Educating our children in values, but what values?

Postmodernity brings with it a profound crisis in academic and family content regarding values ​​education

Joaquín Díaz Atienza

Reason, the foundation of knowledge and the truths it proclaimed, is in irreversible crisis. Until the 50s, society operated under the categorical imperative of values ​​considered universal and stable, which gave meaning to life. Kant was the unquestionable point of reference. We have moved, regardless of whether one is Christian or atheist, from "your neighbor as yourself" to "only yourself." Shared and generalizable truths no longer exist; now there is only my truth. An unstable, ever-changing truth, like the autobiography I can construct from it. We have gone from a homogenizing narrative to countless narratives, each with identical axiological value. The Übermensch has been born, even though he moves in spiritual poverty. We have opened the door to Nietzsche, Foucault, and Marcuse, and buried it for Descartes and Kant.

How have values ​​"transmuted"?

• • References to precise and universal beliefs, whether religious or ideological, are no longer valid. Now everything is vague and relative. Reason loses power to emotion, to individual feelings. What matters is what my heart tells me.

• Ethics as a benchmark for social coexistence and citizen self-regulation no longer exists. Now, pragmatism is what matters, "morality" based on results and consequences.

• Achievements through effort lose relevance in favor of pleasure. What matters to the postmodern individual is the satisfaction of the body, of instincts. The soul, as well as any transcendent meaning of being human, disappears. We are distinguished from other animals only by the species to which we belong and by our capacity for self-awareness.

• Roles have become blurred, increasingly diluted: parents/children; teachers/students; men/women, etc., all becoming more intertwined. This leaves our sons and daughters without role models, without figures upon which to build their own personalities. Figures of authority are disappearing. I am my own role model; I decide what is right and wrong, even about my own life and the lives of others, provided it is socially permissible: euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion without time limits, infanticide, eugenics, etc.

• We have moved from a sociogenic view of man to an absolutely individualistic one. The other is significant insofar as he satisfies my own desires and contributes positively to my life story.

• Only the present matters, so satisfaction, consumption, and hedonism take precedence. There is no commitment, only a fluid agreement with those with whom I occasionally identify and share values, because nothing is permanent or transcendent. As we live in society, it is no surprise that different identity groups try to be as hegemonic as possible, often employing totalitarian traits to maintain their uniqueness at the expense of other forms of diversity. Therefore, today, in the absence of universal truths, we are subject to political correctness.

This content-free, fluid, and profoundly self-determining and selfish ethic coexists socially with other radically different ones: solidarity coexists with a lack of solidarity, tolerance with totalitarianism, mercy with indifference, promiscuity with abstinence, poverty with wastefulness, machismo with hembrism, etc.

How to educate in postmodernity?

1. 1. The great dilemma facing parents and educators is none other than the fragmentation of values, as well as their relativism and fluidity, in the face of the need to instill in our children values ​​that are consistent enough to underpin their life projects. Faced with the daily grind of postmodern life, we parents dream of children with plans for the future; faced with children focused on consumption and hedonism, we dream of children with enough self-control over their emotions and primal instincts to resiliently confront life's challenges and frustrations.

1. 1. Faced with the relativity of values, we need to equip our children with the capacity to distinguish and critically evaluate the ideas that other groups try to impose. We need to make them self-reliant and autonomous in their decision-making, in the face of the chaos of postmodern society.

1. 1. Postmodernity generates serious contradictions that foster social and individual neuroticism. One of these is the preaching of tolerance in the face of diversity, when each of these groups attempts to impose its singular worldview on us in an authoritarian manner. We hear talk of interreligious dialogue, cultural diversity, and diversity among individuals, yet, on the other hand, we observe how groups, and even states themselves, close in on themselves to avoid being contaminated by other worldviews. Thus, we have China, pre-Columbian cultures, the Arab world, LGBTQ+ communities, religious groups, and the West itself, with its favorable stance toward postmodernity, becoming hermetically sealed to avoid being contaminated by currents of thought that could challenge them. Both intercultural and interreligious dialogue, in my opinion, are nothing more than the result of a naive idealism on the part of individuals and groups lacking identity or ignorant dreamers who don't understand the human condition. Because one thing is tolerance, as long as I am tolerated, and quite another is not understanding that human beings and various societies need to face the increase in entropy that comes from accepting worldviews that put them in crisis and in a state of uncertainty.

1. 1. Therefore, as parents, we must educate our sons and daughters in values ​​that we believe benefit them, regardless of political correctness, and ensure they develop socially in environments that share those same values. Anything else will only create adjustment problems and existential crises for them.