MORALITY EDUCATION FOR THE YOUNGER

Metro TV Sunday, October 21^st 2012 reported that the police In Samarinda handled two cases of immoral videos which acted by Junior High School students. These cases show that the students nowadays have lost their good moral. Many of them involved in free community which guiding them into the wrong way that is able to break their future. Many of them think and act like adults and do what they shouldn’t do. The cases reported above are only some examples of many other related cases which happened not only in Samarinda, but also in almost all area in Indonesia. For example in Kupang, our beloved City, many students cannot continue their studying because of accidents. They were pregnant before finishing their studying which forced them to marry early.

The cases above are impacted by the failure of morality education. There are three environments that take the most important role of the development of the younger’s morality. The three environments are environment of family, environment of school and environment of society. If the younger are failed to be guided to the right way in these three environment, it is really difficult help them from the darkness. The failure of education toward the younger nowadays in these three environments becomes the most influence thing to the bad characters of the younger which caused them do the immoral things. Let’s see the explanation about the three environments below:

The first environment which affected the younger morality is family. It takes very important role of the younger starting from their childhood. It is an environment that gives foundation of the character of the younger. In this environment, the younger in which the children get their first education from their parents. If the foundation of character given by the parents is good, then the children are able to develop well in character because they have good base. On the other hand, if there is no good education in their childhood from their parents, it is really difficult to guide them in the step of education.

The situation nowadays shows that many parents are so busy, so almost there no time for them to teach or giving attention to the behaviour of their children. They spend all their time for working in order to get money as much as possible. They forget that their children are far more important than their jobs so they forget to pay attention to the character development of their children. Many of them ask baby sitter to take care of their children. Unfortunately many baby sitters don’t have good education before so they fail to guide the children into the good character. Moreover some of them help the children to get close to the hell. Sometimes they use objurgation to the children unconsciously, and the children will imitate it as their language in their development. It is able to fossilize in their mind and affecting the development of their character. This is the first failure of education to the younger’s character.

The second environment which has important role in constructing the character of the younger is school. School is the place where the younger get their formal education. It is the place where the younger are able to be taken care of three important aspects, such as Intellectual Question (IQ), Emotional Question (EQ), and Spiritual Question (SQ). IQ related to the ability of the younger as students to get the knowledge taught by the teachers. On the other hand EQ and SQ are more related to the personality of the students including the development of their character. Many teachers work hard to enhance the IQ of their students to a very high level without paying attention to the development of their EQ and SQ which affect the character of the students very much. Although the latest curriculum demanded the teachers to imply the education of students’ character in schools, but the implementation did not work as well as what is hoped. Many teachers avoid the education of character and just focus in the intellectual of the students that makes the good in intellectual but bad in character. This is second failure of character education of the younger.

The third environment that has important role toward the construction of the younger’s character is society. In this environment, the younger spend almost all their time to interact each other. The younger tend to model upon everything in the society where they live. For example when they live in a society where the people are work harder, then they will be work harders. On the other hand, when they live in a society where the people are alcoholic drinkers, then step by step the will be drinkers. The unluckiness is the societies nowadays especially in the cities don’t care about the younger development. Nowadays, something like living together without married, pregnancy before married, and so on, have become habits in the society. So the younger never feel that they are in the wrong way when do something like that. This is the third failure of education of the character of the younger. Actually there are still many factors that affect the behaviour of the younger, but the three stated above are most influence aspects which affect that.

Due to the problem above, through this article I want to ask all sides who take responsibility on the younger development to pay more attention to character of the younger, because if they have good character all aspect of their life will work well. On the other hand if they lost their good character, then they will lose all their life. For the parents as the first side who educate the younger to pay more attention to the character/moral of the children. For the teachers and all sides in schools to not only focus in IQ development but also EQ and SQ so they can work in a balance. The last one is for society to give good model for the younger to act so they are able to imitate and develop good characters they see from the society. I believe that if tazhese three environments (Family, School, and Society) can do their role well to take care of the younger character, then the problem of bad moral of the younger as that one reported by Metro TV above can be solve easily.