ISBN
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978-602-97249-0-5
International Seminar on Vocational Education and Training
45
of lacking care from parents to their children due their father and mother both working. The parents leave the schools to take over their responsibility and even worse ask
schools to play roles more than their capacity. Currently, there is a push from all nation- states and are facilitated by UNESCO to strengthen the development of personal
characters education. Some programs on living values have been developed by UNESCO and most of the nation-states have developed character education on the basis
of their contextual needs.
C. The Importance of Educating for Personal Character
As you may all know that there is recognition in most of the nations may be all that sustainable development of a nation rests upon the development of education of its
people. Education is supposed to prepare children to be well-rounded people develop individual as a whole, including preparing for work. In reality, however, less attention
is given to personal character education. Personal character education generally and employability skills as well as personal characters in specifically are not taught properly
i.e. ill-prepared and ill-implemented in vocational education and training institutions.
The less attention to character education can be observed in reality, in that, society put the highest priority in economic value in their lives. From his research,
Lickona 1991 found that “Money increasingly drives our society and shapes the values and goals of our youth. Making money becomes the justification for breaking
rules. Consequently, live escalation tended to greed, dishonesty, violent crime, and self- destructive behaviors”. It is dangerous for the country. He quoted statement from
former US President, Theodore Roosevelt saying that “To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society”. He further quoted from the statement
of William Kilpatrick saying that “The core problem facing our schools is a moral one. All the other problems derive from it. Even academic reform depends on putting
character first”.
Slamet PH 1995 also found that student fighting, violence, and self-destructive behaviors were mainly caused by lack of love, compassion, respect, and tolerance from
parents. For parents, money counted everything, while for students, it was not enough, and human tough was actually needed by them. The former Minister of Education and
Culture, Republic of Indonesia, Prof. Dr. Fuad Hasan 1996 also warned that, putting too much priority on economic value at the expense of the other values such as
ISBN
:
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
