Value Orientations and Citizens of the Future

The paper defines the notion of “value” through analysis of the historical heritage of the past as an objective source of understanding the essence of this category. Author’s hypothesis is presented, defining highest values and their relation to building self-assessment skills among young people and their reflection in real actions’ alignment with axiological constants. The method of comparative analysis is applied to assess the evolution of “spiritual upbringing” in Western Europe and Russia; a summarizing conclusion is made to the effect that today, the contemporary Western and Russian society finds itself at the stage of conceptualizing the “spiritual upbringing” paradigm lacking clear standards that could regulate specifically spiritual relations, or an absolute ideal that every person and the society in general could strive towards. The author believes that a student can learn to conceptualize and assess their value orientations independently, through pedagogical technologies of developing critical thinking. To this end, it is important to create real conditions of shaping every individual’s moral basis. This basis is the national spiritual potential that must not be lost. The author therefore arrives at the conclusion that the notion of “value” needs to be determined – not only by understanding its true essence theoretically, but also by analyzing the individual value potential in practice. The novelty of the author’s approach is connected with the innovation in conceptualizing the skills of dividing the absolute value and a relative value, establishing a link between the two. Distinguishing between true value and pseudo-value will enable students to reflect and analyze before reacting to any information from our times or from the past and build an individual value-oriented experience, while understanding which value will pass the test of time and which one will sink into oblivion.