Immigrating to the UK insights on UK immigration education: Regarding integrity, everyone believes it should start from childhood. But how? Some basic concepts in the UK seem quite different, and perhaps they offer some valuable insights.
I. Children are not blank slates
A British friend once said that the West also used to hold the "blank slate" theory, believing that children are tabula rasa (Latin for a blank state). However, scientific research has now proven that children come into this world having already partially inherited their parents' temperaments, personalities, and other psychological genes. The "blank slate" theory is an oversimplification and is considered outdated in the West. In Western society, it is generally believed that a child's character is primarily influenced by their parents, elders, teachers, celebrity idols (social role models), and the overall social atmosphere.
II. Morality is not taught
In British primary and secondary schools, moral education is not called moral education, but is usually referred to as "Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education" or the socialization process. The goal is not to have children set lofty ideals or strive to be self-sacrificing heroes, but to help them understand the basic principles of being a person, how to handle relationships between people and between people and their environment, and how to exercise self-discipline to integrate into society and become a member of it. Its core moral values are fourfold: respect for life, fairness, honesty, and trustworthiness.
The British also hold the view that "morality is caught, not taught." This "caught" is the same verb (catch) used in "catching a cold." In the context of moral education in British schools, this means children are not required to memorize moral codes by rote, but are encouraged to understand and grasp them from the depths of their hearts and through daily life.
III. Honesty is not an isolated virtue
British schools generally do not have dedicated moral education classes, but they do offer elective courses on various major world religions, including Buddhism and Taoism. This course is considered very important for the cultivation of a child's character/conscience.
Furthermore, most British schools organize weekly class discussions, selecting events that have occurred in the school or society, allowing children to express their views, discuss together, and learn to discern right from wrong for themselves. Collective games are also an important way to help children learn to consider and empathize with others, and to understand how to cooperate with peers.
British schools also generally encourage children to keep small pets, organize students to visit nursing homes to chat with the elderly, raise funds for charities, and participate in other public welfare or environmental protection activities to cultivate children's love and social skills. Honesty is not an isolated virtue; it is closely linked to self-respect, respect for others, and love for life and nature.
IV. Do not be indifferent to winning or losing, but enjoy the process
So, how do you prevent students from cheating? The answer is simple: teachers have a responsibility to ensure that every student understands this basic concept: if you win by cheating, you have actually already lost.
However, British teachers do not teach students to be detached like Laozi or Zhuangzi, indifferent to the results of winning or losing; on the contrary, in British schools, the words "winning" and "losing" are always on people's lips, because there are many types of competitions that fill the school life of students. But precisely because there are so many competitions, every student has the opportunity to appreciate the message the teacher wants to convey: you will win, but you won't win every time. Everyone has times when they win and times when they lose; what matters is enjoying the process of participation, and what matters is doing what you want to do.
V. Do not hinder others
There is another point in British social moral education that left a deep impression on the reporter: children are taught from a young age to learn to take care of themselves while being careful not to hinder others. This is actually the distinction between public and private morality, also known by some as "moral requirements for strangers."
British primary schools attach great importance to cultivating children's independence; personal hygiene, keeping study tools tidy, etc., are all within the scope of moral education. Confucius said, "Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself." Western philosophers actually have a very similar but perhaps more positive saying: treat others the way you want to be treated.
Every aspect of British society is permeated with this way of thinking. Take traffic rules, for example: why can't you turn on rear fog lights when visibility is good? Why should you switch from high beams to low beams when someone is overtaking? If you consider the situation of others while driving and consider the danger you might pose to other road users, it also means considering the safety of your own driving. The British Highway Code embodies this unspoken principle everywhere.
VI. Ideals do not have to be lofty
The first time I met a British person was many years ago, a teacher named Robert Lee from an advanced English news writing course at the Thomson Foundation. He said that his childhood dream was to be a truck driver. So, as soon as he graduated from high school, he went to a transport company and achieved his dream at the age of 17! He drove a truck all over Europe, came back, changed jobs, found a newspaper, started from the bottom, attended night school to study journalism, and he achieved many more of his life's ideals.
I was stunned, ashamed that it was only then that I first realized that ideals don't have to be permanent, there can be more than one, and they don't have to be the ultimate goal of life or humanity. Ideals were actually so easy to achieve.
When I met Robert, he was almost at the age of knowing his destiny. He never felt that the ideal of being a truck driver was small; on the contrary, having achieved his ideal at 17, he had a sense of accomplishment and looked intoxicated when recalling it.
In contrast, I felt that the ideals I was taught I should have as a child, such as being a scientist, were so out of sync with my own intellectual structure that I lost the motivation to strive for them from a young age, and instead simply thought that ideals were just those ideas that had little to do with real life. Even now, when talking about ideals, my first reaction is still to refer to those far-fetched ideas.