Good Education Prepares Children to be Responsible Citizens

As an immigrant in the Western country every one must realize the importance of education and its need in our daily life. Many immigrated parents have formal education and so many parents do not have that much formal education. However, every parent desires to educate their children. Each of parent sacrifices lots to make their dream in reality. It is possible if the children share the goal with parents and make a realistic plan to achieve the goal. Question may rises how the child and parents work together and what kind of education should parents and children emphasize to achieve the goal? It is important to research the job market of any professional studies. Many poor and middle class parents do not research or plan ahead for their children. Indeed, children also do not research what would be the best their future career. A student must think of his/her future career and make a concrete plan when student in middle school. It must be remember that plan is not enough; action is more important. So, student must work hard to achieve highest SAT results toward going to college/university and get full bright scholarship opportunities. Highest SAT result is the highest chance to get high scholarship. Indeed, it also finds out personal interests of studies in four years university diploma. Researches have shown that the sense of undecided major does not motivate student to complete his/her desire degree on time. For any student, it is always better to decide the major of the studies and interested college/university should be applied. Once a student finished higher education then of course, it creates lots of opportunity to make money, but do we ever think that money does not fulfill all needs of human life! Money is part of life, but not all. If there is so much money and there is no character/moral education, and skill how to manage money then imagine what could be in person’s life!

We have to think and prepare our children not only for making lots of money, but to give importance to prepare them a responsible, good citizen, and to be competent citizens for the world. Our children should compete with other citizens across the world with their knowledge, values, intelligent, skills, and morality. To be competent citizens what we need to be done and need to be learned? Where is the right place to learn?

We know family is a non-formal education institution that children learn in every day. However, there is other important education center is "school." The school is the workshop of human development. In school there is learning environment and also there are expert and skilled professionals. A progressive educational philosophy that states that character education and ethical disposition provide the foundation for students in a democracy to be able to improve their quality of life and their ability to respect, responsible, care, and work for highest happiness. Ancient Greece philosopher Socrates´ educational philosophy clearly considered that the educated person was precisely the person who knows himself or herself and his or her limitations. Socrates defines his philosophy as a virtuous life and true knowledge, and knowledge is the matter key of virtue. Plato’s philosophy is that education is a matter of leading a person from mere belief to true knowledge. The educated person uses the dialectical process to discover true beauty, goodness, and justice. In a similar manner, Plato’s great philosophy in education is that it is the theory of forms (idea) that will enable people to lead good and productive lives. Another ancient philosopher, Aristotle, believes that a human being, through education, cultivates the natural desire to know and comes as close as it is possible in this world to actualizing the human potential. It is important for human beings to seek highest good that can be found in human happiness. To know the good is to do good things. An educated person unites morality and reaction to virtuous action.

Dewey one of the American educational philosophers he believed that a democratic society could exist and functions well only if the citizens was well-educated and contributed to the success of the society. Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy advocates an education that provides meaningful experiences those that help citizens think, solve problems, communicate ideas, and develop an interest in improving themselves for their society. They learned that life is an educational setting, learned on tolerance and patience through a cooperative learning and living environment, developed interpersonal relationships as well as developed self-esteem and self-confidence. At this point obviously, the question may rise: what does "good citizen" mean? A good citizen is basically what a moral person should be like. A moral person should be marked by honestly, self-control, friendliness, selflessness, fairness, respect, responsibility, compassion, loyalty, empathy, and a cooperative spirit. In short, those who are moral should be good people. The school is the best social institution for children to learn to be good citizens as well as home environment. As Dewey believes that the school is primarily a social institution. Children come to school to learn and share their values and home experiences. School is a learning lab where children reproduce activities in such way that the children will gradually learn the meaning of the subjects and be able to interact with others with their own ideas and thoughts. The school is a community life, not an individual life. The school is the heart of social change and individual development. Many psychologists said that by birth human beings are virtuous and the potential of virtuous need to be nurtured to be actualized. Aristotle also suggests that proper education, performing good acts, and developing good habits enable a person to achieve moral excellence and become ideal citizens ready and able to perform their responsibilities as rational members of society.

Moreover, students in school need to learn civic knowledge; citizens ought to know about their rights and responsibilities. Students should know about their civic life, politics, government, political system, and the roles of citizens in constitutional democracy that each citizen is a full and equal member of a self governing community endowed with fundamental rights and entrusted with responsibilities. Citizens should understand that through their involvement in political life and in civil society, they can help to improve the quality of life in their communities and nation. Most important is knowing the civic dispositions which refer to the traits of private and public character essential to the maintenance and improvement of constitutional democracy. Traits of private character include moral responsibility, self-discipline, and respect for the worth and human dignity of every individual is imperative.
Schools must provide opportunities for students to discover what is most worth knowing, as they prepare, not only to be citizens, but also good workers and good private individuals. Therefore, schools choose to engage in character education in hope for any sort of peaceful coexistence that would allow students to learn and thrive. Character education that enhanced the universal values in an education program focused on teaching students specific universal values that help them think and behave in an ethical way, such as caring, courage, love, equality, freedom, peace and justice, generosity, hard work, honesty, kindness, tolerance, relationship building, and respect. In regards to performance, a focus is placed on teaching values, such as hard work, to provide students with a greater awareness of their skills and abilities.

School is an agent of socialization that can also be an effective way of addressing students´ needs through the development of a school environment that focuses student’s whole development. Teachers, educators, administrators, and parents need to work together in an informal manner to provide students with a caring learning environment and an interlocking support system that addresses their moral, physical, psychological, social, and academic needs. Collaboration and cooperation provide bonding, a type of social capital which promotes a sense of harmony and respect between educators and parents. It can also facilitate a sense of shared responsibility for student character development.

In addition, respect and responsibility are the two foundational values that are worth knowing to be good citizen. These values can learn from home and school. Of course, many other values corresponding to be good citizen—such as honesty, fairness, tolerance, prudence, self-discipline, helpfulness, compassion, cooperation, courage, and host of democratic values. We progress in our character as a value becomes a virtue, a reliable inner disposition to respond to situations in a morally good way. If our children and citizens can practice all these values in real life then there is possible to good person as a whole. Religious education is very important to educate children with those values. A morally educated persons develop relationship with God, develop strong faith on God, pray daily, respect human beings, love and care nature, love and serve others, work honestly, and loyalty to the nation. What is most impressive is that learning to become a moral or character person, according to Lickona has three interrelated parts: character involves moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral action. A model of good character: Moral Knowing: awareness, values, reasoning, decision-making, and self-knowledge Moral Feeling: conscience, self-esteem, empathy, loving the good, and self-control; Moral Action: citizenship, competence, community service, good discipline, and habit.

Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good—habits of the mind, heart, and action. All these values are very important and necessary for leading a moral life; all three make up moral maturity. A good citizen is one who knows about, cares about, and acts upon core ethically values such as respect, responsibility, fairness, compassion; values learned through the contributions of people from a variety of cultures, races, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, and abilities in the school and community.

Down through history, in countries all over the world, education has had two great goals: to help children to know and understand so that they become smart, and to help them become good people. Realizing that smart and good are not the same, wise societies since the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have made character/moral education a deliberate aim of schooling. They have educated for character as well as intellect, decency as well as literacy, virtue as well as knowledge. They have tried to form citizens who will use their intelligence to benefit others as well as themselves, who will try to build a better and just world. True education proved that character educational knowledge, skills, and ethical disposition provide the foundation for students in a democracy and improved quality of life and for life-long learners who are able to love and work. I argue that our every parents look towards creating good citizens through cooperate them in learning, be friendly with them, join parents and teachers meeting in school, talk to teachers, create learning environment at home in order to help children to be good student and responsible citizen with skill and moral sense. We find thousands of examples throughout the world that many educated people do not reflect their educational values/philosophy in their daily life through their attitudes, behavior, and action. They may be skilled person but not true educated person. Now-a-days, it is essential to be a skilled and moral person and parents as well as children must give importance and realize to know the elements of good character and to bring them in action in daily life. Every good action can make a difference.

Writer is the specialist in Educational Admin. & Policy Studies, Internatioal Scholar Winner- recognized by the Center for Global Education, the Catholic University of America (CUA), Washington, DC, & Freelance Journalist)

Email: Nirmalgomes@aol.com or Gomes@cua.edu
April 16, 2010