The overriding prominence of any education system invigorates learners to become more independent, curious, open-minded, and think outside the box. The Educational Institutions should seek to create and maintain a community of learners, qualified for the rigorous academic, professional, and civic demands of the programme and rich in experience and diversity. Educators and Institutions should ensure that the learning environment is conducive to independent thought and is a place where learners are actively encouraged to question, formulate ideas and express themselves confidently. We should not forget that the end of education is the character of learners.
We always talk about the excellence in education, quality of education, standard teaching & learning practices, top-ranking institutions, high-performance learners, academically sound learners, but never talk about the individual’s character they develop at the end of their educational journey. The discussion about the core purpose of education does almost not exist in the current educational policy debate; if we talk either, it is very lofty or ambiguous. Every nation spends a considerable share of its GDP on education, especially academic research, training & development, assessment instruments, management accountability, curriculum development and other academic-related activities. But did we raise the questions about the effectiveness of the current education system? Did we evaluate whether this education system is robust enough in building the character of learners?
The critical questions society should be addressing is this: What is the end goal of education? What specific goals and ethos should guide the educational institutions and educators to develop educational instruments in developing learners’ characters. The end goals of education should gear towards developing multiple characters, namely intellectual character, moral character, civic character, and performance character. By creating these characters, an individual will feel better competent, more engaged, high morale and effective, open-minded with a high degree of critical thinking & curiosity.
Don’t we think this is what we all are looking for from an education system in which individuals can grow with confidence? It is vital that as an educational institution, policymaker or educator, we focus on the learner’s character rather than the learning content. The focus should be on sustainable learning for the longer term and easily transferable into a specific situation to solve real-life problems. The world of reality is sometimes different from what we learned from educational institutions. The bookish knowledge or what we have learned from our past education often easily forget or unable to apply to the actual situation. However, the positive attitudes, habits, our experiences, past interactions, positive thinking patterns, and various engagements moods carry forward. We quickly can transfer these & apply them in a new situation.
I am not suggesting that learning contents are not necessary. There is a direct correlation between appropriate learning content and developing a learner’s character. However, one of them should be given priority as the core of the process. In which case, building learners' character is the key and central focus of educational ethos. This philosophy of this disposition should guide the development of learning contents, curriculum development, and teaching approaches. Suppose learning content such as knowledge transmission, teaching, and assessment, high academic performance, better ranking, high grades become the valid reason to learn. In that case, education becomes opaque, leading to superficial and isolated knowledge.
Developing intellectual character is essential for the learners to become a more curious, self-reflective, open-minded, truth-seeking, skeptical, and critical thinker. The intellectual character will assist learners in developing a solid habit of minds, patterns of thoughts. Regrettably, all of us, including parents, educators, Institutions, and policymakers, always think and focus on learners and institutions’ academic performance, learner’s subject-specific expertise, and grading in the final exams. We always believe that Learners are brighter and more genius if their academic performances are great in grading terms. Therefore, our teaching and learning modes are mainly academic progress-oriented; memorising specific details & procedures means bookish knowledge.
I am not at odds with the academic progress; instead, and I am suggesting focussing more on developing the intellectual character of learners as the fundamental purpose of education than accumulating specific knowledge with ambiguity. Such disposition will help learners to develop a cross-domain broader knowledge and understanding. Knowledge disposition for truth-seeking, curious and open-minded learners can be applied adequately and appropriately in different contexts-A classroom experience to solving a real-life problem. Textbook’s knowledge is very narrow & specific while developing intellectual character will broaden learner understanding and thinking boundaries to solve new problems. Therefore, it is paramount that learning content should be taught in a more inductive & exploratory manner rather than implicitly to develop intellectual character. We should remember that such intellectual, moral character can be acquired through the appropriate designing of learning content.
Another aspect of the character is to provide moral education to all learners. An exacting and righteous education system will help develop citizens who will be value-orientated and more attuned as ethical citizens, including factoring in social responsibility. Moral character focuses on identifying right and wrong. The core philosophy of education is to help young people become competent, ethical, virtuous, and caring. An honest citizen will give priority to the right things over wrong. Moral education should start from the early stages of an education system. Respects, integrity, trustworthiness, honesty, and dignity are essential features for being a virtuous citizen of society, and the modern education system should recognise such elements.
We all are witnessing a homogeneous trend throughout the world that is the loss of noble values such as relationships, family bonds, honesty & integrity, politeness, respect to others, selflessness, togetherness. Are there any ways we can bring these values back to the character? Yes, only an education system that focuses on character education. Such education is imperative to the revival of national importance. More than 2500. years back, Confucius uttered that humans have the potential love of virtue. Yet, if it is not guided by character education, the same human can turn into worse animals and most vicious. Character education should be offered systematically and start from a basic level of education. The education should help the learners knowing the good, loving the good, and doing the good.
The world has progressed & developed by science & technology over the past century. We all have witnessed this unprecedented development from understanding the universe & cosmic system to the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, understanding the human Genome system to the dangerous virus, Voyager-1 spacecraft to bring supercomputers to robotics mechanic, and many more. Countries are in a race to compete with each other, investing a substantial share of national GDP in science, technology, and defense, fighting each other, and bringing the world into chaos. Over the past several decades, we have witnessed several economic turmoil, political degradation, human rights violations, religious & race segregation, persecution of religious minorities, ethnic cleansings, hatred dividing our land into pieces, people’s offence & agitation has grown beyond limits. Science, technology, wealth creation, persona & national achievements, fulfilling self-interest, and achieving the top become important, ignoring morality and ethics. The current Education system may make someone very clever, more intelligent, and a top performer, but does it always instill virtue?
Education without character, scientific progress, and development without human values, liberal politics without integrity & truth, businesses & enterprises without ethics, friendship & love without sincerity, a bond without trust are the fundamental causes for the erosion of virtue. Rabindranath Tagore also criticized the current education system in his article “Siksar herpher” in 1892 and called the schools in his time `prisons`. He believed that education that neglects the learners and their needs rather heavily focuses on the textbooks and the school authorities destroy individuality and authentic learning.
According to Plato, both individual and social justice can be achieved through good education and moral education. This social justice is obtained when an individual develops his or her ability to the fullest. For Plato, such justice referred to as excellence which means virtue. For Socrates, virtue is knowledge; when the education system becomes the engine of societal progress in economic terms, such societies will face social severe injustices and challenges. To bring societal harmony & justice, modern education should be guided by the Platonic view of education: character education to provide comprehensive solutions to the current societal problems and address various dynamism.
Modern education should focus on the quality of character the learners develop in their education journey, not the excellence in education in economic, structural, and reputational terms. It is not good enough to gain profit if we lose our souls. We all must revisit the world's social order and human values. The contemporary world is based on the estimation, assumption, fabrication, falsification, mistrust, conflict, quantification of humans, and greed. Respect, dignity, love, morality, and trust are all neglected or bypassed. We are witnessing an unprecedented degradation of human values & character. Despite this, did we ever ask this question about this moral degradation? Did we raise the issue what the ultimate goal of our child's education? As parents do, we want our child to become only a high performer in the society or build their character to live with dignity? As an educator, do we care to provide an education that ensures lifelong scaffolding to our learners to make them moral citizens? As a policymaker at the heart of the Government did, we realize that the character of the citizen powerfully guides the character of the nation.
Martin Luther King Jr posited that the purpose of education is to “build intelligence plus character. For him, good education provides one not only power of concentration but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate”. The character-building process should start from the primary schools then move to the higher level of education and beyond. An essential aim of teaching is to develop learners’ moral habits, soft skills, and skills for life. We all are responsible for building a nation of character from parents to policymakers. As parents, we should focus on building our child`s character rather than academic performance and exam grades. As an educator, we aspire to provide moral and value-oriented heuristic learning experiences to our learners. As an educational institution, we must provide a curriculum that is based on character education. Government should focus on the education policy that promotes character-building education. We all strive to move forward to prioritize character-building activities to ensure our youths succeed in achieving the true aim of education-Character.