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“Schools should be responsible only for teaching academic skills and not for teaching ethical and social values.”

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion expressed above. Support your point of view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.


Here is my answer

The school has a clear mandate of teaching academic skills, there is no argument on that part. However it becomes tricky when it comes to teaching the ethical and social values. Various communities and cultures may have different ethical and social standards and one-value-fits-all may be hard to find. Also the students come from various economic and financial standards of living, and a particular ethical or a social value may be offending for some. On the other side of the spectrum, social and ethical values nevertheless need to be taught to the students. In today's date, when parents are often busy and students spent an large portion of their time in school, it becomes at least a partial responsibility of the school to provide some ethical and social values.

Considering some kids already have some ethical and social values imbibed in them, may become more judgmental of the other kids. This may cause deep fractures and groups in the classroom based on race, financial status etc. Also teaching ethical and social values, in school may cause some young people to resent their families or teachers based on some things that they learn in school.

The other side of the issue, may be what happens if the school does not teach enough ethical and social values ? While many of the young people may get good ethical and social values from family and home, some others may not be so lucky. This may lead to having a a large number young people in the society who will be deprived of having ethical and social values.


While there are interesting points to argue from both sides of the issue, it is clear that a broad framework of basic ethical and social values, need to be formulated. Care must be taken that they must be uniform for all colors,races and faiths. They should not interfere with any basic beliefs of the various faiths. Once such a framework of ethical and social values is created, they need to be imparted to the students. This middle of the way approach should help the schools build a healthy future generation. As a word of caution, the framework of social values needs to be implemented in a sensitive way, so as to ensure that everybody in the class can contribute and learn social and ethical values from each other.