Learning Is Valuing: Attention, Agency, and the Value Hierarchy in Education
What happens when the way we learn begins to shape the way we value?
In this Hartman Happy Hour, Philip Eldred explored the relationship between learning and the value hierarchy in education, drawing on Barry Kort’s work on emotions and learning alongside principles of formal axiology. His presentation considered how students move through different emotional and cognitive states as they build, test, and revise their understanding, and how educational environments can either support or disrupt this natural process.
For anyone interested in education, coaching, leadership, or human development, the discussion offered a thought-provoking question: are our educational systems helping people develop their capacity to value well, or inadvertently teaching them to value the wrong things?
Learning Is More Than Acquiring Information
Philip began with Barry Kort’s theory of emotions and learning, which describes learning as an active cycle rather than a straightforward accumulation of knowledge.
As learners encounter something new, they form mental models, test those models against experience, encounter challenges or contradictions, and then modify their understanding. Emotions are an important part of this process. Feelings of uncertainty, frustration, confusion, or even failure are not necessarily signs that learning has gone wrong. They can be signals that a learner is actively working through a change in understanding.
This has important implications for education. If discomfort is treated as something that must always be avoided, students may be protected from some of the very experiences that allow meaningful learning to take place.
Rather than focusing only on whether a student is succeeding or failing, Philip suggested that educators can pay attention to where a learner is in the learning process, including their attention, emotional state, and developing mental models.
Understanding the Value Hierarchy
Philip then connected this learning process to the axiological hierarchy of intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic valuing.
These are not simply three different kinds of value. They describe distinct modes of valuing that depend upon one another in an organic hierarchy.
Intrinsic valuing concerns the direct experience and recognition of persons and things as valuable in themselves. Extrinsic valuing allows us to understand relationships, usefulness, function, and exchange. Systemic valuing enables us to work with concepts, rules, categories, and systems.
Within a healthy hierarchy, these modes of valuing support one another. The challenge arises when the order becomes disrupted.
Philip explored how educational practices can unintentionally contribute to these disruptions, creating learned patterns in which achievement, rules, performance, or external recognition become more important than the underlying purpose of learning.
When Education Disrupts the Natural Learning Process
One of the most engaging parts of the presentation was Philip’s exploration of different patterns that can emerge when the value hierarchy becomes inverted or distorted.
He described several recognizable student patterns, including the “armchair theorist,” the “achievement hamster,” and the “alienated achiever.” These caricatures helped illustrate how different approaches to education can produce different ways of relating to knowledge, achievement, and personal value.
The “achievement hamster,” for example, reflects a pattern in which continual performance and accomplishment become the primary goal. Learning can become secondary to proving competence, collecting achievements, or meeting external expectations.
Philip connected this idea to his own experience as a self-described “recovering smart kid,” reflecting on how it is possible to become very good at performing within an educational system while gradually losing connection with the intrinsic experience of learning itself.
The broader point is not that achievement is inherently problematic. Rather, it is worth asking what sits underneath it. Are students learning because they are genuinely engaged and curious, or because they have learned that achievement is how they secure recognition, approval, or security?
Protecting Intrinsic Motivation
The discussion that followed explored how educators can maintain space for intrinsic motivation while still providing the structure and guidance that learning requires.
Participants considered questions around autonomy, relationships, and the developmental needs of learners. One discussion point focused on the age range of Barry Kort’s research, with Philip explaining that the work discussed had focused primarily on self-motivated learners from late elementary through middle school.
The conversation also highlighted a tension that extends beyond education. People need autonomy, but they are also inherently relational and interdependent. Environments that place too much emphasis on individual performance can create pressure, disconnection, and eventually burnout.
This makes the question of motivation particularly important. Whether in a classroom or workplace, encouraging people to perform is not necessarily the same as helping them develop a genuine relationship with what they are doing.
From Individual Autonomy to Autonomous Interdependence
Philip concluded by connecting these ideas to a broader cultural question about individualism.
He noted that Hartman’s emphasis on individuality emerged partly in response to collectivist systems that diminished individual freedom and dignity. Yet there can also be a point at which an emphasis on individual autonomy goes too far, overlooking the fundamentally social nature of human beings.
The alternative Philip proposed was an “ethics of autonomous interdependence.”
This concept brings together two ideas that can sometimes be treated as opposites: the importance of developing a strong sense of individual agency and the recognition that we exist in relationship with others.
Applied to education, this suggests that the goal is not simply to produce independent achievers. It is to support people who can think for themselves, remain connected to their own intrinsic motivation, engage meaningfully with others, and participate constructively in the systems around them.
What Can Educators and Coaches Take From This?
Philip’s presentation invites us to look beyond educational outcomes and consider the patterns of valuing that education may be cultivating.
Some useful questions include:
What is motivating this learner: curiosity, achievement, approval, or something else?
Are we treating difficulty and frustration as necessary parts of learning or as problems to eliminate?
Does the structure of an educational environment support intrinsic motivation?
Are students learning to value genuine understanding, or primarily learning how to perform?
How can we balance autonomy with the relational nature of learning and human development?
What value patterns might people carry from education into their workplaces and adult lives?
These questions demonstrate how formal axiology can provide a different lens through which to consider education. Rather than looking only at what people learn, we can also ask how they are learning to value.
Continue the Conversation
The relationship between learning, valuing, motivation, and human development is a rich area for continued exploration. Philip Eldred’s Happy Hour presentation offers an opportunity to consider how the value hierarchy might inform the way we approach education, coaching, leadership, and personal development.
Want to explore the full conversation? Become a member of the Robert S. Hartman Institute to access the complete Happy Hour recording, along with previous sessions and other member resources, and join future Hartman Happy Hours live.
