I have been lost from the blogosphere for quite some time now – months, maybe even years.

Yet recent events, both public and personal, have sparked a flood of thoughts. When I was younger, writing was how I processed the world. It was how I made sense of experiences, questioned ideas, and gave shape to thoughts that refused to stay quiet. Sometimes I wonder why I stopped writing simply for the joy of writing. Perhaps one of the pitfalls of becoming a professional content author is that writing slowly transforms from an act of reflection into an act of production. Somewhere along the way, the freedom to write without purpose quietly disappears.

Professionally, I work on building cognition and competence. I spend my days thinking about how young people learn, how they reason, and how they solve problems. But recent experiences have made me wonder if, in our pursuit of competence, we have neglected something equally important: values.

But then, what exactly is value education?

Is it memorising virtues from a textbook? Is it learning to be polite? Or is it something deeper? Is it teaching people to question what ought to be questioned, to challenge what ought not to be accepted, and to stand up for what is right – even when doing so is inconvenient?

Recently, I found myself in a situation where repeated observations led me to conclude that my competence was being questioned because I was a woman. When I questioned this, I was told that such treatment was “normal”. That I should stop questioning it. That I should simply get used to it and learn to deal with it.

What unsettled me wasn’t merely the experience itself. It was the expectation that I should suspend my own reasoning simply because the conclusion was uncomfortable.

None of this made sense to me.

Why should anyone get used to being treated poorly? Why should behaviours that diminish another human being become normal simply because they occur frequently? Frequency does not make something acceptable.

My conclusion was not an emotional reaction. It was an inference drawn from repeated observations over time. Like any scientific inference, it emerged because a pattern consistently explained what I was seeing.

And that brought me back to science education.

In science classrooms, we spend years teaching children how to think. We teach them to observe carefully, gather evidence, identify patterns, draw inferences, and revise conclusions when new evidence emerges. We tell them that good thinking requires questioning assumptions. We celebrate curiosity. We encourage them to ask, “Why?” and “How do you know?” and “What makes you think so?” We praise them for refusing to accept claims without evidence.

Yet somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us seem to unlearn those very lessons.

When evidence points towards uncomfortable truths, we are suddenly expected not to observe too closely. Not to question. Not to infer. We are told to ignore the pattern because acknowledging it would make others uncomfortable. Somehow, critical thinking is applauded in the classroom but discouraged in society.

Perhaps that is where value education truly begins – not in teaching children what to think, but in giving them the courage to continue thinking even when the conclusions are inconvenient.

In that regard, I must commend the younger generation – the so-called Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

They have been called lazy, entitled, oversensitive, and even compared to cockroaches. Yet I see something different. When the systems around them failed, they refused to quietly accommodate those failures. They questioned them. They challenged them. They demanded something better.

I do not see that as disrespect.

Nor do I see it as being at odds with our culture.

I find it deeply inspiring.

Because the systems they challenge are not systems they created. They are systems my generation – and those before us – have inherited, accepted, and, knowingly or unknowingly, helped sustain.

Perhaps every generation has the responsibility to leave the world a little better than it found it. If that requires questioning long-held norms, then maybe that is not rebellion. Maybe it is assertion – a necessary assertion that my generation, and those before us, have too often suppressed in the name of preserving harmony, normalising what should never have been normalised, and extending unquestioning respect based solely on characteristics that should not automatically command it. Respect should be earned through conduct and integrity, not demanded by age, gender, position, or tradition.

And perhaps we have misunderstood values themselves.

We often speak of values as though they are fossils – unchanging truths that must be preserved exactly as they were handed down to us. Yet nature teaches us otherwise. Species survive not because they refuse to change, but because they adapt while holding on to what is essential for survival. Adaptation is not the abandonment of principles; it is their continued relevance in a changing environment.

Perhaps values are no different.

The principles themselves – kindness, fairness, dignity, empathy, integrity, respect – remain timeless. But the ways in which we express and uphold those principles must evolve with the societies we build. Respect, for instance, should not mean silent obedience to authority; it should mean recognising the dignity of another person while also having the courage to challenge actions that undermine that very dignity. Harmony should not require enduring injustice. Tradition should not become an excuse for preserving inequity. A value that asks people to remain silent in the face of unfairness has ceased to be virtuous. A value that expects people to accept disrespect simply because “that is how it has always been” no longer serves the society it claims to protect.

True values do not weaken when they adapt. They endure because they adapt.

The world no longer belongs primarily to people of my generation. It belongs to those who will inherit it. It belongs to the Gen Zs and Gen Alphas who refuse to apologise for asking difficult questions, who speak up for what they believe they deserve, and who are unwilling to accept “because that’s how it’s always been” as a satisfactory answer.

If that makes them difficult, perhaps we need more difficult people.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can teach the next generation is not obedience, but discernment. Not conformity, but courage. Not blind respect, but respect rooted in reason and humanity.

Perhaps that, in the end, is what value education really means.