CHAPTER   ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Morality can be tied to the laws and customs of a particular society. It is one of the central concerns of ethics. moral laws differ as they exist in different communities and cultures like for example in some communities it is right to call an elderly person by his name without a respectable title while in some communities it is not right.

Morality is concerned with good and evil which are the social rules that governed behaviors.

It has often been seen (and taught) as a matter of following a few simple rules, the main obstacles lying a few simple rules, the main obstacles lying not in finding out what is right but in beginning oneself to do what one knows to be right or wrong.

Back Ground Of The Study

“All human beings are born and endowed with reasoning and conscience and should act towards one another in a respectable manner”.

Only a handful of educational theorists hold the view that if only the adult world would get out of the way children would ripen into fully realized people.

Most thinkers, educational practitioners, and parents acknowledge that children are born helpless and need the care of guidance of adults into their teens and often beyond.

More specifically, children need to learn how to live harmoniously in society. Historically, the mission of schools has been to develop in the young both the intellectual and the moral virtues. Concern for moral virtues, such as honesty, responsibility, and respect for others, is the domain of moral education.

Moral education then refers to helping children acquire those virtues or moral habits that will help them individually live a good life and at the same time become productive, contributing members of their community.

In this view, moral education should contribute not only to the students as individuals but also to the teachers, parents, and to the Cameroon community as a whole.

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.

Every enduring community has a moral code and it is the responsibility and the concern of its adults to instill this code in the hearts and minds of its young citizens. Since the advent of schooling, adults have expected schools to contribute positively to the moral education of children.

When the first common schools were founded in the New World, moral education was the prime concern. New England Puritans believed the moral code resided in the Bible. Therefore, it was imperative that children be taught to read, thus having access to its grounding wisdom.

As early as 1642, Massachusetts passed a law requiring parents to educate their children. In 1647 the famous old Deluder Satan strengthened the law, stating that “without the ability to read the scriptures, children would be prey to the snares of Satan”.

During the colonial period as schools spread throughout the colonies, the moral education of children was taken for granted. Formal education had a distinctly moral and religious emphasis. Harvard College was founded to prepare allergies for their work.

In the 19th century, schooling was promoted for both secular and moral reasons. In 1832, a time when some of the founding fathers were still alive, Abraham Lincoln wrote, in his first political announcement (March 9, 1832), “I desire to see a time when education, and by its means, morality, sobriety enterprise and industry, shall become much more general that at present”.

In the 19th century teachers were tired and trained with the clear expectation that they would advance the moral mission of the school and attend to characters’ formation. Literature, biography, and history were taught with the explicit intention of infusing children with high moral standards and good examples to guide their lives.

Students’ copybook heading offered morally uplifting thoughts. “Quarrelsome persons are always dangerous companions” and “praise follows exertion”. The most successful textbooks during the 19th century and early 20th century were the famed McGuffey readers, which were filled with moral stories, urgings, and lessons.

During this period moral was deep in the fabric of schools. However, something else in the fabric of moral education caused it to become problematic at that time: religion. In the United States, as a group of colonies and later as a new nation, the overwhelmingly dominant religion was Protestantism.

While not as prominent as during the Puritan era the King James Bible was, nevertheless, a staple of United States public schools. The root of the moral code was seen as residing there. However, during the mid-19th century as waves of immigrants come to their country, century forward the Pan – Protestant tone and orthodoxy of the schools came under scrutiny and reaction set in concerned that their children would be weaned from their faith, Catholics developed their own school system.

Later in the 20th century, another religious group, such as Jews, Muslims, and even various Protestant demonic nations, formed their own schools. Each group desired and continues to desire, that its moral education be rooted in its perspective faith, or code.

Twentieth-century. During this period, there was also a growing reaction against organized religion and the belief in a spiritual dimension of human existence. Intellectual leaders and writers were deeply influenced by the idea of English naturalist Char les Darwin, the German political philosopher Karl Marx, the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, and the German philosopher and poet Friedrich  Nietzshe, and by a growing strict interpretation of the separation of church and state doctrine.

This trend increased after World War II and was further intensified by what appeared to be the large cracks in the nation’s moral consensus in the 1960s. Since American the strongest roots of moral truths reside in their religious beliefs, educators and others became cautious of using the schools for moral education.

More and more this was seen to be the province of the family and the church. Some educators became proponents of “value-free” schooling, ignoring the fact that it is impossible to create a school without ethical issues, lessons and controversy.

Relatively recent moral educations are often called character education programs. It urges the public schools to take an infusion approach to educate for the character.

Hence, in respect to the historical outcome of moral education, and the various subjects taught to adolescents in both secondary and primary schools, moral education should be considered one of the most important subjects. This is because it will help to shape adolescents’ behaviours.  All adolescents ought to have education and some moral values as a worthwhile way of life.

Statement Of Problem

Society today is made up of many negative and positive aspects. Some of the negative aspects are prostitution, alcoholism, laziness, corruption, mismanagement of public funds, gambling, scamming, and dishonesty.

This chaotic situation has made society have no value. In order for society to regain its value, it is advisable to introduce the teaching of moral education because it will enable the learners (adolescents) to differentiate between right and wrong, have respect for one another, be honest and obedient, hardworking, and most importantly inculcate a sense of responsibility and good behaviour.

This research, therefore, seeks to find out the extent to which the teaching of moral education will affect the moral state of adolescents in society.

General Objective

This research seeks:

To find out how the teaching of moral education will influence adolescents’ behaviour.

Specific Objectives

1. To verify the extent to which elements of moral education could be taught in schools.
2. To examine the stakeholders (agents) of moral education.
3. To investigate the importance of moral education on adolescents’ behaviour.
4. To find out the relationship between moral and prosocial behaviour of adolescents.

HYPOTHESES

Alternate Hypotheses (H1)

General Hypotheses

Teaching moral education has a significant influence on adolescent behaviour.

Specific Hypotheses

• Elements of moral education have a significant influence on adolescents’ behaviour in the Buea Municipality.
• Agents of moral education have a significant influence on adolescents’ behaviour in the Buea Municipality.
• Moral education has a significant influence on adolescents’ behaviour.
• Moral education has a significant influence on the prosocial behaviour of adolescents.