Values Clarification Is A Fraud

The growth of self-expression in our classrooms in the last two decades has not served to bring a glorious increase in student happiness and mental health.  If anything, the great rise in student violence and the continued decline in student test scores are evidence that the opposite has occurred.  In short, the assumption about the complete natural goodness of the self, which stands at the heart of the values clarification theory, is false.  This weakness alone is enough to remove it as a sensible candidate for a theory of moral education.

Paul C. Vitz, "Psychology As Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship," pg.70