MORAL EDUCATION IN THE MODERN SCHOOL: UTOPIA OR REALITY

«Do not forget that each of us is a small flower which absorbs everything that happens around us»

Concern for the moral virtues, such as honesty, responsibility, and respect for others, is the domain of moral education. Moral education refers to helping children acquire those virtues or moral habits that will help them individually live good lives and at the same time become productive, contributing members of their communities. The word moral comes from a Latin root (mos, moris) and means the code or customs of a people, the social glue that defines how individuals should live together.

The educational system is among the most powerful institutions in the modern world, and like any other modern institution, there are interactions between it and other institutions in the society. In order to evaluate moral education in the context it’s necessary to look at the educational system as one of the institutions in the modern world, and in particular pay close attention to moral education as a special feature of this system and how the interaction between the educational system and other institutions in modern society may shape and impact the methods and purposes of moral education.

Along with development of the modern educational system in the world, moral education became an issue for debates within nation-state societies. The educational system, and more precisely schools, has often been considered responsible for moral order in society, especially when compulsory education made everyone walk through this narrowly controlled institutional channel to enter the society. Therefore, with the growth of so called literacy, or the 3Rs, the growth of morality has also been expected. However, there have been increasing complaints in many modern societies that each new generation is less and less moral.

In recent decades, issues of moral, ethical and spiritual and moral education and education in general and vocational school paid much attention. This issue was the subject of public discussion, and sometimes a certain resonance.

Moral education - is the systematic formation of the child's knowledge of the moral and immoral, good and evil, right and wrong, help with emotional awareness of moral values ??so that they are personally meaningful to the pupil.

Although the real key to build moral society may be in a family, moral instruction in the school is indispensable. The role of moral education in schools is to enforce "social" virtues acquired at home so that children can apply them in schools and then society. The goals of moral education cannot be attained by unnatural or "artificial" method such as indoctrination. Morality learned in "natural" setting can be retained with natural feeling. There should be no fundamental differences between the family and school in terms of education for moral development. Teachers' role should resemble parental one so that they could be respected. Schools should maintain the atmosphere that senior pupils take care of the younger. The problems occurred in classes or schools should be solved from the viewpoint of family relationship. However, it does not mean indulgence. It is necessary for schools to keep good order based on what parents do in the family. The notion of a family is the key to resolve most of school and social problems of the youth in the natural way.

Everyone wants to be virtuous, but recent psychological investigations suggest that this may not be possible. Challenges this theory and asks, not whether character is empirically adequate, but what characters human beings could have and develop. Although psychology suggests that most people do not have robust character traits such as courage, honesty and open-mindedness, many scientists argues that we have reason to attribute these virtues to people because such attributions function as self-fulfilling prophecies – children become more studious if they are told that they are hard-working and adults become more generous if they are told that they are generous.

Moral education is commonly understood as what schools do to help young people become ethically mature adults, capable of moral thought and action (Ryan, 1986). However, our study of the history of moral education shows that it more often than not embodies the economic, political and social norms of particular times and places. The modern educational system innovated special features which taken together create a special identity and function for schooling that can integrate within its surrounding system. Such features were not found in pre-modern educational system in any pre-modern societies. For example, education in the modern world is a sub-system within the larger political system that became an integral part of the modern nation state. This political model of societies gives education a special identity, because before modernity, societies did not have such strictly defined national boarders and people were living mostly inside their local ethnic geographical environment, often as part of a larger empire by default, but not necessarily identifying with it. They educated their children based on their cultural traditions and community needs and their main relation with their rulers was in the form of paying imperial taxes.

Modernity created a new meaning for nations, along with a new map of the world, shaping societies within specific geographical boarders and giving them a more conspicuous identity based on nationalism. Even now, centuries after this division, there are still obvious problems in such borders, obliging governments to police their borders and encourage nationalistic emotions within the state to keep its lands and people within defined borders. Therefore, the modern educational system continues to have a very powerful political feature, and although it is not always recognized as such, it will be my contention that it is a political institution more than anything else. The importance of this feature becomes clearer when we expect this system to produce moral citizens for society. It is obvious that morality by its very nature cannot easily be produced in a system formed for other purposes.

Another feature of the modern educational system that was not found in pre-modern educations is that schools largely became compulsory. Citizens of modern nation states, in other words, are compelled by the state to attend school, and there are no other options to enter the society, which makes this feature of schooling an important tool for social control. However, when we come to the problem of moral education, the inefficiency of this system of social control in producing moral citizens is an important point to be discussed. When the only educational road to a society is unable to make moral persons, there are few other options a society may have to offer its children.

Despite the new educational policy, the question of moral education remains in the foreground. The level of moral education in the world is such: from 2007 till 2008 the average level of moral education dominates, from 2010 till 2011 the low level of moral education dominates. It means that the level of moral education decreases every year. It’s a big problem of our society. The scientists (K. Ushinsky, L. Bozovic, I. Ilyin, Kavin Ryan, etc) note such reasons of low level of moral education as:

• low level of development of the country;
• negligence of parents;
• moral illiteracy society;
• uneducated teachers.

Every teacher should know the techniques and methods of education of the moral personality. The result of moral education is manifested in relation between students in their duties to the activity itself and others people. For example, at school the level of morality the 3^rd form is higher than in the 6^th form. It means that moral education is focused more in primary school and moral education in the 6^th form fades into the background, which leads to decrease in the level of morality in general.

Literature:

Internet resources:

1. http://www.education.com
2. http://www.encyclopedia.com
3. http://www.studyplace.org
4. http://www.holisticeducator.com
5. http://education.stateuniversity.com