From the 1990s through the early part of this decade, a momentum began in Australian public life, as in other English-speaking nations, for the reintroduction of some kind of values education in schools. This was probably in reaction to the trends which had been evident for three decades previously: that young people seemed to be increasingly self-indulgent, individualistic, uninvolved in their community, and given to crime and addiction. There may have been a sense that in moving away from the firm moral framework of the mid-century, schools and teachers had been complicit in the process. It is also likely that…