IN June 2020, I became hopeful when a law was passed that makes it mandatory for Good Manners and Right Conduct and Values Education to be taught as core subjects from kindergarten to senior high school in both public and private schools.
The said law focuses on character development and values formation. More specifically, to inculcate the basic tenets of good manners and right conduct such as caring for oneself, giving concern for others, according proper respect to people, upholding discipline and order, and cultivating sincerity, honesty, obedience, and above all, love for country.
But then, on second thought, I asked myself: Why has it become necessary to legislate the teaching of good manners and right conduct?
Is it because we’ve reached a point that should alarm us?
Consider where today’s youth are now residing—on social media. This is where they are learning and picking up information, including new words and new ways of behaving. How to be vicious, how to act in ways that will get you more likes. The weirder, the more clicks; the more lascivious, the more clicks. Four-letter words have lost their ability to shock. Lying, deceiving, misinforming, bad manners and offensive behavior are becoming the new normal.
I was silently chuckling at the irony that the said law was signed by a president who has normalized cussing in public.
Video sharing platforms helped create this polluted environment, and it looks like parents and educators are helpless. Our young have not only waded into the cesspool but are deep into it. Indeed, the times are a changing…for the worse.
But let’s rally around the new law and push back against the tide. Let’s talk about the ways to do it because very often, even the noblest intentions can go awry in the execution.
My idea is the pushback must start in school. And the arts are the central and fundamental means to do it.
Let’s harness the power of the arts and humanities to instill good values and attitudes in school. Making them part of learning must be a major, sustained effort from kinder to grade 12. It will be like injecting a vaccine to build immunity that will steel our young against corrosive and toxic influences of social media.
This means that we may have to re-envision our education and recalibrate our school curricula that will bring the arts and humanities into the classroom.
I don’t advocate a complete retreat from social media, largely because that is impossible.
First of all, match their addictive quality by being innovative and creative in employing media arts in teaching subjects such as history, literature, sciences, and even mathematics. Let’s create new educational apps for school children. Let’s bring video games into the classroom. Why not create wordle app version to teach reading and language? While we’re at it, let’s bring the movies into the classroom and make the students talk about it. Documentaries, dramatic excerpts, animation—these are good triggers to spark learning.
If social media platforms are the way of conveying and consuming information, then let’s give our children content other than what they see on TikTok and other platforms. Let’s offer them great literary, musical, visual works in appealing ways.
Good content that the arts can provide—that’s how we can empower our school children to be more discerning and discriminating while at school. Let the teaching of the arts and humanities inspire them, make them think, induce self-discipline, and help them discover the joys of learning, the uniqueness of their being, the wonders and possibilities of life and the revelations that cultural literacy provides.
So many studies have proven that when it comes to young minds, art enriches them, expands them, and prepares them for life in useful and unexpected ways. Children who participate in music and arts programs often do better in other subjects than children who do not, and troubled students engaged in arts and music programs have better attendance and increased cooperation with teachers and other students.
Schools need to provide the fuel that will ignite young minds, spark their aspirations, and illuminate their total being. The arts can often serve as that fuel.
More importantly, let’s cultivate our students’ “inner eyes” to enable them to think and express themselves by being immersed in the performing arts.
The Chinese proverb “I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand,” supports the countless opportunities that the arts provide our students and our communities through the process of experience in our mind, body, hands, and soul.
When young people put on a play or a dance piece together they learn to cooperate—and they find terms that go beyond tradition and authority if they are going to express themselves well. Participating in plays, songs, and dances fills children with happiness that can carry over into the rest of their education.
The creating, performing, and responding learning opportunities, which we provide, offer transform life experiences for our young people.
Let the classroom be an incubator of antigens that will strengthen the character of our young people so they can withstand the onslaught of misinformation and forms of bad behavior.
As a start, let’s make lying and cussing wrong again.
We used to say “art for art’s sake.” Now, it is “arts for our children’s sake.”