Teaching values ​​is to educate moral sentiments

Abstract

This article presents a proposal about what does it mean to educate values, from the point of view of an active conception of the developing subject. For this reason we consider that to educate values consists of creating conditions to learn ethically. Ethical learning is a process related to domains of formal education as well as to fields of non formal or informal education, because its nature does not rely only in a ruled knowledge but it is rooted in the established relationships among different contexts, from which we build, elaborate and reelaborate our cognitive and affective schemes. The author stands for personal autonomy, will, respect for the difference, acceptance of contrarieties and readiness to dialogue, as a set of values and means one should use when dealing when establishing relationships with other people. Take all this into account requires a distinction of the reasoning and feelings of the pedagogical statements and practices and, more concretely, what are moral feelings, if we wish to educate.