Media reports corruption and fraud almost on a daily basis. When their number goes up, the society deteriorates. And when it becomes extremely large, the law-and-order machinery may not be able to cope with and the whole system spirals out of control. Correcting it back then will not be easy. There are many examples in the world.
We cannot take everything for granted, we have to be proactive and work on it and there comes the vital role of moulding the children with moral and civic education to make them better citizens of tomorrow.
No child is born to be a fraud or a corrupt person. Society made them or allowed them to be. But that can be corrected with an extensive moral and civic education, especially when they are young, and this correction can make significant impacts in the society, including cultural, environmental and political betterment.
There are many stories in front of us, where a child succeeds when an adult fails. Many bad habits of adults like smoking, drinking, and family violence, are stopped by the children. Children have the power to correct society and they will uphold morality in their own life developing a better society of the future. To do that an innocent child must know the right from the wrong.
How serious moral and civic education should be:
Even though there are attempts by different education boards in India on this, I feel this is not sufficient. These subjects must be taught exclusively and time must be allocated explicitly for these subjects and specific syllabus and their outcome must be clearly spelled out. Our educational system must take up this seriously and impart moral and civic education to the children without delay.
This must continue throughout their school life. Classroom time spent should be progressively changed as the student grows up. Topics also must be modulated accordingly. These efforts will be amply rewarded as they grow up to become a responsible citizen of the society.
This would also help developing better leaders and administrators for tomorrow, which will lead to the overall improvement of the nation building and governing process.
How do we do this and at what level one should introduce these:
Moral education
We all know that learning starts at very early ages, thus the earlier the better. Children love stories. So, storytelling and reading of stories is a strong method of teaching. Fortunately, India has a large number of excellent moral story books developed thousands of years back. Panchatantra, Hitopadesha, Jataka Tales are just a few examples. They are available in all the Indian languages and extensively translated to a large number of foreign languages. We should leverage this rich culture that exists here. We also know listening or reading stories stimulate the brain. So, apart from developing the moral side, there will be an overall development of the brain from this activity. Designed properly, this is also an excellent source of teaching the language skills specially for the children. Additional books can be developed according to the needs.
Civic studies
There are ample examples to show the defects in the behaviour of our society which need to be improved or corrected. To highlight a few; Littering is a behaviour deep rooted in our society, whether it is in the school or in the public places. Keeping a place tidy must be inculcated right from childhood.
Safety consciousness must be brought into the society. For example, a large number of lives are lost in road accidents just because the motorists do not follow the rules properly. Since everyone has to use the roads and the vehicles, safety rules and traffic laws must be brought into the minds of the students.
Large number of motorists do not even have the basic culture of stopping the vehicle at the pedestrian crossings, putting the life of road users at risk especially the older and the children. Safety consciousness must be inculcated into the society and let us change the culture with the students.
Since the internet and smartphones became a powerful learning tool and part of our life; safety of the internet must be taught correctly. Good and the bad of social media must also be discussed.
Environmental awareness
As the technology advances there will also be misuse of more of these technologies in the future. Thus, moral and civic education will be a good platform to discuss those issues on a continuous basis.
As the students move to higher classes, real case studies from the society must be brought in and initiate discussions in the classroom. Encourage those students who show moral and civic responsibilities in their life by honouring them with a proper award system. Discuss their actions in these sessions. Thus, more students will be drawn into such activities leading to a cultural shift. While the prefect selection system in the ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Examination) syllabus follows this method to a certain extent, it can be further enhanced and adopted by other boards as well. Children being an integral part of the society and the behaviour of the society of the future is decided by the children of today, let us mould them correctly.
Unless we make a concerted effort, the behaviour of the society will not improve. As India advances in all fronts and takes on the world, a behavioural shift is essential. Our moral and civic sense has to improve.
—The author, Dr. V. Premachandran, is a member of the working group in the Kerala State Planning Board, and was a Senior Fellow at the Solar Energy Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
Read his previous articles
here
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
