An interesting aspect of education, one that our teachers should pay special attention to in their classes, is communicating important human values that are being neglected and ignored in favor of an education designed exclusively as a tool to find employment in today’s market. While finding a job is important, it’s also necessary to teach students human values, tolerance, independent and critical thought, in addition to the intellectual and academic training they receive throughout their education.
We simply cannot separate this part of the educational process from the rest when this particular element is what completes a student’s knowledge with useful values for society and the individual. In recent years, education has been misconstrued as a mere tool to achieve better social status, work goals, or greater economic benefits. This has been at least partially responsible for high dropout and academic failure rates, especially among Hispanics. We need to prioritize the human education of the whole person as a value in and of itself; math and history aside, the most important thing students can learn through their education is to think for themselves. This is what will make education the transmission of knowledge and humanity again.

Learning about literature, history, sciences or mathematics, is only the beginning of students’ education in human values. Less and less schools instruct students in human values for appropriate, positive interaction in real life, and those that do are being sidetracked by educational plans and politicians more interested in manipulating the minds of future voters than teaching them those values that will make them free-thinking citizens. Educating students in their own humanity provides them with values, makes them into independent thinkers and teaches them about concepts important to America as country, such as nation, life, constitution, citizenship, ecology, responsibility, leadership, patriotism, solidarity, compassion…it’s this combination of concepts, emotions and feelings that will form an integral part of their personal, human education and their world and life views. This is what makes education instrumental to humanization.
In an educational process focused on humanity, the mastery of technical tools, computers, and new technologies, are only a means to an end. Frequently, study plans focus on the use of these means as if they were more important than teaching students how to learn. They aren’t. Teachers are key to a human education that not only communicates information and knowledge, but also values, ideas and even examples of behavior. Teachers are fundamental to a humanistic education that teaches students to think and learn independently, as opposed to merely memorize content in the classroom under teacher supervision. When we devalue teachers, we are leaning towards a dehumanized education, no matter how many computers our students know how to use.

We must return to the idea of the classroom teacher as an authority figure that has the ability to teach the text and human values, as well as the power to discipline and reward students. Without this necessary discipline, painfully absent in so many schools and universities, the Teacher’s educational purpose is diminished and in danger of extinction.
Current society has taken general and moral authority away from the teacher in the classroom and we are paying for it with high rates of academic failure, rude and badly educated students without values, morals or scruples of any kind, who are poorly prepared for life and promise to become irresponsible citizens who will later vote for irresponsible and mediocre political leaders. This is an uncomfortable, but ever-present truth.
At present education, which walks a dangerous line in so many issues, urgently needs to get back to the model of the classroom ruled by a respected teacher who knows how to guide students with discipline and authority and avoid daily chaos in the classroom in order to better promote the well-rounded education of all students.
While it presents a challenge, educating students in humanity is more necessary today than ever before, as many educational institutions abandon humanistic values. This isn’t the first time that this has happened in history; other eras have also lived the consequences of this careless behavior. The fight for an education that communicates humanity to students and educates them as complete human beings is probably the most important challenge we currently face, as this education will leave its mark on the character of future generations and the world we know.
A humanistic education that inspires us to be sincerely proud of ourselves, will always be an enriching and positive education for individuals and society.