VALUES editorial
Underlying statements about what we believe "should" occur are our values. Without the ability to explore, investigate and challenge our own and other people's stated and implied values and value systems, we will be forever stuck in a loop of accusations.
This section of diversity studies is committed to exploring various systems of values that underlie education and the larger social systems that encompass education.
As we are interested in examining the socio-constructs affecting values that we hold, we are equally committed to explorations of the inner psychological workings that play in and out , around and among those "shoulds" and "oughts" that permeate academic and political polemic.
We propose that a variety of value systems is beneficial to human ecologies. We do not recommend any sort of universal agreement when it comes to values. However, we wish for a more open evaluation and discussion of value systems so that genuinely representative compromises can be negotiated between people.
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Conflicting Value Systems And Therapeutic Intervention
As we go on extending the definitions of mental illness and labeling an increasing number of people as 'disturbed', thus transforming people into patients, we are constantly confronted, whether we realize it or not, with the problem of values.
Science and Human Values Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Rationalism, for what ever its value, appears to have emerged from mythology with the Greeks. In engaging in this intellectual exercise, the Greeks assumed, of course, that nature would play fair; that, if attacked in the proper manner, it would yield its secrets and would not change position or attitude in midplay. Over two thousand years later, Albert Einstein expressed this feeling when he said, "God may be subtle, but He is not malicious." There was also the feeling that the natural laws, when found, would be comprehensible. This Greek optimism has never entirely left the human race.
From its new perspective, Science may be as much a study of information as it is a study of gravitation or electricity.
A Constructionist Approach to Values through On-line Narrative Tools
The paper describes an on-going research project, Kaleidostories, a computer-based narrative tool to support construction of coherence between the fragmented selves and values that populate our identity.