Sunday, May 10, 2015

Character Building for the Nations

            Character building is now has become major issue in Indonesia. It is an education that leads the students to behave in a good manner, based on the values and norms that prevail in the society. According to the law in article 1 paragraph 1 No. 20 Year 2003 on National Education System "Education is a conscious and deliberate effort to build a learning and learning process atmosphere so that learners are actively developing and have the spiritual strength of religious, self-control, personality, intelligence, noble character, and the skills, society, nation and the State" (Depdiknas, 2003). Whereas character according to Hidayati et, al. is an imperative manifestation of the educational process implementation at every level of education. The government of Indonesia are deliberately proclaiming about the character building for Indonesian students especially for student in the first rung. Character building education for first rung students indeed is so critical for these three following reasons.
Character building is the basic of education to sharpen the well-mannered character to the students. It teaches about these values namely, (1) Religious, (2) Honest, (3) Tolerance, (4) Discipline, (5) Work hard, (6) Creative (7) Independent, (8)Democratic, (9) Curiosity, (10) The Spirit of Nationality, (11) Love the country, (12)Rewarding Achievement, (13) Friendly /Communicative, (14) Love of Peace, (15) Joy of Reading, (16) Environmental Care, (17 ) Social Care, (18) Responsibility (Kemendiknas, 2010). It also emphasizes on the education of our ideology, Pancasila. The five values on Pancasila namely, (1) Belief in the one and only God, (2) Just and civilized humanity, (3) The unity of Indonesia, (4) Democracy guided by the inner wisdom in the unanimity arising out of deliberations amongst representatives, (5) Social justice for the whole of the people of Indonesia. It is imperative for students to know what their ideology is and how they back to the ground. It means that when they are Indonesian, they have Pancasila to be their main hint and to live their life by the guiding of Pancasila ways.
The deteriorating of moral values on the students may be because they lack of the character building education. Then the following peculiarity why character building should be taught to Indonesian students is that it uses to prevent the moral deteriorating of the students. Dating and having sex before marriage is a common phenomenon that happens around them. Moreover, the drugs user has already reached out to the students in a small country, no longer only in a big city. The National Narcotics Agency states that the drug addicts will increase by 2.8% in 2015 (International Journal of Education and Research Vol. 2 No. 6 June 2014). The use of drugs and have no belief of a sacred thing such as marriage indicates that the moral of our students nowadays are so apprehensive. By teaching character building, teachers as the active participant, guide the students to act according to the prevail manner and to tell that something is not in our culture. One of the example of thing that is not attached in our culture is that having sex before marriage. Teachers may talk to the students that as an Eastern people, we do not hold the view of liberation. We have to hold on firmly to our concept which is consider that a relationship among people is considered to be sacred for the example is marriage.
Character building is an education that aims to build the basic character to the students. Character is a basic personal trait that is owned by one people and has differences to another. Our character determines our personal quality. As Abraham Lincoln says Reputation is the shadow. Character is the tree.” It means that character is not only how people see us, it is how we recognize our quality and how we look for onto it until it becomes one main thing that grows in our body. Character building is so imperative since it helps students to acquire the good manners and teach the valuable values. We believe in the existence of God as well as we do hold on to the Pancasila’s view. Without learning character building, students may not know what is his belief, view, and culture. Belief, view, and culture is one unity that cannot be separated and depended one another. For example in Indonesia, we profess a religion it walks along with our view, ideology Pancasila, in the first sila “Belief in the one and only God”. More importantly character building also aids the students to growing up his good personality traits. For it teaches valuable norms such as religious and love to our country; and also it teaches about ground norm, Pancasila, which is our view of life for good.
The build of basic character may not be the one of character building duty since the formation of the character can be happened in a prenatal period. Well I extremely opposed this idea. We have to know that character building education is a learning stage which has its own purposes and processes. Character building education as well as learning is a process which has the purposes to expose good values and norms to the students. However, it needs time to help the students acquire the norms. Students are like blank pages. It depends on the one who will draw a black or red ink to the pages. One famous says by Dorothy Law Nolte stated that children learn from his surrounding; “If children growing up with complements, he will learn how to appreciate”. It shows that in the process of grown up, he also take sides on the situation of acquiring the prevail manner around. So learning character building is not automatically given by natural process. We need effort to reach that kind of special manners by knowing and implementing character building education.
Character is not only the way how people see us. It captures about our personal quality traits. It is so imperative for students to learn character building since it has special features. Character building as a basic education for all, prevention for moral deteriorating, and the aids of build basic character, are the features of character building. It might possible that a personality is build naturally when the students still in the womb; yet it need a great effort to learn character building as well as learning. It needs process.

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By: Laily Isna Nur Cahyani
Academic Argumentation




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