How are values formed? A perspective. (v1.0)

There are many perspectives on how values form. Here is my perspective. 

Value form when you are younger, and they tend to really stick. 

Nobody taught me hard work and integrity. I learnt it by observing dad. I observed how he climbed his way up from a poor PWD officer in Nagpur to the head of south India sales region in Kirloskar. He did it with hard work and integrity and determination.  I also saw how he interacted with everyone - never bad mouthing anyone and handling himself with integrity in all his interactions. I observed everything he did and processed it. I adopted that in full. That was my role model. I learnt it. 

Nobody taught me self-responsibility. I learnt it at IIT (collage). I was alone and independent far away from home staying in a hostel. I learnt and internalized and concluded that your parents sheltered you in the past but going forward I was an independent agent and whether I succeeded or failed or achieved happiness depended solely on me. I was in charge of my future. My decisions were mine and so were the consequences. I developed a strong independent streak. It was learnt/processed. 

We process all the millions of sensory inputs and experiences as we grow up and mature and form a world view. You learn to love because you experience it, as you grow up, from your parents and you reciprocate to them. It is not taught. If you grow up in a home with a bad environment and poor role models, your sensory inputs and experiences are bad and that is what you learn and take away. 

In other words, in my view values are learnt or arrived at after processing by the child from observations and experiences and role models from their environment. Environment includes classmates, friends and teachers and even public figures and the society the child is embedded in. Parents instill good values in their children by offering them a good loving environment to grow up in populated with good role models, and good experiences to encounter. Good role models for a child makes a huge difference.  

A lot of people anchor values on their religion. That is very good and a good anchor point. It is the religion they were exposed to as they grew up. They processed it and accepted it as good and true. Yes. It was taught in church/temple/mosque, but ultimately, they processed it and accepted it. So, in the final analysis it was "learnt" and not something they were "taught" that they blindly followed without examination and inquiry and internalization and acceptance.  

Yes. School does teach courses on morals. Yes. Parents do try to teach their children their religious beliefs. Doing something unsolicited for another person for example is thoughtfulness and is typically taught, if not by parents, then belatedly by a spouse. But I think these are secondary influences in the world view a child forms. Ultimately the child "processes" what is taught, evaluates it against its experiences, and reaches its own understanding and adopts what it chooses.  A learnt value sticks much longer than a taught value. 

Will end on this note. 

When something is taught, and you process and learn it, there is a causal relation between teaching and learning and the two terms can be used in this context. But when you learn from sensory inputs like observation of a role model or learn from experience say by experiencing the feeling of love to learn love then there is no teaching side and you just learnt. Therefore, learning applies to a superset of cases while teaching applies only to a subset. 

So, it is a truism to say values are learnt.