WHAT happens when artificial intelligence (AI) gets smarter and human beings get less humane? Look around.
In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, machines generate knowledge, algorithms nudge behavior and social media unconsciously helps shape who we become. Our children learn to swipe before they learn to write. They meet influencers before they understand influence. They move through virtual worlds long before they weigh in real-life consequences.
Are we building human character at a faster pace than we are building AI?
I doubt it. I argue that values education deserves to be treated as a core competency. We will look at the evidence of the alarming gap, the policies we already have, the science that explains how values form, and the shared work of home, school and society.
The gap: Intelligence and character
The warning signs are hard to ignore. About 43 percent of Filipino girls and 53 percent of Filipino boys, all 15 years old, said they were bullied multiple times a month (OECD’s 2022 Program for International Student Assessment). Across OECD countries, the figures were roughly 20 percent for girls and 21 percent for boys. The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom 2) has brought these numbers to national attention.
Meanwhile, drawing on its Health Behavior in School-aged Children study, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that problematic social media use among adolescents rose from 7 percent in 2018 to 11 percent in 2022 (WHO, 2024). That survey covered 44 countries and regions in Europe, Central Asia and Canada, not the Philippines, but it shows where the global tide is heading.
Bullying, aggression, dishonesty and online harassment are not just disciplinary problems. They point to deeper questions about moral reasoning, emotional regulation, empathy and parenting. Still, let us not condemn a whole generation. Misconduct has many causes, and young people are not born less moral than their elders. The better question is whether our schools are nurturing them for ethical situations that get more complicated every year.
What good is an educated mind if it cannot recognize the dignity and humanity of another human being?
Policy foundation that exists
The Philippines has put values formation into law. Republic Act 11476, or the Good Manners and Right Conduct and Values Education Act of 2020, makes good manners and right conduct (GMRC) a separate subject in Grades 1 to 6 and values education a separate subject in Grades 7 to 10. Both get the same time allotment as other core subjects. In kindergarten, GMRC is woven into daily learning activities, and in Grades 11 and 12, values education is integrated in all other subjects. The law also asks for a whole-school approach, teacher training, partnership with parents and an annual review of learning outcomes.
Recently, under the Matatag curriculum, GMRC and Values Education now have their own learning competencies. In April 2025, the Department of Education (DepEd) announced deeper values formation and anti-bullying lessons starting school year 2025 to 2026. In August 2025, Education Secretary Sonny Angara announced the revised implementing rules of the Anti-Bullying Act. Then in February 2026, DepEd launched a Values Formation Survey to review GMRC and values education, the Homeroom Guidance Program and anti-bullying efforts.
These are good signs. But a law on paper and a lesson in a guide do not automatically produce character.
The real challenge is to turn values education from a subject students pass into competencies they can contextualize in daily lives.
Values as future-ready competency
Around the world, education frameworks are reaching the same conclusion: Knowledge and technical skill are not enough without values and sound judgment. Competence is knowledge, skills, attitudes and values put to work, with student agency at its center (OECD Learning Compass 2030). Global Citizenship Education draws on three domains of learning, which are cognitive, socioemotional and behavioral (Unesco). The 2024 AI Competency Framework for Students places a human-centered mindset and the ethics of AI right beside technical know-how.
The lesson is simple. In digital intelligence, digital literacy without values can produce citizens who are technologically capable but ethically irresponsible. Hence, potentially, beasts.
Our students must learn how to use AI. They must learn when AI use turns dishonest, discriminatory, manipulative or harmful. Deepfakes, misinformation and unhealthy attachment to virtual companions are detected and rejected. Technology is not the enemy, because it can enrich learning, enhance creativity and improve civic life. Our young people must learn to distinguish the efficient from the ethical toward meaningful outcomes that are beneficial to humanity.
How values are formed
Values are not taught by telling, they are developed through a process of valuing, namely choosing freely from alternatives after thoughtful consideration; prizing by publicly affirming and cherishing the choice; and acting by repeating it as a pattern of life (Simon). Developmental psychology gives us solid ground to stand on. Children’s sense of rules, fairness and responsibility grows through social interaction (Piaget). Moral development traced moral reasoning from preconventional obedience and self-interest toward conventional social responsibility and post-conventional universal ethical principles (Kohlberg). Children learn by watching, imitating and being reinforced (Bandura).
Put together, these ideas tell us that values cannot be built on lectures and memorization alone. Values must be modeled, experienced, reflected upon, practiced and reinforced. Children learn honesty by seeing it, respect by receiving it and accountability when consequences are fair and consistent.
Circles of responsibility
The home forms the foundation. The school strengthens the structure. Society tests its integrity.
At home. Today, parents — and teachers — compete with influencers and algorithms for a child’s attention. Digital world can reward popularity as self-worth, arrogance as confidence, aggression as assertiveness. Values-based parenting takes more than limiting screen time. It means strengthening the moral compass children use to consume what is on their screens. Parents can model, set sensible limits and take a real interest in their children’s digital lives.
In school. Values education should be measurable, without shrinking morality into exam scores. Learners can show learning outcomes through ethical case analysis, reflective journals, group problem-solving, community service, restorative practices and responsible online behavior. The test is not whether a student can define honesty but whether that student can recognize a dilemma and choose well. Teacher education institutions should prepare educators to guide moral reasoning, and DepEd must secure enough instructional time, qualified teachers, learning resources and meaningful assessment.
In society. Imagine a child hearing parents preach honesty but practice deception, schools teach respect but tolerate bullying, and leaders demand integrity while culturizing corruption. That child receives contradictory moral lessons.
The future we must choose
Picture tomorrow’s professionals with competence but no conscience, leaders with intelligence but no integrity, and citizens who demand rights yet refuse responsibilities. That future is possible when technology outruns moral development. It is not inevitable.
We can move values education from the written curriculum to the center of human development, from knowing values to living them, and from digital literacy to meaningful digital citizenship.
The greatest danger of the Fourth Industrial Revolution may not be machines growing more intelligent than humans, but humans growing less humane among intelligent machines.
Like a circle, education begins with humanity and must return to humanity. That is values education for New Age humans. And that is education in action.
