Society is currently going through a clear crisis of values. Moral ambiguity is the order of the day and post-modern relativism is stronger than ever, perhaps because of globalization, which facilitates contact and empathy with other cultures, perhaps because of a decline in previously established values, which are condemned to be systematically revised.

Anyway, it is not so clear anymore what is good and what is bad . Some values are replaced by others, sometimes contradictory, and the older people are reluctant to change while the new generations are dismantling everything and reassembling it.

One of the values that has been most devastating in recent years is freedom . Freedom of expression, sexual freedom, but above all, freedom of choice, the right to choose. Many times, this value is questioned from the argument of “more freedom, less security”, and it is not far off.

Education in values and freedom

From the educational point of view, that some citizens were capable of self-regulation, freely choosing each of their steps and yet maintaining a harmonious coexistence, is pure fantasy (in all senses of the word).

However, the reality is there, and half the thinkers think that man is a wolf for man. If as a society we grant too much freedom, there will be those who use it for their own benefits , even going over the heads of their fellow men, so we create laws, security forces and prisons, which are still a mechanism to regulate that freedom.

This tension is untenable. We cannot on the one hand defend that feminism is dressing the way we want, but on the other hand condemn certain forms of dressing because they hypersexualise the figure of women, objectifying it. We cannot, on the one hand, educate our students through constructive learning, and on the other hand, evaluate their academic performance on a specific numerical scale from 0 to 10.

The way to make this new wave of freedom flow is by attending, as always, to education in values . It is true that freedom is the path to optimal functioning in society, but this freedom, this capacity to choose, grants us power, power over our life and power over the life of our fellow men. This can be written in any era: every great power carries with it a great responsibility.

Collective responsibility and ethics

Freedom comes with responsibility . I can have the freedom to dress as I want, but act responsibly and choose an option that does not contribute to maintaining hegemonic gender values, which are harmful to my society, and at the same time, legitimize someone else to choose the other option without judging it.

Responsibility is not a coercion, it’s not a prison. Responsibility is freedom, it is the capacity to choose, but to do so with criteria and reflection . To choose responsibly is not to choose “correctly” (nothing guarantees that we will choose “correctly”), it is simply not to choose lightly, to be aware that what we choose can affect others, just as what others choose can affect us.

That is why we consider it very important to educate in the value of responsibility at an early age , and to insist on it throughout schooling.

It is crucial to teach students to ask themselves what they can do to achieve their goals, to train them to recognize those situations in which they enjoy some kind of power that brings them that responsibility, or to educate them in empathy and other social skills. More than anything else because this time of change cannot be consummated if that value does not have the protagonism it needs, and then it will leave us in eternal debates that, not only will not end with the established values, but will create in many people the sensation of doing things contrary to their ideals, falling into the malaise known as cognitive dissonance, or making them unable to choose one option or another, falling into the malaise known as learned helplessness.