ARTICLE REVIEW

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The article that will be reviewed entitled “THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL EDUCATION IN

MALAYSIA”. The author is Vishalache Balakrishnan from Department of Foundations of Education

and Humanities, Faculty of Education, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur. The research is

mainly about the Moral Education. Only a handful of educational theorists hold the view that if only

the adult world would get out of the way, children would ripen into fully realized people. Most thinkers,

educational practitioners, and parents were acknowledged that children are born helpless and need

the care and guidance of adults into their teens and often beyond. More specifically, children need to

learn how to live harmoniously in society. Historically, the mission of schools has been to develop in

the young both the intellectual and the moral virtues. Concern for the moral virtues, such as honesty,

responsibility, and respect for others, is the domain of moral education.

Moral education, then, refers to helping children acquire those virtues or moral habits that will

help them individually live good lives and at the same time become productive, contributing members

of their communities. In this view, moral education should contribute not only to the students as

individuals, but also to the social cohesion of a community. The word moral comes from a Latin root

(mos, moris) and means the code or customs of a people, the social glue that defines how individuals

should live together.

Every enduring community has a moral code and it is the responsibility and the concern of its

adults to instill this code in the hearts and minds of its young. Since the advent of schooling, adults

have expected the schools to contribute positively to the moral education of children. When the first

common schools were founded in the New World, moral education was the prime concern. New

England Puritans believed the moral code resided in the Bible. Therefore, it was imperative that

children be taught to read, thus having access to its grounding wisdom. As early as 1642 the colony

of Massachusetts passed a law requiring parents to educate their children. In 1647 the famous Old

Deluder Satan Act strengthened the law. Without the ability to read the Scriptures, children would be

prey to the snares of Satan.

1

2.0 SUMMARY

The Malaysian education system makes Moral Studies compulsory for non-Muslim students at

secondary and primary schools. Muslim students instead partake in Islamic Studies lessons. Both

subjects figure among the seven compulsory subjects undertaken by students for the Sijil Pelajaran

Malaysia. There has been considerable debate about the usefulness of the "Moral" subject, primarily

due to the strict exam-oriented marking-schemes.

In Malaysia, Pendidikan Moral (Malay for "Moral Studies") is one of the core subjects in the

Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination. It is a required subject for all non-Muslim students in the

public education system in Malaysia. Muslim students are required to take the Islamic Studies (Malay:

Pendidikan Islam) course.

In the early 1980s, amid the widespread concern over students' poor academic achievements

and behavior, educators rediscovered the word character. Moral education had a religious tinge,

which made many uneasy. Character with its emphasis on forming good habits and eliminating poor

habits struck a popular and traditional chord. The word character has a Greek root, coming from the

verb "to engrave." Thus character speaks to the active process of making marks or signs (i.e., good

habits) on one's person. The early formation of good habits is widely acknowledged to be in the best

interests of both the individual and society.

In addition, character formation is recognized as something that parents begin early, but the

work is hardly completed when a child goes to school. Implicit in the concept of character is the

recognition that adults begin the engraving process of habituation to consideration of others, self-

control, and responsibility, then teachers and others contribute to the work, but eventually the young

person takes over the engraving or formation of his own character. Clearly, though, with their learning

demands and taxing events, children's school years are a prime opportunity for positive and negative

(i.e., virtues and vices) character formation.

The impetus and energy behind the return of character education to American schools did not

come from within the educational community. It has been sparked, first, by parental desire for orderly

schools where standards of behavior and good habits are stressed, and, second, by state and

national politicians who responded to these anxious concerns of parents. During his presidency,

William Clinton hosted five conferences on character education. President George W. Bush

expanded on the programs of the previous administration and made character education a major

focus of his educational reform agenda. One of the politically appealing aspects of character

2

education, as opposed to moral education with its religious overtones, is that character education

speaks more to the formation of a good citizen. A widely repeated definition (i.e., character education

is helping a child to know the good, to desire the good, and to do the good) straddles this issue. For

some people the internal focus of character education comfortably can be both religious and civic and

for others the focus can be strictly civic, dealing exclusively on the formation of the good citizen.

The overwhelming percentage of efforts within the public education to address the moral

domain currently marched under the flag of character education. Furthermore, since these conscious

efforts at addressing issues of character formation are relatively recent, they are often

called character education programs. The term program suggests, however, discrete initiatives that

replace an activity or that are added to the school's curriculum (e.g., a new reading program or

mathematics program). Although there are character education programs available, commercially and

otherwise, most advocates urge the public schools to take an infusion approach to educating for

character.

In general, an infusion approach to character education aims to restore the formation of

students' characters to a central place in schooling. Rather than simply adding on character formation

to the other responsibilities of schools, such as numeracy, literacy, career education, health

education, and other goals, a focus on good character permeates the entire school experience. In

essence, character education joins intellectual development as the overarching goals of the school.

Moreover, character education is seen, not in competition with or ancillary to knowledge and skill

acquisition goals, but as an important contributor to these goals. To create a healthy learning

environment, students need to develop the virtues of responsibility and respect for others. They must

eliminate habits of laziness and sloppiness and acquire habits of self-control and diligence. The

infusion approach is based on the view that the good habits that contribute to the formation of

character in turn contribute directly to the academic goals of schooling.

A foundation of the infusion approach is the recovery, recasting, or creating of a school's

mission statement, one that reflects the priority placed on the development of good character. Such a

statement legitimizes the attention of adults and students alike to this educational goal. It tells

administrators that teachers and staff should be hired with good character as a criterion; it tells

teachers that not only should character be stressed to students but also their own characters are on

display; it tells coaches that athletics should be seen through the lens of sportsmanship rather than

winning and losing; and it tells students that their efforts and difficulties, their successes and

disappointments are all part of a larger process, the formation of their characters.

3

Critical to the infusion approach is using the curriculum as a source of character education.

This is particularly true of the language arts, social studies, and history curricula. The primary focus of

these subjects is the study of human beings, real and fictitious. Our great narrative tales carry moral

lessons. They convey to the young vivid images of the kinds of people our culture admires and wants

them to emulate. These subjects also show them how lives can be wasted, or worse, how people can

betray themselves and their communities. Learning about the heroism of former slave Sojourner

Truth, who became an evangelist and reformer, and the treachery of Benedict Arnold, the American

army officer who betrayed his country to the British, is more than picking up historical information.

Encountering these lives fires the student's moral imagination and deepens his understanding of what

constitutes a life of character. Other subjects, such as mathematics and science, can teach students

the necessity of intellectual honesty. The curricula of our schools not only contain the core knowledge

of our culture but also our moral heritage.

In addition to the formal or overt curriculum, schools and classrooms also have a hidden or

covert curriculum. A school's rituals, traditions, rules, and procedures have an impact on students'

sense of what is right and wrong; and what is desired and undesired behavior. So, too, does the

school's student culture. What goes on in the lunchroom, the bathrooms, the locker rooms, and on the

bus conveys powerful messages to students. This ethos or moral climate of a school is difficult to

observe and neatly categorize. Nevertheless, it is the focus of serious attention by educators

committed to an infusion approach.

An important element of the infusion approach is the language with which a school community

addresses issues of character and the moral domain. Teachers and administrators committed to an

infusion approach use the language of virtues and speak of good and poor behavior and of right and

wrong. Words such as responsibility, respect, honesty, and perseverance are part of the working

vocabulary of adults and students alike.

One of the most popular approaches to character education is service learning. Sometimes

called community service, this approach is a conscious effort to give students opportunities,

guidance, and practice at being moral actors. Based on the Greek philosopher Aristotle's concept of

character formation (e.g., a man becomes virtuous by performing virtuous deeds; brave by doing

brave deeds), many schools and school districts have comprehensive programs of service learning.

Starting in kindergarten, children are given small chores such as feeding the classroom's gerbil or

straightening the desks and chairs. They later move on to tutoring younger students and eventually

work up to more demanding service activities in the final years of high school. Typically, these high-

4

school level service-learning activities are off-campus at a home for the blind, a hospital, or a day-

care center. Besides placement, the school provides training, guidance, and problem-solving support

to students as they encounter problems and difficulties.

In recent years, schools across the country have adopted the virtue (or value) of the month

approach, where the entire school community gives particular attention to a quality such as

cooperation or kindness. Consideration of the virtue for that particular month is reflected in the

curriculum, in special assemblies, in hallway and classroom displays, and in school-home

newsletters. Related to this are school wide programs, such as no put-downs projects, where

attention is focused on the destructive and hurtful effects of sarcasm and insulting language and

students are taught to replace put-downs with civil forms of communication.

There are several skill-development and classroom strategies that are often related to

character formation. Among the more widespread are teaching mediation and conflict-resolution

skills, where students are given direct teaching in how to deal with disagreements and potential fights

among fellow students. Many advocates of cooperative learning assert that instructing students using

this instructional process has the added benefit of teaching students habits of helping others and

forming friendships among students with whom they otherwise would not mix.

The moral education of children is a matter of deep concern to everyone from parents to civic

and religious leaders. It is no accident, then, that this subject has been a matter of apprehension and

controversy throughout the history of American schools. Issues of morality touch an individual's most

fundamental beliefs. Since Americans are by international standards both quite religiously observant

and quite religiously diverse, it is not surprising that moral and character education controversies

often have a religious source. Particularly after a period when moral education was not on the agenda

of most public schools, its return is unsettling to some citizens. Many who are hostile to religion see

this renewed interest in moral education as bringing religious perspectives back into the school

"through the back door." On the other hand, many religious people are suspicious of its return

because they perceive it to be an attempt to undermine their family's religious-based training with a

state-sponsored secular humanism. As of the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, the

renewed attention to this area has been relatively free of controversy.

Contributing to the positive climate is the use of the term character rather

than moral. While moral carries religious overtones for many, the word character speaks to good

habits and the civic virtues, which hold a community together and allow us to live together in

harmony.

5

A second issue relates to the level of schools and the age of students. The revival of character

education in our schools has been evident to a much greater degree in elementary schools. Here

schools can concentrate on the moral basics for which there is wide public consensus. The same is

true, but to a somewhat lesser degree, for middle and junior high schools. And although there are

many positive examples of secondary schools that have implemented broad and effective character

education programs, secondary school faculties are hesitant to embrace character education. Part of

it is the departmental structures and the time demands of the curriculum; part of it is the age and

sophistication of their students; and part of it is that few secondary school teachers believe they have

a clear mandate to deal with issues of morality and character.

A third issue relates to the education of teachers. Whereas once teachers in training took

philosophy and history of education–courses that introduced them to the American school's traditional

involvement with moral and character education–now few states require these courses. At the

beginning of the twenty-first century, the American schools are seeing the large-scale retirement of

career teachers and their replacement with large numbers of new teachers. These young teachers

tend to be products of elementary and secondary schools where teachers gave little or no direct

attention to moral and character education. In addition, a 1999 study by the Character Education

Partnership of half of the nation's teacher education institutions showed that although over 90 percent

of the leaders of these programs thought character education ought to be a priority in the preparation

of teachers, only 13 percent were satisfied with their institution's efforts.

There are a few character education programs with encouraging evaluation results. The

Character Development Project (CDP) has more than 18 years of involvement in several K–6

schools, and in those schools where teachers received staff development and on-site support over 52

percent of the student outcome variables showed significant differences. The Boy Scouts of America

developed the Learning For Life Curriculum in the early 1990s for elementary schools. This

commercially available, stand-alone curriculum teaches core moral values, such as honesty and

responsibility. In a large-scale controlled experiment involving fifty-nine schools, students exposed to

the Learning For Life materials showed significant gains on their understanding of the curriculum's

core values, but they were also judged by their teachers to have gained greater self-discipline and

ability to stay on a task.

Still, evaluation and assessment in character and moral education is best described as a work

in progress. The field is held back by the lack of an accepted battery of reliable instruments, a lack of

wide agreement on individual or school wide outcomes, and by the short-term nature of most of the

6

existent studies. Complicating these limitations is a larger one: the lack of theoretical agreement of

what character is. Human character is one of those overarching entities that is the subject of disciples

from philosophy to theology, from psychology to sociology. Further, even within these disciplines

there are competing and conflicting theories and understandings of the nature of human character.

But although the evaluation challenges are daunting, they are dwarfed by the magnitude of the adult

community's desire to see that our children possess a moral compass and the good habits basic to

sound character.

3.0 REFLECTION

Religion studies are much better than Moral Studies, which is an exam oriented class.

Religious Education is the term given to education context concerned with religion. It may refer to

education provided by a church or religious organization, for instruction in doctrine and faith, or for

education in various aspects of religion, but without explicitly religious or moral aims, e.g. in a school

or college. The term often overlaps with Religious studies. Religious studies are the academic field of

multi-disciplinary, secular study of religious beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. It describes,

compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing systematic, historically based, and cross-

cultural perspectives. The school needs religious studies not religion studies. The only risk factor is,

the education department should ensure that no teachers with religion extremist background should

be allowed teaching the subject. I still remember the Malaysian studies subject in public university

was mistreated by some religion fanatic lecturer to propagate their belief to students, even students

from different religion background. The students were undergoing mental torture for 3-4 years just to

pass the examination. I hope this will not happen to students taking Religious studies in secondary

schools.

If the students have studied religion studies, there is not necessary for them to take moral

education, just like the Muslim students who take Islamic Studies. For students that do not belong to

any religion group, with the parent’s consent, he can attend any of the religion class or opted for class

like comparative religions, or a liberal art subjects or foreign language subjects.

Pendidikan Moral, along with Islamic Studies, is governed by the Department of Islamic and

Moral Studies (JAPIM), a branch under the Ministry of Higher Education. The core of the syllabus is

the 36 moral values (called "nilai" in Malay). These values include "Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan"

(creed), "Bertanggungjawab" (responsibility) and "Sikap Keterbukaan" (open-mindedness) among

7

others. The 36 values are divided categorized into 7 major fields of study (called "bidang" in Malay),

namely:

Perkembangan Diri (self-development)

Kekeluargaan (family)

Alam Sekitar (nature)

Patriotisme (patriotism)

Hak Asasi Manusia (human rights)

Demokrasi (democracy)

Keamanan dan Keharmonian (peace and harmony).

These values are presented in detail in textbooks and form the basis of corresponding

examinations. Each value is defined by the Education Ministry. Answering examination questions

requires some interpretation of these definitions.

Pendidikan Moral is often learned by rote. Teachers in schools tend to concentrate on

answering techniques rather than the teaching material provided in the textbook. Instead of

interpreting the appropriate value based on the information given, students are taught to look for

specific keywords in the description and identify the corresponding moral value. Thus, strict

memorization of the values is required without any emphasis on understanding or application. There

have been suggestions to reform the system and incorporate other forms of assessment and not rely

completely on written examinations but thus far, they have not been implemented.

8