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   %TEACH LEARN VALUES SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY PROFESSOR 890317

     It  is  not  possible to separate  the  teaching  and
learning  of science and technology from the teaching  and
learning of values. Pretending to have succeeded in making
such a separation entails the teaching and learning of the
value of playing games of mutual self deception.

     Teaching  and learning technical competence  involves
teaching and learning to value technical competence enough
to see it as meriting the spending of enough personal time
to  acquire  the  competence.  Personal time is  a  scarce
resource.   Setting  priorities regarding how to  spend  a
scarce  resource  entails  value  judgments.   Encouraging
students  to spend major fractions of their personal  time
acquiring technical skills is teaching them to value those
technical skills enough to spend major fractions of  their
scarcest  resource,   personal time,  upon  acquiring  the
technical skills.

     To  pretend  that teaching of values and ideals  have
been separated from the teaching of science and technology
is to participate in a game of mutual self deception;   to
teach  dishonesty.  It is far more integrative to be  open
and honest and to find integrative ways to teach technical
competence   within  the  context  of  open   and   honest
discussions  of  the relative values of various  technical
competencies.   It  is then possible to make informed  and
wise  decisions  regarding how to spend personal  time  in
acquiring  the technical competencies most likely to  have
integrative value in real life situations.

     If professors and students are pretending that values
and  ideals  are  not intimately involved in  science  and
technical education, they are not free to honestly discuss
the  relative merits of learning one set of scientific and
technical facts, skills, procedures versus another set. In
the  absence  of  such  discussion  both  professors   and
students are victims of traditions which are divorced from
feed-back   evidence   regarding   the   consequences   of
respecting  the traditions.  They cannot objectively study
the consequences of their own reflexive behavior  patterns
as  they  pretend  to be objective in  their  professional
lives.

     These   considerations  are  relevant  even   without
attending  to  traditional questions regarding the  social
implications  of science and technology.  Even within  the
limits  of traditional professional activity of scientists
and  technically  trained  people not  all  knowledge  and
technical  skills  are  of equal value.  It is a  game  of
mutual  self deception to pretend otherwise and  to  avoid
all  discussions  of  the  relative  values  of  different
scientific   and  technical  knowledge.   People  who  are
compulsively dedicated to being objective at all times can
not  permit  themselves to engage in such  discussions  of
relative  values  and ideals;  for  such  discussions  are
essentially reflexive and cannot be objective.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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