to help acquire socially useful values

Gavriel Salomon : Educating for Values
"The truth is that we have quite a bit of expertise in the field of learning. But our expertise is limited to mainly scholarly learning, particularly the acquisition of facts, concepts, formulae and organized bodies of knowledge.

This kind of expertise we have is badly limited in three respects: (a) We know how information is acquired but know far less about how it is being transformed by the solo learner and by a team of learners into meaningful knowledge. Only recently have we come to realize that information is not knowledge and that the acquisition of the former is hardly a necessary and surely not a sufficient condition for the latter. (b) We know even less about ways of turning knowledge into usable, rather than inert knowledge. (c) Most importantly, though, is the fact that we know how intellectual stuff is learned, but we know far less about acquiring human values and learning to live by them."


"If we knew how to help youngsters acquire socially useful values such as mutual help, caring, shared responsibility, striving for greater equality, interdependence instead of self-serving independence, and their likes, we might see a more humane society, perhaps poorer in monetary possessions yet richer in social capital. Such a society might also show greater compassion for the rest of the world that feels left out, oppressed, and exploited. It is that part of the world that breeds enough hatred to send human missiles into towers occupied by unsuspecting, innocent human beings."