Overview and Summation Dr. Roger Packham 29th September 2000 I offer this to Sri Sathya Sai Baba my teacher, and my guide towards the wisdom that lies beyond knowledge. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my honour to present to you the conference We are now concluding the International Conference Strengthening Values Education: Innovative Approaches to Teacher Education for Peace and International Understanding. What an important conference to be holding at the end of the twentieth century, and on the threshold of the twenty-first! The twentieth century saw humanity start to question the status of the "enlightenment project" and the overarching status of scientism. Humanity had hoped science would bring about a better world through prediction and control, but faced with the overwhelming evidence around us, we now know there are things that science cannot deal with, and that our approach has to change. The common belief of the more than 650 delegates from over 78 countries at this conference, is that values education is the way forward; the questions arising, however, are what do we mean by this and how do we achieve it?

Before looking more closely at the programme and how it tackled these questions, let me draw out some themes that I believe have emerged at various stages:

1. Before we can develop values in children, we adults have to become conscious of, and develop, our own values. Children learn values through modeling from their teachers (parents, school teachers etc), so teacher trainees must develop character as well as knowledge and skills.

2. Rather than administrators trying to train teachers as technicians to deliver a "teacher-proof" curriculum, they should be ensuring such character development in teacher trainees. Teachers in many countries are no longer held in high regard, partly due to this mechanistic approach - we all need to work together to reverse this trend. If society does not value its teachers, why should children?

3. We were reminded that teaching something is how you learn and understand that something better, so we all need to go home and teach what we learnt here at this conference to maximise our learning and understanding.

4. Values are inherent in all - they need to be drawn out, not injected in.

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