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Teaching character is important
Published 8:29pm Thursday, August 9, 2012From my perspective, character education and math/reading are like two sides of a coin of which each side is needed in order to become valuable. We are strengthening the character of our community by ensuring our students also learn about core values that are centered on empathy, hard work, caring relationships, respect for others and meaningful acquisitions.
Do not get me wrong, reading and math are important in today’s world, but what is of extreme importance is the type of person doing that science, math and reading those books.
Our system is doing its best relative to character education.
This article is not about what is not being done, rather it is about what needs to be intensified and embraced by everybody.
Most school systems are committed to character education as an endeavor to become the microcosm of a loving, civil, respectful and peaceful community. They achieve this by developing meaningful and caring relationships among students and between school and families.
It bothers me when parents perceive us — the Selma School Board — as antagonist when we should be partners. It also bothers me when the concerns of parents are not properly addressed.
We must be empathetic to each other’s feelings particularly relative to our student who is also a parent’s child. For example, if we need nurses to help a sick student, the discussion should never result to a fight between the school and a parent because the sick child is the community’s child.
The truth is that a caring relationship promotes the desire to learn and the aspiration to be a good person. Similarly, when schools and parents respect each other properly, this value is likely to be passed down to the child through the staff and the parents.
Character building is ongoing and we are all affected. The more people improve in character the better their society become. A community that cares enjoys peace and love in their council meeting, in their school board meeting, classrooms, school corridors, churches, school bus, principal’s office, parks, hospitals and shopping centers.
Some behavioral scientists and some psychologists may disagree with me on this, but I stalwartly believe there is no substitute to using God, or our Lord Jesus Christ, in building character.
Fear and love of God instill empathy in people.
The reason people intentionally hurt others is the fact they care less about the offendee’s feelings; but when you begin to internalize another’s pain, you begin to desist from hurting them. One of the first things a child or a person learns when you introduce God to them is creation in the book of Genesis.
When you learn and believe in creation, the likelihood of respecting another human being, regardless of what makes you different becomes inevitable. When a child trusts in God, the child is likely to be focused and hopeful on God even when things do not go his way.
No motivational speech is comparable to getting a child to accept Jesus and believe that greater is Lord that he/she has than any evil arrow thrown at him.
A student who believes God shall supply all needs will not do wrong when the supplied needs have not yet arrived. A God fearing student forgives others’ trespasses as God forgives him too.
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