In the past, we acquired human virtues, such as sincerity and obedience, at home, while the school fostered habits of industriousness and discipline. Then we became more supportive in a society that was still a nurturing one. It was assumed that these habits were necessary in the maturation process staff and in the preparation for life.

We had to wait for educational to be influenced (and, on some occasions, instrumentalized) by the ideological, for the so-called "crisis of values" to emerge, some of them artificial. Right now it is repeated like a mantra, that we are in one of those crises that, despite the frivolity with which it is denounced, (often in the bar of cafeteria) I admit that it exists. No one would deny the evils caused by moral permissiveness, later converted into permissiveness educational.

What is not usually said is that we have all contributed, in some way, to the crisis; we are not mere spectators of an event that is alien to us, but protagonists. That is why it is not enough to lament. For example, the crises in some families stem from the loss of incarnated values (virtues) in some of their members,

There are forgotten positive values (such as discipline); manipulated values (such as authority); overestimated values (such as utility); legitimized negative values (such as roguery). The hierarchy of the scale of values has been upended on a whim. Truth, goodness and beauty are no longer at the top of the axiological scale, displaced by economic and utilitarian values.

In our society it is neither fashionable nor well regarded in some environments to speak of virtues; instead we always speak of values, either because they are impersonal and, therefore, less committed, or because virtue is usually associated with religion (forgetting the existence of numerous human virtues).

Values should not be kept indefinitely on an impersonal and abstract level, but should be personalized.

Values and virtues are similar concepts, but not equivalent. A value is a noun without an adjective (loyalty, solidarity, etc.). However, it becomes a living value (a virtue) when it can be identified as an adjective of a specific person: exemplary teacher, employee loyal, supportive citizen. Acquiring staff a value implies mastery and self-mastery through the use of the will.

When values cease to be something external and theoretical and become internal principles of action, they acquire the name of virtues.

For the ancient Greeks the Education was based on areté. In Aristotle it meant excellence in the finished fulfillment of a purpose or a function. By means of excellence, man attains the "good life", in accordance with virtue, while avoiding the "good life" typical of people who live only to enjoy the maximum of momentary pleasure(Carpe Diem).

For the Latins the virtues(virtutes) meant stable modes of conduct that enable us both to mature as persons and to carry out all subject of interpersonal encounters, as seen, for example, in friendship(amicitia).

 Just as an athlete increases his performance with the habits acquired in daily training, until he is able to break a record, so it happens with the person who wants to acquire a virtue: he needs to exercise.

For Carlos Llano, in today's society there is no crisis of values, but rather a loss of virtues. It is necessary to give priority to positive values, but it is even more important to have the conviction and will to take them to internship to generate virtues. It is not the concepts that generate virtues, because a transformation towards a greater development is the responsibility of real people.

To educate is, essentially, to educate in virtues. Since Socrates we know that virtues cannot be taught; they are not transmitted like knowledge, through instruction, but are discovered and transmitted as if by osmosis, in formative environments and in encounters with people of integrity who are models of identification.

López Quintás points out that values do not drag us, but attract us; they offer themselves to our intelligence and our freedom, and wait for us to actively embrace them in order to project our life.

As educators, we are value brokers; we bring to the learners foci of value irradiation. The same author gives an example that I summarize: a mother got a reluctant son to give alms to a disheveled beggar who was knocking at the door of the house. What she was looking for was not only to make an act of charity, but also to bring the child closer to a area of irradiation of the value of piety.