Youth / OPINION : Morals, Values and Ethics: What Is the Role of Our Schools?

ALBERT SU

Senior, 17, Woodbridge High School, Irvine

The moral reasoning which guides one’s actions and behavior comes as a result of family education and outside influence, one of which is ultimately school. At school, children spend countless hours each week with their teachers--phenomenal to the number of hours parents usually spend with their own children. The conventions of teaching allow students to constantly be in an attentive, receptive, listening mode--prime conditions to foster moral standards.

While parental guidance is highly stressed, the subject of ethics should be taught principally at the elementary level. It is during these early years that children are more receptive to learning and, in turn, learn and develop their lifelong code of ethics. Once in high school, it becomes difficult to teach this subject because of already developed notions and natural rebellion. Thus, inculcating an ethical way of life, children can develop early that innate feeling of right and wrong.

If the schools do not teach ethics and parents fail at their teaching, who is to properly educate the children? Society? With today’s moral standards, society is out of the question.