The Best of Creative Computing Volume 1 (published 1976)
What Do You Value? (exercises to determine what values are important to you)
A new learning activity from Creative Computing ....
What Do You Value?
by Sally Richards
There's a great deal of talk (and action, too) these days about values; value
clarification, strategies, the processes involved in "valuing," and about the
revaluation of values. Based on the premise that our lives, our surroundings,
and our roles are constantly shifting and changing, it becomes critically
important that each of us knows what we value. That is, we must know who we are,
what we want and where we're going.
Values have become a central issue in school, home, church, and business. Value
clarification is being sought extensively as a vehicle for achieving personal
growth and fulfillment, as well as a basis for decision making and problem
solving.
How does one know what to value? How do you know
what you are for or against?
In these troubled, confused, but also exciting times, we need people who know
who they are, who know what they want out of life, and who can name their names
when controversy rages. People who are not so vulnerable to a demagogue, or to
blandness, or to safety. Values are the basis upon which people decide what they
are for and against, or where they are going and why. In other words, they give
direction to life. But, with the many divergent values viable today, it is
oftentimes difficult to know where you stand.
The following exercises (sometimes called strategies) can be used to help you
determine what is important to you? What do you value? After doing these
yourself, you can perhaps try them on friends, family, or students and compare
some of their ideas and alternatives to your own.
