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Character Education in Oceania

In Oceania, character education enthusiasts are making a concerted effort through various projects to help develop character in individuals, couples and families.  As Heraclitus once commented that "Character is destiny" implying that the best investment one can make to ensure a peaceful world is to develop good character in individuals. Good leaders, good husbands and wives and good parents are good people. Goodness is a measure of one's level of character development which is rooted in one's capacity to love. This implies that loving unselfishly is the most noble pursuit of a human being.

The goal of character education is to realize the three great outcomes of education which are as follows:

1. Personal maturity

2. Developing good family and other human relationships

3. Developing one's abilities.

In short it means to live and love well.

Since the island nations of the Pacific are primarily Christian character education is often expressed in Christian terms.  Ironically, while it is not uncommon to find people who profess great faith, the same persons can be immature when it comes to emotional intelligence, that is, ineffective in being able to harmonise well with others. In character education in Christian terms, the focus becomes the manifestation of the "fruits of the Holy Spirit" i.e. respect, responsibility, patience, self discipline, forbearance, compassion etc. Incidentally, God is not interested in religious nuts but prefers the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Put in another way, character education is the application of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount called the "Beatitudes". Jesus is guiding us in terms of the attitudes or disposition that we ought to have in order to "be ye perfect" (Matthew 5:48) Character education can be seen then as a path of purification in order to mature in one's faith and personality.

There are three main dimensions to character education: classroom/seminar activity (theory) secondly, 'hands on' activity (practice) and thirdly self reflection. Without the latter, nice theory can be forgotten and practice can be remembered as simply an enjoyable experience that does little to impact a person's life. Through proper self reflection, valuable life lessons can be learnt and applied for years to come.

Much of this activity is being conducted by the International Interreligious Federation for World Peace and its affiliates. In terms of actual curricula being implemented, the International Educational Foundation, whose President is Dr. Joon Ho Seuk have developed a comprehensive character education curriculum titled "My Journey in Life". It was originally designed for Russian high school students and was a labour of love over more than ten years with numerous drafts.

In Oceania, many Ministries of Education are examining IEF materials and preparing to contextualize My Journey in Life for their nation. One and two day Introductory character education seminars have been held in Australia, Palau, New Zealand and Nauru. The goal is the implementation of curricula like MJL into the existing curriculum framework so that students study character education as frequently as they would say mathematics or science.