Contribution of Morals During The Journey to Essence
It is obvious to everyone that family is the first unit of education for children. The sum of values she will gain in the future as an individual, the structural foundation of morals that will lead her life or expected to lead her life is laid in the first period of childhood. However we know that when children come to age of school other dynamics too emerge. A child becomes a student and the act of learning starts taking place through different ways, including “peer learning,” the child is exposed to various kinds of learning methods through different characters in school. However in this period we observe that teaching about societal roles; rules, habits and cultures, co-existing in society, sharing, taking responsibilities takes precedence over academic knowledge.
We observe that parental expectation trends lean towards this. However some segments have reached extreme such points, the way we look at life, our culture, our values reaching us from time, the relationship with material has experienced a great paradigm shift. The culture of education a student is surrounded with from primary to high school in the name of education has been reduced to exam preparation; In our old culture parents were focused on advising their children on “being a good man, being a good person,”; nowadays these concerns are replaced with parental motivation on “acing a test, leaving peers behind, becoming the number one”. Children instead of becoming concerned individuals taking initiatives, sharing emotions, games, empathy have turned into unsatisfying individuals of a strange generation; abstracting themselves to become number one, to see friends only as rivals, to keep what they learn only to themselves.
Because they are not allowed to take responsibility and their desires are fulfilled immediately since birth they lack an important part of basic life skills. Some authors call them “Generation Alpha” and because they are born into technology they are called “Digital Natives”.
Contemporary educators know that the future of a nation is determined by the young generations they are raising and today’s youth will carry the torch of a country in the future. This issue that contemporary educators, psychologists and psychiatrists cannot undermine will present itself as more complex and dire if not handled thoroughly.
This issue is about focusing on character building rather than academic development, equipping them with our value systems, giving vision, determining goals and raising them as a “human being”. This issue is about raising awareness at a time of crises, have children internalize the dynamics of our old culture while world tackles with problems; hunger to refugee crisis, global environmental disasters to global warming. This issue is about the responsibility of raising exemplary hearts with minds where human value come forward for the future, naturally born ready for responsibility and initiative taking.
The modern world got away from core values and maybe the only way out now is for our children to return to their naturally clean essences, and surround them with a frame of morals. If there is any other dire issue for the educators it is to admit these issues within themselves if they are to educate in a moral centered education and spend effort and be insisting on solving the crisis.
One of the hardships our educators will face is to involve parents in this challenging period. Because most parents’ perspective is to only consider the worldly happiness of their children when thinking about the “the good of their children”. Nevertheless it is important to make families realize providing the worldly happiness of their children also requires teaching them love, respect, justice, morality and responsibility and above all shaping an environment of values such as compassion, patience, trust in God, and gratitude.
The best thing our educators could do for our children is to introduce them what is actually “normal”. Other steps are to make them get to know their true nature, temperament, giving them good examples of our exemplary civilization, bringing them together with beautiful people and engrave in their hearts that we become human only through our humanely values.
Teaching them requires giving knowledge in variation, setting a balance between East and West. Also in the framework of morals, a touch on daily life, interdisciplinary connections to be established and instilling a certain understanding of aesthetics are other points of importance. As social etiquette, gaining them the daily life skills and establishing deep human relationships is another crucial point. But as mentioned before if the family does not take part in this endeavor, chances will be slim that children will gain these qualities. The right guidance of parents, practicing the values given at school at home, and realize the importance of being a role model to the child.
This arduous but if applied carefully fruitful time all depends on the links of chain connecting strongy. In this respect the job of educators is quite difficult. But we are sure the outcome, beautiful acts and behaviors engraved in children, the hope that these habits will spread around and transform the world in the name of our nation and humanity makes it all worthy of the trouble.
The most important assignment of our educators is to see the moral principles as the fundamental stones in raising our children and in this direction they should note the right actions to be taken as their pillars on the road maps.
Fatih Nida Üye
Founders' Representative of NUN Schools