Teachers instilling good morals in pupils

Somchit Soaseechan

It's often said so many of our young people are growing up lacking in moral behaviour. It's a problem countries around the world are facing - among them Malaysia and Thailand - as they try to tackle the challenge.

Two examples: a Malaysian teacher at a secondary school promoted her ideas in the hope of reducing poor student discipline and reviving change for the good in her students.

While in Thailand, a primary school teacher has been developing morality in her pupils for years, using garbage as the main tool.

Jamaliyah bt Shaik Abdullah, who taught at Convent Butterworth Secondary School (CBSS) in Malaysia, launched her "Be Good, Look Good" programme to change undesirable behaviour among students there in 2007.

"Convent culture", a record of the code of conduct at the school, found that more and more students seemed not to care for school regulations and no longer appreciated convent culture because regulations were not implemented with firmness, according to Jamaliyah's research.

The research paper said an initial survey indicated the school faced problems with latecomers, students playing truant from class, untidy student appearance, and weak leadership from prefects and class monitors.

She said banners and flyers were put up all over CBSS to attract the school's attention to the programme, discussions on exemplary student behaviour in line with the convent culture were organised and recorded, and a video about the his¬tory of CBSS played back to the students. Jamaliyah also used candid videos comparing what the students did and what she wanted them to change.

"Sharing understanding with students is better and more effective than punishing them," she said, more effective than shouting at them or knocking their heads.

Using this ideal as a basis, monitoring and making frequent patrols around the school helped led to successful changes.

They included organised and quiet assemblies, smooth stairway movement from classrooms to special rooms, hair tidiness, a decrease in latecomers and a significant decrease in the number of students loitering outside classrooms.

Her research showed that the number of students late for school fell to 120 cases in February from 333 cases in January, and to only 88 cases in March. Besides, the num¬bers of students loitering along corridors in several areas were similarly down — reduced from more than 20 students in January to less than 10 in May, on average.

Jamaliyah moved to Dato' Onn Secondary School in 2008 and is now doing similar work to reduce misconduct among students at her new school.

Meanwhile, Somchit Soaseechan, a Thai teacher at Anubaan Chiang Mai School has run the "Kha ya boon" campaign for seven years. Pupils at all levels have been encouraged to take part in garbage collecting activities.

She's taught them how to separate garbage before selling it. So far,up to Bt50,000 earned from garbage selling has been spent on students' making merit activities at temples, as well as donated to help construct school buildings and to fund students and 35 monks who were former trainee teachers there.

"Over the past seven years, around 1,500 students participated in this campaign. I'm really happy to see 90 per cent of students decided not to litter around the school as they did before the project started."

"I found there have been sidebenefits as well. Collecting garbage together made students at different levels harmonious and more familiar with each other. Some of their parents were surprised when their children asked permission from them to collect saleable garbage found as they walked home. Some parents told me they were happy their children no longer dropped garbage," said Somchit.

Both teachers presented their projects at the 2nd Thailand - Malaysia Joint Educational Research Conference 2009 held between November 15 and 18 at the Pullman Bangkok King Power.