siliconindia | | October 20199Facilitating both character building exercises as well as following the strictures of curriculum is not only challenging but also a tight rope for schools to walk onthrough the various modes of critical, analytical, creative, visual and ab-stract thought process. "Intelligence plus character ­ that is the goal of true education. The complete edu-cation gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate," said Martin Luther King Jr., in his essay The purpose of education. In recent years, character building has been emphasized in education from primary school all the way up to further education and beyond. Pro-ducing students with good morals, soft skills and skills for life is signi-fied as an important aim of teaching. In practice, facilitating both character building exercises as well as follow-ing the strictures of curriculum is not only challenging but also a tight rope for schools to walk on. One element often falls by the wayside, and there is no clear way of countering the im-balance. Character building frameworks, like the `Six Pillars of Character' de-veloped by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, help to guide our understand-ing of where to begin when consid-ering character building in students. The Six Pillars are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, car-ing and citizenship, which cover some of the main character criteria which theoretically make students `well-rounded'. In the 20th century, two great theories have been put forward in an attempt to interpret human dif-ferences and to design educational models around them. Learning Style Theory has its roots in the psycho-analytical community and is the fruit of cognitive science that focusses not only on subject comprehension, but emphasises the development of the personality as well. Learning style theorists believe that learning is the result of a personal, individualised act of thought and feeling, wherein the learner looks for images implied in learning, uses feelings & emotions to construct new ideas, and judges the learning process according to its originality, aesthetics, capacity to surprise or delight, and the ability to deal with challenging tasks.Without good character instilled in a person, education becomes a bane, a tool for exploiting fellow human beings. The benefits of edu-cation, which is to liberate the hu-mans from their miseries, would be nullified, and in fact, the world may become a worse place. The current focus in our school system is a sin-gle-minded drive to improve educa-tional attainment. Yet, education is much more than a mechanistic pro-cess, which achieves its highest state with the maximisation of academic performance. Exam success is neces-sary, but not a sufficient condition for being an educated human being. As human beings, we are not machines, but flesh & blood, with capacious minds, with bodies, with emotions, and with a soul. To conclude, it would be true to say that learning and understanding concepts are more important than the rat race of getting marks. In fact, in the process of chasing good marks, we tend to forget emotional intelli-gence, social skills and other aspects of education. What we are aiming for is the Holistic Development of a stu-dent and not just making them able to acquire degrees. It is not enough for young people to emerge from school with a string of exam passes and for schools to pat themselves on the back, thinking that the box has been ticked and the `job done'. This is only a part of the whole education journey. Families have a key role in the development of the finished prod-uct. Academic attainment and exam success can never be more than part of the story of the profound moral responsibility of schools to children, parents, society and the nation. Jasmine Gandhi
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