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Education is the process of teaching. It is a life long activity, which begins at birth and continues until a person's last day on earth. Education is such a vital instrument in the development of an individual and the society that it is cherished and fostered in every age and culture. Education can be formal, informal or social. It can be traditional and indigenous, or modern and imported.
One of the important fields of the education is to educate your character and commonly named as “Character Education”. Character education is a deliberate effort to cultivate positive personal attributes and civility among students. It is a whole-school effort to create a community in which positive attitudes, values and behaviors are fostered. These qualities are promoted explicitly, modeled, taught, expected, celebrated, and continuously practiced in every day actions. In short, character education is the promotion of universally desirable qualities such as respect, responsibility, honesty and integrity.
Character education is not based on reading your child Bible stories, nor is it based strictly on your behaving in front of your child as you want him to behave, though these things are important. Rather, character education is something that happens to your child whether you are around or not; the simple fact is, though you (and your close family) are the most important person in your child’s life, unless you home school, by the time he’s six he spends most of his waking time around people who are not you. Character education is a deliberate effort to cultivate positive personal attributes and civility among students. It is a whole-school effort to create a community in which positive attitudes, values and behaviors are fostered. These qualities are promoted explicitly, modeled, taught, expected, celebrated, and continuously practiced in every day actions. In short, character education is the promotion of universally desirable qualities such as respect, responsibility, honesty and integrity.
Today’s world faces many difficult problems. Escalating crime, drug and alcohol abuse, workplace violence, gang activity, vandalism, school dropouts, deteriorating work ethics, domestic violence, juvenile delinquency, racial tensions, broken families ... The list seems endless.
At their root, all of these problems spring out of the lack or misapplication of good character qualities. If we are to find lasting solutions to the problems of our day, we must deal with these roots! We must work to improve our own character and help those around us to improve theirs! Character development is essential to the ongoing success of our society. Character is the Key to Success!
Children and youth today don't live in a "kid friendly" world. They face serious problems as never before - problems such as substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and youth violence. These are all ethical issues. The long-term solution to solving these problems is to develop a societal norm based on a limited number of core values.
This is not new to camp professionals. Camp people have known the importance of developing character for well over a hundred years. We have been developing character by teaching a set of core values. Now we need to help the rest of the world to understand that adults need to teach and demonstrate these values to children and youth.
Our children and youth are in real need of positive youth development - and the cornerstone of youth development is character development. Every child has the right to develop his or her character so that he or she will know "right" from "wrong" and make decisions that will allow them to be a child of character and competence. Camp counselors have known for a hundred years that you can't "police" kids at camp. They know that they must develop a norm of behavior for their cabin group. This is character development in its purest form.
Many business leaders are learning that it is counterproductive to focus only on achievement and profit, without emphasizing the character qualities which underlie the achievement. So they are emphasizing more on Character Education Programs. A business whose employees are developing greater attentiveness, more alertness, more responsibility, and more diligence will certainly become much more successful. We must think in terms of developing character. Character training is essential for lasting success! |
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