A brief history of Education by Experience

E × E is an educational model designed to foster in children and youth the competencies needed to lead lives that are guided by ethical values. The approach encourages students to utilise dialogue to critically analyse their viewpoints and life circumstances so they can reflect on what is right, improve their reasoning, make decisions on how to proceed in different scenarios, and make a commitment to put those decisions into actions.

The pedagogy was conceived during the late 2000s by an entrepreneur and philanthropist, Dr Armando Prida, who sought to find solutions to some of the problems facing Mexico and the world. In a quest to create a more ethical and humane society, Dr Prida brought together a group of educators, academics, intellectuals, and journalists to create didactic materials for children and youth deemed “born to lose”, in the words of Spanish sociologist Rafael Feito (Freito & Alonso, 1990).

In contrast to prevailing top-down educational approaches, E × E prioritises processes where children’s lived experiences frame their learning and choices so they can discover the value of acquiring new knowledge, why they ought to learn, when they should learn, and for what purpose. E × E aims to improve human rights through ethical decision-making, inclusiveness, plurality, and tolerance.

The programme spans from early childhood through post-secondary education and centres on four pedagogical processes: (1) listening, (2) dialoguing, (3) decision-making, and (4) awareness-raising. The model promotes democratic values, equity, self-esteem, efficacy, impulse control, patience, and perseverance. It helps students develop competencies such as self-awareness, creativity, commitment, leadership, civic engagement, teamwork, critical thinking, linguistic competence, problem-solving, character development, physical and emotional well-being, and goal-setting. The model brings together three fundamental actors for learning and change: (1) children and adolescents, (2) parents, and (3) teachers.

The core assumption of the model is that decision-making is primarily based on values. Learning is based on students’ experiences. Teachers introduce children to E × E topics and key terms. Students read a lesson then offer their opinions about the theme at hand, sign a pledge to abide by the principles convened during the session, and ask their parents to commit to the agreement as well.

The model enables students to interact more productively and to develop learning skills to acquire new knowledge. They are able to work in a group while expressing their personal opinions, enjoy better relationships with their parents and peers, and engage in society conscious of the positive and negative consequences of their actions for themselves, their families, and others.

E × E was first piloted in nine schools in Puebla, Mexico, in the spring of 2011, and it was implemented in 217 schools during the autumn of the same year. Staff from the state’s Human Rights Commission and the Family Welfare Directorate validated the programme’s implementation during the piloting phase. The following year (October 2012), in conjunction with Puebla’s Normal Schooling Institute, E × E evaluated the programme in twenty-five preschool programmes with seventy-six teachers. In February 2013, E × E offered the programme to more than 2,500 preschool children. By 2015, E × E had signed multiple agreements across Mexico benefiting over 7 million people, promoting the signing of over 124,000 parent and teacher pledges, offering more than 22,000 teacher-training workshops, and distributing over 7 million books and 500,000 CDs in various states of Mexico.

Assessment results from early implementation programmes in Michoacán (with 5,800 primary-school students in twenty schools) and in Sinaloa (1,000 secondary-school students) showed increased interaction, participation, and empathy among participants, fostering positive behaviour and self-esteem among students and positive interpersonal communication among family members.

Successful implementation of E × E has led to the programme’s expansion throughout Mexico. English-language materials are being developed and will soon be piloted in California. In April 2020, E × E signed an agreement with the United Nations to expand the utilisation of the model across the globe.

Methodology: The four steps of Education by Experience

The E × E method is organised in four steps: (1) listening (listen); (2) dialogue (discuss); (3) decision-making (decide), and (4) awareness-raising (transcend). When students are first introduced to a theme presented in their grade-level-appropriate E × E textbook, they listen to the adult facilitator, and fellow students read the words in the text addressing each topic presented in the text. Facilitators explain the most relevant concepts and new terms that are included in a glossary section in each thematic chapter. Students are then invited to share their points of view on the topic, and the teacher poses questions to encourage dialogue among the group. Specific questions are provided in each textbook, prompting students to write individual reflections and to sign a pledge to engage in ethical practices and to adopt the attitudes promoted in each specific unit. Parents and guardians are also provided with a guidebook for engaging with their child in both dialogue and actions pertaining to the themes that have been discussed in the child’s classroom E × E experience. Parents and guardians are also asked to sign a pledge to embrace the ethical principles discussed with their children and to take relevant actions within their household and community. The fourth step is premised on developing increased levels of consciousness about social problems and their relation to values. In this regard, be it in relation to people, situations, or narratives, three types of values can be identified: (1) individual or personal values; (2) moral values; and (3) aesthetic values. Moral values are discerned as different from individual values yet may inform an individual’s values; therefore, moral values are sometimes intermingled with ethics and ethical values. Despite the fact that any discourse about values can conflate ethics with morality, the distinction is usually made as they are perceived in terms of practice. Morality is seen as an individual endeavour with strong normative principles. At the same time, ethics is a guide to discern what is good or bad or, in other terms, acceptable or unacceptable in human behaviour.

A question that has occupied philosophers and thinkers for centuries is whether universal moral and ethical values exist—that is, universal value standards. On the one hand, context marks significant cultural differences in the acceptance and implementation of values, and there are cultures in which those values are deeply embedded. On the other hand, there is a general agreement to accept as a universal value judgement and “moral compass” the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on 10 December 1948 by the United Nations in Paris. (Only eight countries abstained, but none dissented. These countries were Czechoslovakia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, Byelorussian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, South Africa, and Yugoslavia.) The E × E model recognises universal values, and, at the same time, its content and educational activities take into account the particular context of Mexico.

The E × E model links to the works of educational thinkers such as Pestalozzi (1781, as cited in Bowers & Gehring, 2004), Dewey (1916, 1922), Freire (1970, 2000), and Vygotsky (1978), among others. Indeed, the model calls for investigating the reality of learners in order to discover the significant situations of their lives and for using them as generative themes in the organisation of knowledge within an interdisciplinary curriculum that simultaneously considers cognitive reasoning, emotions, and practical actions (“head, heart, and hands,” in Pestalozzi’s metaphorical language). Moreover, following the ideas of John Dewey, the E × E programme emphasises experiential learning (hence the name Education by Experience) and connects new knowledge to what learners already know. This process is undertaken collectively and aims to construct a locally relevant curriculum that connects that local reality to a broad range of individual, community, and societal issues. In the E × E curriculum, students discuss a range of topics of relevance to their daily lives and their broader community. Among the many topics covered in the programme are the following:

  • interpersonal relations in the family;

  • peer-group relations in school;

  • race, gender, and class relations;

  • public transportation;

  • electoral politics;

  • public health;

  • crime and public safety;

  • air and water contamination;

  • sustainable development.

Likewise, the E × E model calls for a dialogical approach to teaching that encourages active learning (as opposed to passive or banking pedagogical models) and collective discussion and debates (as opposed to lecturing) in an ongoing process that leads to raising the critical consciousness of the learners. Learners are not only students in the classroom. Through dialogue with their parents, a new learning dimension opens up, not only incorporating the parents in this model but also imbricating them in the process of decision-making and in developing together a shared set of values that enhance human life, the global commons, and the need to promote democracy and tolerance as central global values. (A new European study explores the teaching of common values in Europe, particularly democracy and tolerance—if and how they are addressed by EU member states’ official curricula for secondary-education students. The role of civil society and non-governmental organisations is also considered. Country chapters set out the situation in twelve EU member states and show that there are considerable gaps between general policy aims and concrete implementing measures and between policy and practice in many cases. See Veugelers et al., 2017.) This programme also emphasises a problem-posing approach. Freire’s problem-posing education starts by discovering the theory hidden in the practice of human agency, civil society, communities, NGOs, and social movements. His epistemological perspective seeks, in turn, to produce new knowledge that will guide, inspire, redefine, and assist in the comprehension of praxis. However, this new knowledge has yet to be invented, constructed, or recreated through dialogue between the logic of critical social theory and the complexity of contradictory, tension-ridden practices (O’Cadiz & Torres, 1994).

Thus, Freire’s epistemological stance has at least two major implications. On the one hand, critical pedagogy emerging from Freire’s contribution is concerned with how emancipatory education can validate learners’ own culture and discourse while at the same time challenging their common sense and encouraging the development of a “good sense”. On the other hand, Freire’s recognition of the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity helps to unveil the need to find intersubjective ways to define principles and values that can guide our own experience towards a more enhanced level of phenomenological consciousness (Torres, 2014).

An example: Primary-school textbook for fourth grade

E × E has three main programmes: (1) formal education, (2) community, and (3) Indigenous Nations. This paper focuses on the formal education programme, which covers all levels from kindergarten to secondary-school education. In K–12, the programme has materials for students, parents, and teachers. The formal educational programme includes a great variety of topics, from “learning to live together” (in Spanish, convivencia) to gender equity, human rights, health and well-being, equality, and sustainability.

Primary-level textbooks follow a pattern that allows students to become familiar with the approach, making the introduction of each theme covered in the textbook predictable. Specifically, topics are examined through the same analytical format: presentation of values and competencies accompanied by thematic glossaries. Thematic introductions are followed by a reflection section examining negative and positive consequences of behaviour or awareness about the topic at hand. Finally, the last section offers learners an opportunity to express their own ideas, to provide feedback, and to sign a commitment to act in a way consistent with their values. As stated earlier, this analytical model promotes students’ familiarity with the pedagogical approach and ease of comprehension.

For the most part, the E × E textbook is relevant to school-age populations in Mexico. It has great potential for being implemented with appropriate adaptations in other contexts, including in the United States. In the United States, as a branch of civic education, moral education has a long history in public schools. The records of the National Education Association (NEA) indicate that the topic has been relevant since the 1860s when E. E. White’s address (entitled “Report on Moral Education”) at the NEA’s 1896 meeting offered an overview on the subject to date (Wilson, 1926).

Subsequently, during the progressive-education movement, the 1926 NEA’s research committee on character education offered recommendations drawn from a survey conducted with 300 cities enrolled in a curriculum-improvement effort. Among other things, the committee concluded that (1) ethics curricula varied in content outcomes; and (2) parents must be involved in the educational process. As noted before, E × E produces interrelated ethics-focused materials for students, parents, and teachers with guided discussions to encourage dialogue between students and the adults that teach and care for them. A revision of E × E materials and observation of E × E institutional videos revealing class dynamics within schools implementing the E × E curriculum indicates that the approach emphasises democratic values and the development of curricula based on students’ strengths and relevant social issues.

As in many other countries, the question of democracy has been at the core of civic education in US public schools for over a century. At a time when the United States was immersed in the Second World War, Isidore Kayfetz (1942) offered a “frame of reference” for character education in primary schools, highlighting the pre-eminence of democratic principles and practices as the basis for social order. He argued that the purpose and method of character education ought to be “training our children for the democratic way of life, in the broadest and most inclusive sense, embracing every sphere of human activity, and every relationship within the school” (Kayfetz 1942, p. 206). Effective civic-education programmes can promote students’ socio-emotional development, create awareness of social problems, nurture civic engagement, and improve school climate and academic achievement (Berkowitz & Bier, 2004).

Like any other pedagogy, civic education can be taught in various forms. For instance, the E × E model can be implemented in tandem with the school curricula and as part of a range of extracurricular programmes. Previous research has found high achievement among students who attend schools emphasising both character and academics. Moreover, parents and teachers in these schools understand their role in preparing students for active citizenship (Benninga et al., 2006).

Critical character education has always been a controversial subject in education. Martin Luther King in his famous speech delivered in Washington, DC said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” (King, 1963). This acknowledgment of the challenges that might emerge in defining how to judge the content of one’s character is almost a validation of moral education, in the sense of character-building, from a hero of the civil-rights movement in the United States—and from someone who paid with his life for his commitment to equality.

Finally, following Vygotsky’s ideas, E × E’s curricular units emphasise the connection between expected behaviour and students’ pre-existing strengths. Indeed, it is easier for children to understand and internalise values if they can relate them to their own experiences (Rawana et al., 2011).

The Paulo Freire Institute’s research team at the University of California, Los Angeles (PFI-UCLA) has examined a sample of several E × E textbooks for students and family members, conducted interviews with the programme coordinators, and observed videos of classroom interactions. The thematic units covered in the textbooks emphasise internal and external dimensions of moral and civic education. The consistency with which new concepts are presented in the E × E model allows for greater flexibility in the organisation and teaching-learning processes related to different units.

Thus, once students are introduced to the protocol of respectful and ethical social engagement, individual practices and personal commitments, they can immerse themselves into any unit covered in the text. Some of the units expose students to content about external circumstances and problems that are impacted by individual behaviours (e.g., water, deforestation, discrimination, violence, smoking, and other addictions). Other units examine individual processes and practices that impact students’ identity and interactions with peers and the world (e.g., diversity, temperament, self-esteem, bullying).

New directions for Education by Experience?

Whereas the original E × E books were designed and implemented in Mexico, there is growing interest in adapting this educational project to other countries, especially in connection to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The first testing ground for this international project will be California. The PFI-UCLA recommends that, in applying the E × E model to the California context, it could take on new directions and expand the thematic scope. In this regard, the first recommendation is to emphasise the model of global commons as the new horizon of teaching values and to link children’s experience to some of the most complex dilemmas in value learning. The second direction relates to understanding global citizenship education (GCE) as a new ethics in the global system. We will elaborate on both recommendations in what follows.

New directions I: The global commons, civil minimums, and civic virtues

Two key elements of citizenship should be defined at the outset. First is the notion of civic minimums; that is, as T. H. Marshall argued, full participation in citizenship rests ultimately on material bases. A second important concept is civic virtue. We need to pay heed to, Amy Gutmann’s persuasive argument that “education for citizenship should focus on the justification of rights rather than responsibilities, and, at the same time, that schools should foster general virtues (courage, law-abidingness, loyalty), social virtues (autonomy, open-mindedness), economic virtues (work ethic, the capacity to delay self-gratification) and political virtues (capacity to analyse, capacity to criticize”. (Gutmann, 1987, as cited in Torres, 2017, p. 98).

What is the global commons?

Three fundamental propositions define the global commons. The first one is that our planet is our only home, and we have to protect it through GCE and sustainable-development education, moving from diagnosis and denunciation of “wrongs” into action and policy implementation. Second, global commons are predicated on the idea that global peace is an intangible cultural good of humanity with immaterial value. Global peace is a treasure of humanity, and the promotion of a culture of peace is an essential educational pathway towards its attainment. Third, global commons are predicated on the need to find ways in which people who are all equal manage to live together democratically in an ever-growing diverse world, seeking to fulfil their individual and collective interests and achieving their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Global commons and democratic values: The paradox of democracy

By nature, individuals are not themselves ready to participate in politics. They must learn democratic politics in several ways, including normative grounding, ethical behaviour, knowledge of the democratic process, and technical performance. The construction of the pedagogic subject is a central conceptual problem, a dilemma of democracy. In short: democracy implies a process of participation where all are considered equal. However, education involves a process whereby the “immature” are brought to identify with the principles and forms of life of the “mature” members of society. Thus, the construction of the democratic pedagogic subject is a process of cultural nurturing. It also involves applying pedagogic and democratic socialisation principles in subjects who are neither tabula rasa in cognitive or ethical terms nor fully equipped for the exercise of their democratic rights and obligations. In the construction of modern polities, the constitution of a pedagogical democratic subject is predicated on the grounds that are paradoxically a precondition and the result of previous experiences and national solidarity policies (including citizenship, competence-building, and collaboration).

One of Freire’s significant contributions in this realm is that the pedagogical subjects of the educational process are not homogeneous citizens but culturally diverse individuals. From his notion of cultural diversity, he identified the notion of borders in education and suggested that there is an ethical imperative to cross borders if we attempt to educate for empowerment and not for oppression. Freire argues that notions of oppression and domination are part and parcel of the pedagogical relationships between teachers and pupils in traditional classrooms.

Dialogue as a method and epistemology

Another fundamental insight of Freire is that the social and pedagogical subjects of education are not fixed, essential, or inflexible, i.e. the teacher is a student and the student a teacher. The cultural and pedagogical implications are that the place and role of a teacher are not always and necessarily the extension of the role of the adult white men, or conversely, a role performed by a female teacher subsumed under the discourse of hegemonic masculinity. In the E × E model, dialogue appears not only as a pedagogical tool but also as a method of deconstruction of the way pedagogical and political discourses are constructed.

New directions II: Global citizenship education as a new ethics in the global system

Invariably, citizenship education is related to ethics and morality on the one hand and to the politics of culture and official knowledge of the nation-state responsible for public education on the other. Global citizenship education is different because it plays a role in the global system and does not depend on a specific nation-state’s particular politics. With the impetus of the concept, it should not be a surprise that it already plays a significant role in building the seeds of a new ethics in the world system. Torres’ (2017) rendition of the twelve most important principles of this new ethics follows.

  1. 1.

    GCE should promote an ethics of caring, or what Saint Ignatius termed Cura personalis. (We should notice the similarities of St Ignatius of Loyola with the proposals of the thirteenth-century Andalusian scholar, Ibn Khaldun, among the best philosophers and historians of the Middle Ages, who defended the idea that the influxes of new peoples have always reinvigorated and renewed civilisation.) The care for the individual and for human rights remains a central characteristic of GCE. A global ethics of caring is central to the implementation of GCE, embracing, as well, a key concept from feminist theory.

  2. 2.

    GCE is framed within a social-justice education framework. Without bare essentials, we cannot fully accomplish citizenship. Bare essentials speak of economic citizenship, including the right to a job, education, health care, affordable housing, and learning over the course of life. Global citizenship cannot substitute national citizenship but must add value to local, national, and regional citizenship(s).

  3. 3.

    GCE helps to produce a new narrative in education. The new GCE seeks an education that pursues a holistic learning that encompasses ethics, aesthetics, spirituality, and art, and that includes the goals of peace-building in the spirit of Jacques Delors’s (1996) Learning: The Treasure Within, particularly the principle of learning to live together as well with the rest of the Earth.

  4. 4.

    GCE seeks to identify new models of conflict resolution and negotiation strategies for different regions of the world. For example, in contexts riven by conflict and post-conflict situations, GCE appears as part of the peace-education rubric. GCE as civic education is a premise for democratic participation prevailing in contexts that have experienced totalitarian regimes or dictatorships. Slightly different are areas where regional cooperation mechanisms have emphasised other critical elements of GCE, such as civics and citizenship, democracy and good governance, and peace and tolerance.

  5. 5.

    Based on an ethics of caring and compassion, GCE seeks to understand, explain, and solve today’s migration crisis. The question of the human rights of immigrants remains elusive for the human-rights regime.

  6. 6.

    The world is changing at an unprecedented rate; cultures are intersecting as people and ideas are increasingly crossing borders. GCE can respond to one of the most important impacts of globalisation: the growing cultures of hybridity that criss-cross the world. Hybridity is everywhere—in music and youth cultures, taste, dress and speech codes, culinary delights, and aesthetic expressions—transforming traditional identities and blurring geographic, ethnic, and gendered boundaries.

  7. 7.

    GCE is a way of learning with a strong emphasis on the collective dimensions of knowledge in a rapidly evolving epoch where we are bombarded by “self-directed learning”, “individualised modules”, or “possessive competitive individualism”—these mostly connected to neoliberalism as outlined by Mayo (2015). As Wintersteiner et al. (2015) argue, GCE “responds to globalization by expanding the concept of civic education to global society”; “adopts the ethical values of peace education and human-rights education”; “draws upon the “global society” perspective provided by global education (which not only investigates global topics but more specifically merges the global and the local into the glocal)”; “combines mainly these three pedagogical fields through the concept of global citizenship in terms of political participation as such, but particularly on a global scale” (p. 4).

  8. 8.

    GCE will help to connect the global and the local dimensions, synchronising national educational policies to the global policies advocated by the United Nations. The sixty-ninth session of the UN Assembly set seventeen SDGs and 169 targets demonstrating the scale and ambition of a new universal post-2015 development agenda. For GCE, Goal 4.7 is most relevant:

    By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development (SDSN 2021).

    The most complete formulation of public-education responsibilities is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948), a document issued by the UN in the aftermath of the Second World War when the international community, shocked by the recent tragic events, convened to find ways to prevent such conflagrations from ever happening again. The Universal Declaration states in Article 26:

    Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (UN 1948)

    In this spirit, GCE brings together the agendas of different fields of education, including development education, human-rights education, education for sustainability, peace education and conflict prevention, intercultural education and interfaith education, and the global dimension of citizenship education.

  9. 9.

    GCE will enhance the threshold of a new global consciousness based on human rights and universal values and will incorporate diversity and a critical analysis of power relations and global inequalities. A key component of research should focus on the teacher and teachers’ education and adopt research methods such as the practice of participatory action research to cultivate strategies that work in promoting GCE.

  10. 10.

    GCE can address the youth bulge issue by contributing to developing new twenty-first-century skills for youth worldwide who are growing restless in the face of a jobless future. And the future has arrived already. It appears not only in the faces and dreams but also in the anguish and hopelessness of those children and youth who wonder about their own future, about how they can participate in politics to uplift their communities, how they can understand and contribute to solving local and global crises, whether they will have a job and if that job will be fulfilling and pay enough to cover their bills. A large number of the youth today do not work, study, or actively participate as citizens. Through GCE research, policy, and practice, we should seek to understand, address, and offer viable sustainable solutions for disenfranchised and marginalised youth.

  11. 11.

    GCE employs a new lifelong-learning perspective in the transition of education to work. Challenging the many forms of inequalities that persist globally, we face the need to intentionally incorporate more poor and underrepresented people. This work entails creating inclusive cultures for the poor, women and girls, marginalised racial and ethnic groups, those from diverse sexual orientations and identities and marginalised religious minorities across the range of educational environments. This mainly entails reshaping higher-education investment. For instance, we may consider implementing GCE as a diversity-requirement course throughout undergraduate education in the USA and worldwide, perhaps even creating a network of GCE courses as a diversity requirement in many universities of the world committed to the quality of education and the interruption of inequality. Such a project would be compatible with the internationalisation strategy currently pursued by quality universities in the world system.

  12. 12.

    In an increasingly interdependent world, GCE promotes a sense of belonging and active responsibility to the global community and to the planet. It emphasises a shared common humanity and destiny between people and a critical stewardship of the Earth’s biosphere and natural environment.

These twelve principles should illuminate not only the ethics but also the epistemology of GCE. In the same vein, these principles will contribute to animating the spirit, substance, and practice of a model like E × E which is based on respect for students and teachers and which actively seeks the dynamic incorporation of parents as educators in the exploration of ethics and values.

Our analysis and critique of the E × E programme highlights that although it is a powerful model, like most—if not all—things in life, it is not perfect. We are here reminded of a wonderful cosmological practice from the Persian tradition. Nobody can question that, based on reputation and quality, Persian rugs are second to none in the world. Many consider them to be examples of perfect and exquisite art. Hand-woven Persian carpets and rugs have been regarded as objects of high artistic and utilitarian value and prestige for 2,500 years. However, Persian carpet-weavers considered that only God was perfect. Therefore, they included a tiny imperfection in the rug that they called the “eye of the tiger”.

Following this metaphor, the “eye of the tiger” of E × E is that the model presents a strong emphasis on individual ethics and the assumption that changes in individual behaviour lead naturally to social change, without paying enough attention to social dynamics and the structural factors that affect change. From our perspective, the personal changes promoted by the model constitute a necessary but insufficient condition for social change.

Therefore, we propose that the model evolves in multiple directions. Specifically, we have indicated in this article two central perspectives to be incorporated pedagogically in the model: (1) the global commons; and (2) GCE as a new ethics in the global system. In this context, the model should be testing the feasibility and applicability of the twelve principles of a new global ethic presented above.

Planning is an exercise of optimism and education—an exercise of humanisation, the ever-changing utopia for the benefit of humanity and, of course, overcoming the Anthropocene for the sake of all other living beings and materials that accompany us in our life journey. Hence the imperative of sustainability.

We live in a world at a juncture in which the development of global capitalism has resulted in the compromise or outright elimination of many of humanity’s great human-rights achievements. Children should be in schools studying, not working in factories as members of a cut-rate workforce. Workers ought to receive just and dignifying wages and salaries. There ought to be racial, ethnic and gender equality and not dominant institutional mechanisms of multifaceted forms of discrimination. Women’s rights, obtained after long and collective struggles, need to be respected and preserved. LGBTQIA + citizenship should be considered on a par with heterosexual citizenship, with their rights equally respected and preserved. The rights of the planet should also be respected and preserved. These are just some of the ethical and human-rights issues embedded in the values analysed and advocated in this article. These are also the very values, obtained after long and sometimes bloody social struggles, that the global forces of neoliberalism and neoconservatism persist in erasing from the face of the Earth.

Observers have noted that traditional conservative positions (including limited government, low taxes, strict law and order) are being supplemented with extreme positions emphasising ethnocentric nationalism, anti-globalisation or the denouncement of core values underlying the liberal democracy model of governance either through ignorance or wilful knowledge that the rules of the game do not favour their political interests (Desjardins et al., 2021).

For these reasons, we recognise the value of efforts such as the E × E programme, which takes seriously the role of ethics education in creating a more humane and just society. At the same time, we encourage that the E × E programme and other pedagogical approaches to values education consider a more comprehensive critical pedagogical and global perspective with the potential for more consequential social impacts.