Let’s use morals to fight corruption

One of the measures that President Uhuru Kenyatta has adopted to fight corruption is the re-introduction of Ethics education in Kenyan schools. This is a long-term solution to the corruption problem

By common standards, Japan is amongst countries with most honest, well-behaved and corruption-free citizenry. Yet revealingly, official moral education is the tool that revolving Japan governments have used for hundreds of years to ensure self-discipline. Kenya is finalizing revision of education system and is set to adopt a new model

The first major lesson from Japan is the importance of a self-defined national moral culture that is agreed to be what defines a Japanese citizen. This borrows from teachings of a Chinese sage known as Confucian, combined with elements of Buddhism that came to Japan by 4th Century.

Confucian teachings laid a set of moral cords that emphasized orderliness through respect and obedience, love of human kind, social duties and patriotism. At first, these Confucian teachings were meant for the elites who served the rulers, monks and others with official status.

However, as a response to various socio-economic challenges like shortage of land, lack of food due to low agricultural productivity, growing individualism and widening social gaps, the Japanese realized that the Confucianism ideals, if adopted as national culture, would progressively cure their socio-economic ills.

To borrow from Japan, Kenya needs to consider developing its own set of national values. Like constitutional making, this should be a special moment when all stakeholders, tribes and religions in Kenya reflect on national challenges and agree what should morally bind and keep Kenya as unique upright society. Considering the recurrent socio-economic challenges that Kenya has been facing, the specific national morals could revolve around taming greed, valuing honesty and hard work, shunning tribalism, respect for all, and patriotism.

Since 1886 the Ministry of Education in Japan has always maintained a teaching syllabus with elaborate moral education components. The turning point was actually the year 1890 when the then Japanese Emperor Meiji, ordered the Ministry of Education to introduce moral education (shushin), which largely emphasized education based on Confucianism moral teachings.

To achieve Japanese standards, Kenya must ensure lessons start at an early age all the way to Junior secondary. As for practical moral teachings, there should be no fear of the unknowns. Moreover, there are no special trained teachers; instead every teacher in Japan is expected to handle moral education.

The main reason for lack of specialized teachers for moral education is that moral issues are regarded as daily life experiences and culturally, all Japanese adults are expected to guide younger persons. These aspects or moral education make it the easiest subject to be adopted without much testing, piloting and trails.

Kenya has learnt that taking law-breakers to court is not only a tedious, wasteful expedition, but also one that hardly results in personal correction. Further, it is a near futile activity to keep training thousands of policemen to watch every corner of peoples’ life or employing watchmen to take care of mundane acts such as stalking shoppers in every supermarket.

To ensure that moral education is elevated to cause rogue citizens to feel ashamed of their own evils, borrowing from Japan, Kenyan moral education should focus on three major areas: self-awareness, relations with other people, relations with groups and hierarchy respect. Under “Self-awareness”, Japanese teach their people aspects of moderation, diligence, sincerity, love and truth.

On “Relation to Others” the Japanese are taught courtesy, friendship to all humankind, giving thanks, and modesty in behavior.

As for “Relation to Group and Respect Hierarchy” the people are taught to value public duty, contribution to society through meaningful work and personal sacrifice, respect for national traditions and values, love of the country; justice and fairness to all, group participation and loyalty to team responsibility, observing obedience in hierarchical order: people respecting the presidency, children respecting parents, students respecting teachers, young persons respecting older persons, and so on.

Overall, Japanese moral education has succeeded because at schooling level, it involves students in practical activities which lead them to internalize moral responsibility and test their real-life application of moral and ethical issues.

Thus apart from 45 minutes a week classroom lessons on moral and ethics (which has plenty of stories and role plays), Japanese children are expected to play active roles in various special activities that occur throughout the school year.

These include sports festivals, school opening and graduation ceremonies, school open days, field trips and activities in the local community. All of these special occasions involve weeks or even months of intense preparations with students becoming actively involved in the planning, organization and implementation of activities. There is strong emphasis on teamwork, communication, maintenance of traditions and the handing-on of experience from older to younger students.