The Department of Education?s (DepEd) Order 41, S. 2003 stipulated the importance of values education in the Basic Education Curriculum. It further stated for a need to ?meaningfully integrate values development? through the different subjects being taught to students. Eighteen years after the said Department Order was issued, the lingering question facing schools right now is how do we know that we have developed desirable values to our students? To objectively and impartially answer this question entails that DepEd has a scientifically acceptable monitoring and evaluation tool that can track the progression and regression of values that we taught to our students. Unfortunately, there is no such kind of tool so far. It is on this context, that this study was conducted with the end in mind of advancing the idea that now is the time for DepEd particularly the City Schools Division of Cagayan de Oro to start contemplating in the development of a tool that can monitoring an evaluate the progression and regression of those desirable values that we have taught to our students. In respond to this, an exploratory survey was conducted to Grade I students in West I School District, which was then disaggregated in terms of their gender. The result had shown that out of the six values that were included for testing, only three attitudinal and behavioral indicators, namely, politeness, cordiality, and honesty in which male and female Grade I students significantly differ. Due to the delimitation being self-imposed in this exploratory survey, the study did not capture the different demographics of the children, which if done, could provide and extensive as well as intensive insights of these children?s differences relative to the values being explored. The study concluded that all values acquired by the child are reflective of the dominant values in the family of the child and in the community in which the child belongs. Therefore, being able to ascertain and profile the values of our school children, it can provide the teachers and the school an insight of the dominant values that are either positive or negative that students are imbibing in their respective family?s and in their community. On this, it is then possible to come up with program intervention within the context of the core values that DepEd had wanted to promote, namely, maka-Diyos, makabayan, makatao, and makakalikasan. On that note, the study recommended that it is now time for DepEd to come up with a monitoring and evaluation tool to be used during the entire elementary and high school years of children that can track the progression or regression of core values that DepEd wanted to inculcate to its school children.

Values Education