Values... What Values???

Recently high-school values clarification class conducted by a teacher in Teaneck, New Jersey. A girl in the class had found a purse containing $1,000 and returned it to its owner. The teacher asked for the class's reaction. Every single one of her fellow students concluded the girl had been foolish. Most of the students contended that if someone was careless, they should be punished. When the teacher was asked what he said to the students, he responded, "Well, of course, I didn't say anything. If I come from the position of what is right and what is wrong, then I'm not their counsellor. I can't impose my views."

If we do not learn values from our parents and teachers, who do we learn them from? And when they don't teach us values, we pick them up by default from television and other such undesirable sources. No wonder society gets messed up. The teacher such as in the example above is not only irresponsible with distorted values but does not deserve to be teaching our kids.

Through generations, some values have crystallized as eternal and universal, which give us our clear “do’s and don’ts”.

... But today there is a concept of relative values and relative principles. Today’s concept of relative values says, “Everything is OK. What’s right for me, may not be right for you.”

If values are subjective and they keep changing from person to person and situation-to-situation, then they are not values at all. or are they???