Adequacy of the Integrated and Permeation Approaches to Values Education

Since independence in 1963, the government of Kenya through the education ministry and its agencies has been advocating for the integrated and permeation approaches to values education (VE). This is premised on the assumption that these approaches are effectual. With reference to the secondary school Life Skills Education (LSE) programme, the paper interrogates this presupposition. This, the paper does through the lens of Socrates’ insights on the concept of akrasia and knowledge, and Dewey's concept of appreciation. This way, the inquiry reckons that infusion and permeation are piecemeal approaches to VE, as such, they are inadequate. The approaches can often result in the acquisition of simulacra rather than knowledge of values. Hence, the inquiry makes a case for a separate values education subject in the formal school curriculum that should principally focus on helping learners to become virtuous people who appreciate values in lived experience. Such individuals can seldom perform akratic actions.