hear the truth now than experience it first-hand for yourselves and become bitter and disconsolate over it. Loss of morale at that point is the first stage to getting yourself killed. Fat lot of good you will be to the cause then.

Chuck the big expectations of happiness. Work hard; train hard; fail a lot; learn a lot; survive and every day, will yourselves to fight on for just one more day. Go into battle with this mindset and every small victory, every simple pleasure will be that much more meaningful and enjoyable. Forget "delayed gratification"! Where we find true happiness is daily, in the small things in life.

Suit up, check your gear, it's time. Move out!

Getting into the flow with education

The current challenge for schools in staying relevant to our changing times is that instead of locking down information, they should free it up. It seems the memorization by rote thing isn't endemic to the Asian approach to education but a common malady, judging by the rising problems of student engagement and dropout rates everywhere in the world.

Old school functioned by parcelling information out in dribs and drabs according to a prescribed dosage based on the age of the recipient. It categorized information into subjects and topics and kept the disciplines apart from one another, each developing a unique jargon and "accepted" approach so as to discourage cross-contamination between their disparate spheres. It designed exams that rewarded those who accumulated and hoarded information, keeping it to themselves, while declaring those that didn't incompetent and unworthy. Has there ever been a more unnatural environment in which we expected learning to flourish?

Until today, school still generally functions along those lines with the packaging of pre-digested information in textbooks, reading kits, handouts and notes. We teach answers to questions, then test them on the same questions, and award As to those who best reproduce those same answers back to us. The kids themselves can't answer questions they don't already feel they know the answers to, so it's a vicious cycle. And because we spend most of our time 'spotting' questions that are 'most likely' to come out in the finals and teaching the kids to answer only from a specific range of 'safe' questions, we are bored, the kids are bored, and it sucks to be us.

What we have forgotten, or perhaps failed to observe, is that information is more like a stream or river than a block of ice. Schools freeze information and expect the kids to hold on to it. At the next level, the school rewards the kid with another ice cube and so on up the chain. But the kids' hands are hot and ice melts. It's such a frustration to hold on to melting ice with liquid water dripping all over the place, or it's just so cold, hands turn blue and freeze over themselves. Neither is a good outcome for a learning experience, but that's how we still do it.

But information is a stream or a river, constantly flowing, always bringing something interesting and new along with its current. A fish, a leaf, a branch, an insect... every one of us immersed in the river sees different things at different times, approaches and interprets the experience differently, and is enriched by just being where they are, in their spot in the river. And as we learn from our own immediate circle of reach, we're sharing our own experience with others, just as they are sharing theirs with us. So instead of trying to hoard the same frozen piece of water (which is physically impossible, anyway) in the hope of keeping it from others in order to just enrich ourselves, what we learn from sharing is a myriad different perspectives from different aspects of the same river we have immersed ourselves in. And that's a lot more learning than we ever can get from a lump of ice in our hands.

If we want more of our kids to aim for better (and more meaningful) grades, telling them to cut themselves off from the river and just focus on their set texts will be, as usual, counterproductive. They have to get comfortable navigating the currents in the river at this stage, because when they complete their undergraduate studies, that river would have turned into the ocean... and if they have been well-prepared before, they will marvel at the transition. Else, they'll just drown like so many others before them.

Beau Geste

So, that's why we went picking apple snails from the river. We were getting it nice and clean for the PM to give his National Day address in front of.

Anyway, 3:27 in the video (above) raised an eyebrow: "Let us prepare every child for the test of life and not just a life of tests." Apart from the trite cliche, the man is referring to an aspiration, though the reality is proving to be quite the stumbling block.

It is true that we all want our students to do well.  But for many of us, "doing well" means passing the next exam, and we don't quite see much further than that. Qualifying the kids for University IS our stretch goal because we have no control over what happens after that. Once they're undergrads, we've done our jobs. Good luck, kids, you're on your own now!

Secondary schools say the same thing about preparing kids for JC; primary schools say the same thing about secondary schools. When kids pass their tests, we pat ourselves on the back and it's on to the next test, ad infinitum. As long as the paradigm that preparing kids for tests is preparing them for life, I think the big boss and we the bottom-feeders are going to have a little conflict of expectations.

Which is why I like teaching GP. Unlike the other so-called 'content subjects', GP presumes zero knowledge when it comes to taking our tests. Ours really is a test of life. We present a problem no one's really considered before -- the more surprising, the better -- and what we evaluate is the student's ability to go from "whuuuttt??" to figuring out a process that brings whatever little knowledge he has on the issue to bear on the problem and reasoning out a conclusion.

Just like real life, no one can claim perfect knowledge. What we have to go on are the little we do know, the little more we can acquire (Paper 2, the compre paper) and enough common sense to make a reasonable decision. It helps that the student is well-read because the bigger the initial pool of knowledge, the more options are open, but of greater advantage is a well-trained brain that can deconstruct the problem, filter out the relevant knowledge-components and synthesize a conclusion. In our test, knowledge is always secondary to the process.

The other aspect of GP that is so different from the other content subjects which neatly categorize and compartmentalize knowledge into arbitrary 'topics', is that in GP we recognize that true learning is chaotic. There is a reason why we do not subscribe to a textbook: our knowledge currency is everywhere; updates itself on a daily even minute-to-minute basis sometimes; and is virtually limitless. Our job is not to package up finite knowledge in a neat bundle for memorization and later regurgitation, but to train our students in skills of knowledge management, communication and initiative, if not leadership.

Some snide person once asked dNYel how we can squeeze out more A graders in GP. The answer to that is to reduce our kids' dependence on us -- especially at this late stage when the students should be needing our guidance less and less while increasing confidence in themselves, their training and their abilities more and more. Also, there is a growing pool of students who are already well-trained and at this time, we should be putting their abilities to use by helping their fellow students to improve, and not taking the full burden on ourselves.

If we're really going to help our students to take the test of life, we shouldn't be doing more for them, which will only increase their dependence on us further. We should be doing a lot less. We focus, we target, we customize. We do not blanket cover everybody with a one-size-fits-all programme catered to the lowest common denominator and make it compulsory. That proposal sounds like a recipe for disaster.

GP is not one of the content subjects. We are the last department standing that is keeping the Industry of Education from becoming the Industry of Indoctrination. For the sake of the future that the PM himself is envisioning, we must hold out!

A little give and take

“We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily rather than learning to think critically and to challenge.  We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.  A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of civilisation is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”
- Chris Hedges

Not often I get a commission to make a post, but I've been asked to comment on the above quotation. I agree. Totally.

If you're being educated because you need a qualification to get a job, you're barking up the wrong tree. Employers won't hire you because your motivation is to TAKE as much as possible FROM the job.

If you're being educated because you wish to learn about being a smart, moral person living amongst other smart, moral people, you're more likely to get somewhere in life. Employers are more likely to employ you because your motivation is to GIVE as much as possible TO the job.

Hey, if you can appreciate value for money, you should know what it looks like from the employer's perspective.

Great expectations

We've been lying to our kids. And because the lie has perpetuated for at least a couple of generations already, many of us have also been lying to ourselves. The lie is that the more years we spend in school and the better our grades are, the better we can expect our lives to become.

The assumption makes no sense at all. We spend time in school in order to prepare ourselves. But if our lives are expected to get better, then there's no need to be prepared for it. Who needs to prepare for a life of ease? Of sipping pina coladas by a sunny beachside resort in the Bahamas? In truth, the reason why we prepare ourselves is because we expect bad things to happen. We prepare for disaster. We prepare because our lives are likely to become infinitely worse once we leave the safety zone of our school.

So why has this obviously counter-intuitive lie persisted down the generations? Somehow, people have got the mistaken idea that being in school is the way we pay our dues to society, and that the child's relative present suffering is a way of 'paying forward' a ticket to paradise in adulthood. So when the child finally graduates, he can "[habour] high hope [sic] of a good life afterwards." But it's so disappointing to see his hopes dashed in the face of adult reality.

I don't know the letter-writer personally, but I shall assume that he -- like many other of our graduated students -- has "all the A’s in [his] report card", and yet is unable to find satisfactory employment. I shall also assume that being a straight-A student meant huge sacrifices of freedom and other personal privations in order to focus on his studies and score his A's, all the while telling himself it would all be worth it in the end: a nice, cushy office job; telling the B-graders and below to make the coffee; while the money just rolls in. Because all the hard work was already done in school.

It's hard to face the truth that the shiny, golden academic degree is not the passport to the good life we were told it was. If you've worked hard for it, great! Kudos to you. But the real work begins at the workplace. Sadly, the real work involves everything else you gave up in your earlier life while you chose to mug for your A grades. There isn't a job out there that requires the employee to sit and memorize stacks of notes only to reproduce it all over again a month or six later. Xerox made that job obsolete decades ago. Sorry.

Real work involves having lots of different interests, personal, general and current; in order to be interesting to co-workers, customers and anyone else along the production or service chain. Solo muggers are at a serious disadvantage because collaboration -- i.e., working with others, quirks and all -- is a premium at the workplace. People who can think beyond the manual or even improve it are much preferred to those who can just reproduce it or require it in order to carry out their daily tasks. Workplace problems do not come with their own formulas to apply; they have to be solved with new methods all the time. Workers are comfortable with learning, unlearning and relearning, a concept unthinkable to students of our carefully structured and scaffolded system.

Employable skills are those we pick up when we get our noses out of our textbooks and learn from life itself. We can't say we've visited Rome after reading a Fodor's guide. Likewise.

So why are employers starting to rely on foreign employees? Because foreigners are not as grade-obsessed as we are. They don't view educational qualifications as a certificate of entitlement to a job good or otherwise. It's blinkered of us to keep thinking such because today, every other S'porean grad holds a string of A's, but little else to distinguish one from another. What's an employer to do?

The letter-writer is probably right to call himself a "failed product" of the system and not label the system outright as a failure. We don't have a mass unemployment situation here, so it's likely that most who pass through our system do find jobs. It's these small, unhappy minorities who can't fathom what has gone so wrong for them. I hope his new career coach can help undo the damage his schooling experience has done to him. In the meantime, I'm not going to lie to my kids any more. Never have, actually...!

Content with Content but value in Values

The industry has set some new targets. We've been so focused on academic goals, it's time to bring back values. That's what I've been saying all along. In the practical sense, it's the way to go because what is abundant is cheap, and what is scarce is treasured. Today, Content (information/knowledge) is so abundant it's virtually free. What we've grown so scarce of is Values, and if we casually scan our immediate environment, it's clear how lacking we are in this basic human trait. So people who chase after Content, hoard it, and seek to capitalize on it are going to be disappointed in how little return they are going to get out of it. Those who will benefit most in the near future are those who have cultivated the right Values that can guide them in putting the freely abundant resource of Content to the best use.

By the way, I'm referring to Content and Values within the context of my pet subject, GP, hence I am looking at the issue as an academic working in the industry, not as a layman. Lately, campus has been looking to add value to our year-end results. Not that it hasn't been a preoccupation before, but now that our intake has been attracting increasingly better performing candidates, it's been getting harder to add value to our students year after year, since by their 'O's they are already doing well in their academic subjects.

It's difficult for us, especially, because we once had students who were happy enough to pass their 'A's; but now our students are aiming for top grades. Our strategies have to change, not in little increments any longer; we have to take bigger and bolder steps. I can only speak for my subject, so I will venture to examine how our grade rubrics work in order to suggest what else we might be doing to squeeze out that extra value to meet and exceed our new expectations.

Remember that there is little value in abundant resources and a much higher value in that which is scarce? Since Content is abundant to the max given our electronic information access and retrieval capabilities today, providing more Content for the kids to study adds little value to their learning. Content makes the difference between outright pass and fail, though, so there is still a bunch of students whom we must feed Content to and they must be content to just scrape through. But if we examine the GP rubric, the higher grades are attainable by exhibiting good judgement in evaluating Content knowledge based on strong moral principles backed up with logical reasoning, communicated clearly and succinctly to others.

If we're wondering how we have the time to 'cover' so much Content and so much skills training in the slightly less than two years that we have with each cohort, I say we up the emphasis on the skills we are lacking in and downplay Content teaching (what most people are so worried about) which is so abundant, it's valueless. After all, in grading GP papers for so many years, it's clear that depth of content does not gain additional marks but instead distracts the candidate from responding to the main question who then fails to show evidence of thinking, reasoning, evaluating and communicating, thus resulting in mediocre to near-fail grades.

Let's be assured that knowing a little about many 'topics' makes a candidate more flexible in dealing with the tough moral questions that he or she will face at the 'A's than a candidate with a lot of knowledge about only a few pet topics. A daily scan of the news as a personal habit is much more beneficial to a student, because it allows him or her to participate in the up-to-the-minute global conversation, than a topical content package that provides a false sense of security. Such packages are more for assuaging guilt than they are useful in training young minds to become global citizens of the 21st century.

Since the JC timeline is two years duration, I think the first year we should train the kids to source Content for themselves, that is to plug themselves into the daily flow of news, to observe patterns of human interaction and to identify people, concerns and events that repeat themselves over time. It's throwing them into the pool at the deep end. It'll be chaotic as they flail about, struggle, curse and complain but most will get the hang of it, while those who are seriously going under are the ones we are watching out for with the rubber ring.

Second year, we push the kids out more to exercise their moral judgement, critical thinking and communication skills as a natural follow-up from their previous experience. Second year is not the time for Content drilling any longer since (ideally) they have already immersed themselves in the ebb and flow of global information currency. What they need now is to be able to pick a point on the Content map and navigate their own way there, and this is going to require more kids getting involved in classroom interaction and less of teacher-talk which just eats into valuable training-time for the kids.

The reason why I've brought up this discussion on values education is because the industry, bless the top management, has clear and good intentions for the needs of our nation but, like the bureaucrats that they are, their only solution for encouraging schools to embark on Values education is to throw money at it. People have the wrong idea that Values education is a separate entity from Subject education. It's not. In fact, Values education is integral to subject mastery (at least it is for GP) and to reward it with money and certificates gives the very wrong impression that a person's values can be exploited for personal gain, and that values are used to differentiate people from one another instead of integrating everyone inclusively through the sharing of the same values in common with one another.

All the more so that we send out the right message of Values education because we are finding ourselves living in an increasingly diverse society, where tension between people groups is running alarmingly high.