Environmental constraints exit in moral education

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Do our children really get moral education at school? How should moral education be conducted to help our children become really committed to the norms of morality?

I was asked this question by a young man who is very knowledgeable about our schools. As a reporter on educational matters, he has very extensive knowledge about how moral education has been conducted in our schools. It is on the basis of this knowledge that he has become very skeptical about the moral future of our society.

In his opinion, what the schools do to our children these days is not to guide them in the development of their sense of morality, but merely train them in the skill of parroting; how to utter verbal phrases about values, norms, and morals without understanding what those phrases really mean.

He does not believe that the Pancasila moral education program (Pendidikan Moral Pancasila) currently carried out in our schools will contribute anything to the moral development of our children. He is worried that our children will become a generation without moral integrity and that our society will become entirely immoral.

This is a very frightening conclusion. Although I share his feelings, I do not share his conclusion. I do not believe that our society will become entirely immoral. Despite all the immoral acts that we witness in our society today, I firmly believe that various kinds of cultural forces have been at work in our society, attempting to uphold values, norms and resurrect morality.

What we should worry about is the effectiveness of all these noble efforts. Without proper methods, all efforts to instill morality in our children will have very low effectiveness. And this will lead to transformation of value systems which will be very much beyond our control.

I told my young friend that in moral education -- and in any other field of education dealing with norms and values -- the ancient wisdom is that norms and values can be understood and personally accepted only through examples and not through verbal memorization.

I gave him a quotation from Lucius Annaeus Seneca (3 BC to 65 AD) who said that "the journey (toward virtues) is long (if one travels) by prescriptions, but short and direct (if one travels) by examples" (Longum iter est per praecepta, breve et efficax per exemple). So, if we want our children to learn to be fair and honest, we should do our utmost to be fair and honest ourselves. If we want them to grow up to become brave and just, we must show them that we are brave and just ourselves. Without real examples, moral education is reduced to instructions about moral imperatives and prohibitives.

How is our environment in this regard? Does it offer enough examples about correct moral conduct to our children?

I am afraid we should feel worried in this instance. What children see in our various environments these days are not examples of how values and norms are respected and implemented in daily life. More probably, they will see examples of how norms and values are totally disregarded and that such violations are justified.

In this kind of environment, it is very hard to guide children toward understanding and accepting values. If there is no genuine trust between children and adults, all talk about values and norms will be met with cynicism. In our present condition, anyone genuinely concerned with morality and moral education must first win the trust of the younger generation. Without trust, no one can be an effective transmitter of values and norms of morality.

Successful processes of moral development have always been the result of mutual reinforcements among home and school, as well as other educational environments outside these two institutions. Values, especially higher values, are never learned in one educational institution alone. Our problem today is that we may find schools and homes which are separately trying to provide real moral education, but it is very hard to find communities in which homes and schools are mutually reinforcing.

What we will find in most cases are contradictions. What is taught at home is contradicted at school, and vice versa. And what is occasionally taught both at home and at school is contradicted by practices in society at large.

Does it mean, then, that in our present situation moral education is impossible?

What it means is that in our present condition, conducting moral education -- teaching values and norms -- is a very, very difficult task. Knowledge about how values and norms are transmitted is essential for devising educational strategies that can overcome difficulties encountered in the teaching process.

Education about values is considered successful only if most of the values that are being taught are put into practice. Transmission of values starts with knowing (cognition) and ends with doing (practice).

The "mental journey" that goes on within students from knowing (cognition) to doing (implementing or practice) proceeds through four points: cognition, affection, conation and finally, practice. In some cases, the process from knowing to doing is so swift that we get the impression that knowing automatically entails doing.

There are many cases in which knowing is never followed by doing. In these cases, the impression that emerges is that the values being taught are impossible to implement.

When a norm is not implemented in real life, it means that the mental journey is blocked somewhere. The journey can be blocked at the cognitive point, or, at the other points thereafter.

If it is blocked at the cognitive point, it means that the norm is not even understood.

If it is blocked at the affective point, it means that the norm is understood but not appreciated.

If the journey stops at the conative point, it means that the norm is understood, appreciated, but not personally accepted. There is no personal commitment to the value.

And if the journey is blocked at the implementation level, it means that the value is understood, appreciated, personally committed to, but there are circumstances -- internal or external -- that block the act of value implementation. Fear, for example.

It is very difficult to know where the process of value transmission is blocked in any given case. The rule of thumb here is to make the meaning of values and norms as clear as possible. Relate them as much as possible to students' personal lives, so that the norms will beget personal meaning and students will have the burning desire to practice them in their personal and collective lives.