The Importance Of Focusing On Character Education In The 21st Century

There are many components that are fundamental in education. One of the most important ones is character. A good character takes education and turns it into something productive. Character can be split into two subcategories, namely:

1. Moral character, which can include traits like faith, piety, honesty and humbleness, for example. You also get;
2. Performance characters, which can include personalities that might work hard, are tenacious, tough, driven or even lazy.
   In all essence, we want our students and adults who enter the working world, to sway towards the more positive characteristic traits.
   Anis Baswedan Speech – Subject: 21st-century Educational Projections

Anis Baswedan, an education minister, gave an account in one of his speeches of how the education projections for the 21st century are falling into place. Surprisingly, he mentions Character Education as one of the first steps towards his educational goals. This means that we are not only focusing on broadening knowledge and teaching academics, but as educators we are also trying to guide students to work on their good characteristics, removing harmful or negative traits, if possible.

The point of Character Education is not only to improve the morals of students, but with this improvement, the students are more likely to be well-balanced and independent individuals who will focus on their studies and progress well with them. The formation of faithful, diligent, honest, and humble characters also allows for a happy learning environment, where all individuals can thrive.

By building characters, we are not only helping our students to thrive and learn, we are also helping to mould well-rounded adults who will be entering the work place. These adults will be able to take responsibility for their actions, will work better with their co-workers and will be able to perform better, because of their stronger characters and morals.
This is why Character Education should not be taken for granted and should be implemented in schools around the globe as an important part of the syllabus. This way we can raise generations who will put what they have learnt to good use, perhaps we can even eradicate crime and poverty this way, who knows!