ISBN
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978-602-97249-0-5
International Seminar on Vocational Education and Training
46
solidarity, religious, love and goodness, peace, tolerance and arts will cause dehumanization, demoralizations, and objectification of human being, and it will
deteriorate the real meaning of education. Education is only for the sake of economy and the idea of holistic individual development well-rounded individual development
of our children has been neglected. Mind set, heart set, physical set, and action set is not taught in balance.
In essence, all the readings agree that educating individual as a whole in order to be well-rounded people is a must and can not be reduced partially into only mind and
physical sets. Educating individual as a whole consists of balanced mind, heart, physical, and action sets noting that the heart of education is education of the heart.
Hence, personal character as part of the heart education is very important to teach to students in vocational education and training institutions.
D. Dimensions of Personal Characters
There are two classifications of personal characters, general personal characters and specific personal characters. General personal characters should be possessed by all
people to be good citizens in their respective countries and in the world. While specific personal characters are the characters that should be possessed by those who work in
certain types of workplaces this workplace personal character will be discussed separately in Section D. The classification is not meant to be rigid because some of the
personal characters whether general or specific may be applied in both situations. However, stressing should be made because certain workplaces require personal
characters that are not required by citizenship.
A detailed concept of general personal characters was developed by Lickona in 1992. He divides general personal characters into three components: moral knowing,
moral feeling and moral action. He then divides moral knowing into different kinds of sub-moral knowing i.e. moral awareness, knowing moral values, perspective-taking,
moral reasoning, decision-making and self-knowledge. According to him, all of these sub-moral knowing are considered as qualities of mind that make up moral knowing,
and thus represents cognitive side of characters. He further conceptualize that moral feeling include conscience, self-esteem, empathy, loving the good, self-control and
humility. These make up what he calls emotional side of our moral selves. He then claim that values education that is merely intellectual, that touches the mind but not the
ISBN
:
978-602-97249-0-5
International Seminar on Vocational Education and Training
47
heart, will miss a crucial part of character. Finally, he divides moral action into three sub-moral action i.e. competence, will and habit. He claims that moral action is the
outcome of moral knowing and moral feeling. Thus, moral action requires opportunities to develop habits, plenty of practices and repeated experiences.
The followings are examples of general personal characters living values that everybody should possess as good citizens: responsibility, respect for self and for
others, compassion, courtesy, tolerance, honesty, self-discipline, freedom, human rights, democracy, prudence, helpfulness, diligence, courage, integrity, cooperationsolidarity
learning to live together, peace, justice, fairness, good will, love, democracy and humility Ohio Department of Education, 1990; Lickona, 1992; UNESCO, 1999; Drake,
2006; Slamet PH, 2009.
E. Employability Skills Required by the Workplaces