Educator Calls for Moral Restoration in Schools

Once Martin Luther King said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter”. The things that matter too much but are totally ignored by modern schooling present the subject-matter of this talk.
What is a classroom? It is four walls and a future inside. “The future” inside most classroom today evoke dubious emotions on the part of parents, teachers and students themselves. What we do observe in our youth today is, for the most part, emptiness of both minds and souls. Though we have to admit that it is not the worst feature, far worse is the rocketing aggression in ugly, distorted forms such as attacks, beatings, even murders committed by unenlightened youngsters outside classrooms. But they are still our children.
Since time immortal, education has had two goals: to help young people become smart and to help them become good. Realizing that “smart” and “good” are not the same, wise societies have made moral education a deliberate aim of schooling since Plato. They have educated for character as well as intellect, for decency as well as knowledge. Our society at present is paying a high price for the total neglect of the centuries-old heritage, that is, the matter of bringing up children.
Is there any solution to this grievous problem? Fortunately, there is. All we need to do is to restore the school’s character educating function. Not only should the word “school” be associated with notions like: profile education, Unified State exams, Olympiads, numerous programmes, but, more importantly, it must be associated with the notions of love, care, protection, and with understanding what good is and what bad is. To save young souls from further moral decay it is vitally important to take up teaching humanity’s genuine values alongside teaching academic subjects, thus, equally contributing to the moral and intellectual growth of our youth.
My firm belief is that such instruction will never fail to take into account the eternal truths of civilization which condemn cruelty, the unrestrained pursuit of riches as the sole life target, but which acclaim, instead, the following credo:
Give the world the best you have
And it will never be enough
Give you best anyway.