Wes­ley Gib­bings

A re­view of Val­ues For Life

by St An­drew's The­o­log­i­cal Col­lege

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St An­drew's The­o­log­i­cal Col­lege (SATC) has re­spond­ed to a re­cur­ring call for en­light­ened val­ues ed­u­ca­tion in the school sys­tem with a pub­li­ca­tion that re­sists the dif­fi­cult temp­ta­tion by re­li­gious folk to preach and pros­e­ly­tise.

Val­ues for Life is the prod­uct of a col­lab­o­ra­tion in­volv­ing the Col­lege and a net­work of sea­soned ed­u­ca­tors from the Pres­by­ter­ian pri­ma­ry school sys­tem. San­dra Dop­son's de­light­ful il­lus­tra­tions al­so add colour and life to the sto­ries. She is bet­ter known for her acrylic land­scapes.

SATC chair­man, Jus­tice Pe­ter Ja­madar speaks in the pref­ace to the 84-page pri­ma­ry-lev­el work­book of a "deficit in con­struc­tive core life-val­ues through­out the coun­try" and ex­press­es hope the pub­li­ca­tion will help "in a pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion at both the per­son­al and so­ci­etal lev­els."

Wish­ful think­ing or not, the 24 thought­ful­ly com­posed and il­lus­trat­ed sto­ries are suf­fi­cient to at least pique youth­ful in­ter­est in the qual­i­ties of the key pro­tag­o­nists.

Two op­pos­ing adult gang mem­bers, for ex­am­ple, un­wit­ting­ly recog­nise strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween their re­spec­tive sons who turn out to be best friends. In the end, peace be­tween the gangs reigns, and young read­ers are drawn–through sim­ple, poignant ques­tions as vir­tu­al ar­biters to dis­sect the trans­act­ing of this "peace."

In the les­son en­ti­tled Free­dom, two po­lice of­fi­cers vis­it a school and talk to stu­dents about fight­ing and bul­ly­ing. They demon­strate the im­pact of vi­o­lence on vic­tims through a process of role-play­ing be­fore a group of trou­ble­some stu­dents.

The ex­er­cise em­pha­sis­es the neg­a­tive, long-term im­pact of bul­ly­ing and vi­o­lence on vic­timised stu­dents.

This per­haps is the best-case ex­am­ple of the val­ue of po­lice youth clubs and com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing strate­gies once cham­pi­oned by peo­ple such as re­tired deputy com­mis­sion­er Win­ston Coop­er and oth­ers who now lament the grad­ual dis­in­te­gra­tion of the ef­fort in ex­change for a heav­ier po­lice hand.

Then comes the sto­ry of Pa­tri­ot­ic Raj whose life is ref­er­enced by a moth­er who was once asked a prob­ing ques­tion by her 10-year-old daugh­ter on the is­sue of pa­tri­o­tism. "Isn't that when peo­ple die or go to jail for their peo­ple ...?"

In a rare er­ror, the name Gand­hi is mis­spelled in this chap­ter, but the sto­ry diplo­mat­i­cal­ly makes the point that stand­ing at at­ten­tion for the Na­tion­al An­them and fly­ing a flag are high­ly over-rat­ed as sig­ni­fy­ing acts of "pa­tri­o­tism."

This is a valu­able class­room re­source that should reach schools out­side the perime­ter of the Pres­by­ter­ian school sys­tem.

There are vir­tu­al­ly no ref­er­ences to any spe­cif­ic re­li­gion and no at­tempt to con­vert any­one to any­thing. In fact, when ques­tioned on this par­tic­u­lar ap­proach, SATC deputy prin­ci­pal Rev Harold Sita­hal said it was a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort to pro­mote an "ec­u­meni­cal ap­proach" to val­ues ed­u­ca­tion.

Love, in the book, is de­pict­ed as an act of self­less sac­ri­fice by a poor moth­er met by the gen­eros­i­ty of a thought­ful child. Por­tray­ing the child as hero and at the cen­tre of a so­lu­tion in the sto­ry does much to re­spond to mis­placed con­tem­po­rary con­cerns about a co-called "lost gen­er­a­tion."

Val­ues for Life de­serves more than a sec­ond look by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and every­one with a con­cern about teach­ing, not preach­ing, ear­ly lessons on val­ues and chang­ing the fu­ture peo­plescape.