Benefits of Character Education for Children in their Youth – The definition of character education is a conscious and planned human effort to educate and empower the potential of students to build their personal character so that they can become individuals who are useful to themselves and their environment.
Character education is an education system that aims to instill certain character values in students which contain components of knowledge, awareness or will, and actions to carry out these values.
Character education is closely related to moral education where the goal is to shape and train individual abilities continuously in order to improve themselves towards a better life.
Definition of Character Education According to Experts
To better understand what character education means, we can refer to the opinions of the following experts:
T. Ramli
According to T. Ramli, the definition of character education is education that prioritizes the essence and meaning of morals and ethics so that it will be able to form a good student personality.
Thomas Lickona
According to Thomas Lickona, the definition of character education is a deliberate effort to help someone so that he can understand, pay attention to, and carry out core ethical values.
John W. Santroc
According to John W. Santrock, character education is education that is carried out with a direct approach to students to instill moral values and provide students with lessons about moral knowledge in an effort to prevent prohibited behavior.
Elkind
According to Elkind, the definition of character education is an educational method carried out by educators to influence student character. In this case, it can be seen that teachers not only teach subject matter but are also able to be role models.
Function of Character Education
In general, the function of this education is to shape the character of a student so that they become individuals who are moral, have noble character, are tolerant, resilient, and behave well.
Some of the functions of character education are as follows;
To develop basic potential in humans so that they become individuals who think well, have a good heart, and behave well.
To build and strengthen the behavior of a multicultural society.
To build and improve a competitive national civilization in international relations.
Character education should be carried out early on, namely since childhood. This education can be carried out in the family, school, and environment, and utilize various learning media.
Character Education Objectives
Basically, the main objective of character education is to build a strong nation, where the people are noble, moral, tolerant, and work together.
To achieve this goal, character-forming values that come from Religion, Pancasila, and Culture must be instilled in students. The following are the character-forming values:
- Honesty
- Tolerance
- Discipline
- Hard work
- Creative
- Independence
- Democratic attitude
- Curiosity
- National spirit
- Love of the homeland
- Appreciating achievement
- Friendly attitude
- Love of peace
- Like to read
- Care for the environment
- Social care
- Sense of responsibility
- Religious
The Importance of Character Education
As we know, the continuous process of globalization will have an impact on changes in the character of Indonesian society. Lack of character education will cause a moral crisis that results in negative behavior in society, such as promiscuity, drug abuse, theft, violence against children, and so on.
According to Thomas Lickona, there are at least seven reasons why character education must be given to citizens from an early age, namely;
This is the best way to ensure that students have good personalities and characters in their lives.
This education can help improve students’ academic achievement.
Some children cannot form a strong character for themselves in other places.
Can form individuals who respect and honor others and can live in a pluralistic society.
As an effort to overcome the root of moral-social problems, such as dishonesty, rudeness, violence, low work ethic, and so on.
Is the best way to shape individual behavior before entering the world of work/business.
As a way to teach cultural values that are part of the work of a civilization.
From the explanation above, we realize that character education is very important for everyone. Therefore, teachers, lecturers, and parents should always instill good character values to their students.
