Letters to the Editor

Category: Letters to the Editor

Hi, Richard:

The comment from a reader about the value words being action verbs instead of abstract qualities and your response shows that you are both correct.

Several years ago I conducted a study about values. I surveyed 200 teachers and asked them to review a list of 25 value words and rank order the list in terms of importance to them. Number one was the most important and number 25 was the least important.

I then asked each teacher to describe three examples of how they put their number one value into action in the classroom, and provide three examples of how they put their number 25 value into action in the classroom.

We expected that they would easily come up with three actions for number one and have difficulty coming up with three actions for number 25. The exact opposite was true, however. And in some cases the teachers couldn't describe any actions for number one, and when they did, their confidence that the value and action were congruent was very low.

We used this study to postulate that such incongruence between prized values and daily action was the major source of stress for teachers. We also used the data to influence teacher training and teacher professional development to use a more coach like approach in helping teachers articulate their values and construct methods, lessons, etc that reflected or demonstrated their values.

Cheers.

Rey Carr (Peer Resources)

Richard

Good to see you back in print again.

I have a few thoughts on the ‘can you be too rich’ question as in our quest to bend the use of our language, we seem to have lost sight of our goal, and it is time to refocus and consider:

We might consider someone rich from inheritance who spent their capital on things that added little or no value to their lives, to be irresponsible or a wastrel, rather than rich. As we’re doing the same to the natural capital of our planet, claims to be rich when we’re reducing our capital need to be taken with caution – we are reducing the earth’s capacity to support human life at an alarming rate.

The Chinese sage Lao Tse commented 2500 years ago that “only the man who knows the meaning of the word enough can ever be rich”, and I found it interesting to discuss this with clients in Shanghai on a recent visit. Until we decide for ourselves what enough means in terms of holidays, countries visited, carbon emitted, size of my TV and so on, we can’t really start the process of getting rich.

Our biggest challenge is to remember the meaning of wealth and riches, and realise the true value of conversations and relationships – events which retain their value over time – rather than pretend that the continued acquisition of material possessions will ever be sufficient to be replace the value of human contact that they replace.

Perhaps the question is not so much about obscene wealth but ‘ignorant wealth’, as well as its flip side cousin of enforced poverty, which has to exist if I choose material over human wealth.