Activities for Building Student Character

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1. Background

Nowadays, the insertion of character education into the education curriculum has become a hot issue. According to The Jakarta Post (22/05/09), character building has become a missing link in Indonesian curriculum. In which, it is stated that Indonesian curriculum which is focused on the students’ passing the National Examination has forgotten the core of education; that is to educate people into a physically, academically, and spiritually grown up. Ironically, Indonesia as a country that can create International Science Olympics gold-medalists is also the same country which ranks high among the most corrupt country in the world (Wisnu, 2009).

The concern towards the issues of character building, especially about building honesty is highly concerned by educators all over the world. Study about cheating in U.S. high school reveals a mind-blowing result where the “percentage of students admitting to cheating rises to 95%” during the past years (McCabe, 2011). Another issues from China stated that during 2008 to 2010 there is about 31 percent of papers submitted to the Journal of Zhejiang University–Science, an academic journal published by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, enclosed "copied material" without proper quotation; a survey from a plagiarism-screening service Cross Check (Shen, 2011).

To sum up, the insertion of character building, in this case, honesty is a crucial part in our education system. However, building honesty would better be taught at early ages as Piaget’s theory stated that starting from the age of seven children “have the ability to apply logical reasoning” (Pinter, 2006). In addition, Vygotsky mentioned that during the ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) which starts from the...

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...6. Teaching Young Language Learners. China: OXFORD University Press.

Shearer, William J. 1907. Character Building In the Schools: Importance of Moral Training – Neglest of the Subject – Its Difficulties – Much depends on the Character of the teacher. [Online article] Retrieved 24/07/11 from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=FA0B16FC3B5A15738DDDA80B94D0405B878CF1D3

Shen, Terence. 2011. The Scourge of Plagiarism in China. [Online article] Retrieved 25/07/11 from http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3158&Itemid=206

Wisnu, Andra. 2009. Character building: The missing link in Indonesia’s public school curriculum. An article from The Jakarta Post, Friday 22nd may 2009. Retrieved 24/07/11 from http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/05/22/character-building-the-missing-link-indonesia%E2%80%99s-public-school-curriculum.html

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