Morality and ethics in international laws

Morality and ethics in international laws Introduction All of international laws put great emphasis on morality and use of ethics. Morality is one of main criterions in foreign affairs. Many schools at international level provide an account of international relations, which focus on the interplay between power and morality. International level morality captures a holistic framework to analyze the main question to normative theories, namely some of moral values that are attributed to particular political activities against humanity as a whole, or may be the claims of any individual human being. This important question is at the heart of international level morality relations being one of most challenging moral questions. Recently, the international community comes up with great strides. It widely accepted the moral responsibility to protect in most of the situations where the state could not fulfill its obligations of protecting its own people. Morality and ethics are increasingly becoming fashionable and discussed on different levels of international education as well. Morality issues run throughout the lives of people, without making any division between their personal and professional identities. The foremost goal of national education policies is the character building and encouraging students to learn moral values of honesty, respectfulness, tolerance, sympathy, and truthfulness. The content of textbooks should mainly focus on these moral values. If the content is effective and delivered in an effective and efficient way to students, only then they are capable of increasing the internalization of moral knowledge. In order to minimize the gap between student’s moral information and practice, it is necessary to develop such a policy that involve moral content to significant extent in the textbooks of middle and secondary classes. National education policies aim to include moral reasoning and moral information as an essential curricular component of the school experience. Moral education is the main part of an educational backdrop throughout the history of any country. The 21st century is not able to afford any exception. Education policies at national level must embed the curriculum of primary and secondary schools into the moral content areas like Social Studies and Islamic Studies. With the subjects such as English, Urdu, Islamic Studies, Social Studies, Science, and other elective and compulsory subjects, schools can easily facilitate moral reasoning without any need to create an additional course depicting moral content. Introducing a moral reasoning and moral information curriculum through content-integrated curriculum facilitates the moral development of the students. Traditionally, people take moral education through different perspectives. Interpretation of student’s moral knowledge should be developed by taking into account the cultural influences. However, not all the cultures depict same moral values. Therefore, it is necessary to make culture-free the future direction in moral reasoning. Embedding moral content in the content of school textbooks encourages many students to develop their moral character. The moral standard of new curriculum in primary and secondary schools intends to lay such a foundation for students that gives them moral knowledge, develops moral character, responsibility, truthfulness, honesty, and high standards of personality and behavior. Moral values implied in the moral content of textbooks can be divided into several other categories of respectfulness, tolerance, kindness, awareness of rights, and sense of responsibility. Size of Moral Content The school textbooks provide comprehensive knowledge about morality. It covers a wide range of moral content including culture, social life, geography, politics, and environment. Through the moral content, students are able to make their own decisions and moral judgments. They are capable of understanding the importance of moral values that are taught in their primary and secondary curriculum. Moreover, moral education is not only possible through instructing the student on how to behave in the moral domain. The process should also cover the development of moral reasoning of individuals as well as dealing with different moral issues. The primary goal of the schools is not only promoting the academic achievements. However, the schools are in real need to promote moral character and moral development of students as well. Therefore, major part of the content in school textbooks is the moral content that focused on different moral values. With the help of such moral content, students learn many skills on resolving conflicts peacefully. They practice pro-social behaviors and engage themselves in services that result in less incidence of violence. The students master the basic moral knowledge and develop self-innovation skills and their own learning. The purpose of moral education is to develop moral virtues and personal character development of students. It helps in improving learning environment, promoting student achievements, building student character, and reducing disciplinary problems. Studying the moral content in school textbooks turns the students into good and responsible citizen, who are capable of cultivating their moral values efficiently. By studying the different facts of their own lives, they correct their moral orientation and achieve correct moral values. It taught the students ideological, civil, traditional, and moral education. Incorporating a wide range of moral content in the content of textbooks is important for all schools. Teaching moral education to students of primary and secondary schools is all about giving them enough skills to fight with several moral dilemmas that they may face in their daily lives. Moral education is no longer the teachings of religious morality rather it is about the basic character education. Students are able to resolve moral dilemmas peacefully without creating any violence. An effective moral education may revolve around specific strategies that help students in dealing with disillusionment and focusing on creation of a culture that would support the emotional and moral growth of the teachers. It is imperative to include large portion of moral content in education for the moral development of the students throughout their lives. Moral education in schools is effective for building character, sense of responsibilities, and moral values in students. The primary and secondary curriculum over time included it along with mathematics, reading, and writing. In some schools, moral education is a new concept and in many others, it is just a constant thread that has been seen throughout the history and facilitating the growth through levels of moral development. Developing moral reasoning The content of school textbooks on moral reasoning covers much of the social studies and arts curriculum. The content provided developing moral reasoning successfully implements it in daily lives of students. The incorporation of content about moral reasoning in curriculum is sufficient to move the students through stages of moral reasoning in efficient manner. Shared leadership and discussion are necessary curricular components of all schools. Schools teach morality inherently by conveying to students what one expects of them regarding what is right and wrong. Teachers help them to reflect on moral reasoning efficiently. Moral reasoning comprises of abstract concepts that students can examine and evaluate through dilemma-based discussions in their schools. It lets the students to present and discuss open-based scenarios. The content about moral reasoning makes the students to think contextually and analytically, who are then able to make informed decisions based on social and historical context. Therefore, it is best to embed moral reasoning in content areas of language arts and social studies specifically for dilemma-based discussions. Embedding the moral reasoning content into the core content parts of school textbooks allows both the teachers and their students to participate in integrated discussions throughout the school year and at different times rather in isolation. The pressure on students to share their decision-making roles provides such situations where moral reasoning can be applied. It is important to apply it in conjunction with dilemma-based discussions. Moral reasoning allows the students to practice it through their abstract thoughts and discussions. Moral reasoning helps the students to cover quickly the stages of moral development. It allows the schools to reach their mission of an educated citizenry through content-integrated and dilemma-based discussions. Allowing for student ownership in the school is an important aspect of moral education approach. Schools must implement this approach programmatically to achieve goal of an educated citizenry. The school administration needs to model it in order for students, who can internalize it. This approach depends on principles of fairness and justice in society. The contents about moral reasoning in school textbooks depend largely on the moral concepts that include student’s intention and understanding in relation to their actions. Using this approach, teachers are responsible for engaging students emotionally and intellectually through several discussions and solving moral dilemmas and issues. It helps the students to reach at high stage of moral thinking. Since moral thoughts goes through sequence of development stages, teachers must assist students throughout this process. Teachers play a vital role by closely listening to students in order to have better understanding of their reasoning and helping them in moving to next level of reasoning. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development as a theoretical framework facilitate the development of moral reasoning. During the stage of universal principles, the moral reasoning of individuals is beyond the strict rules of the society. Despite, it is beyond the social norms founded on abstract principles. Kohlberg believed that very few people achieve this stage where moral reasoning is guided by those internal universal standards, which supersede laws. The content provided developing moral reasoning exhibits its varying degrees from explicit religiosity to the secular overtones throughout students’ life. Content about moral information A large proportion of the contents of school textbooks explore the moral information and examine whether these contents properly address the content about moral information and knowledge of the students. Moral information is an important curriculum in education that targets in guiding students to live comfortable life and to become responsible citizen. Morality causes them to integrate into their community and learn how to solve problems of their lives. The most important responsibility and purpose of the content about moral information is to make students of primary and secondary classes to learn to live a healthy and civilized life. The moral content guides them in developing high standards of moral values. It encourages them to develop and explore the innovative spirit of science and civic virtues as well. Moreover, moral information leads to a good moral character and behavior habits of the students that enable them to live happy lives. Through moral knowledge and information, they learn about the development of their own in an effective way. Students of early grades are capable of learning skills more than the students in higher grades of education learn. Moral content of the school textbooks provides them such learning skills to face the challenges of life with confidence and solve daily life problems peacefully. They learn to develop their own life skills and avoid disasters and risks in their lives. Moral education guides them about the correct moral orientation and facts regarding their own lives. They analyze and adopt the moral values that play important role in the moral development of their own caring character. Such moral content successfully addresses the principles regarding psychology and physical development of the students. The content of school textbooks about moral information comprises of different categories. These revolve around making the students to love their motherland and their hometown. It guides them kindness to others, sense of participation in society, sense of responsibility, awareness of rights, traditional virtues, national unity, trustworthiness, respect for teachers, and love for younger individuals. It helps in developing mental health of students, their occupational satisfaction, consciousness of peace, and global consciousness. Moral information in curriculum aims to make students productive and contributing social members of the community. It provides them with basic knowledge about cultural literacy and introduces them to the cultural traditions while shaping their moral identity. Living in a liberal environment, the main objective of moral education is to provide intellectual skills to students that help them in making responsible and informed decisions about the problems considered being of moral importance. It intends to promote deep sense of concern in students for the well-being and betterment of the nation. Educating students provided the moral content and information in school textbooks is a challenge largely due to the reason that it does not provide a guarantee that the students would become just persons morally through the principles of common good. One of the major challenges that come up with moral education is that what schools teach children may differ a great deal, to what parents prefer their children to learn. Provided different understanding of morality and moral information, the subject offered different forms depending upon the country where it is taught. Human rights education, character education, personal education, social, and civic education are some of the forms of moral education. Content addressing each moral value different at different level of learning Some of the problems remain there in the moral content of school textbooks. The moral content provides a comprehensive knowledge. However, each moral value addressed is different at different level of learning. For example, the moral content on respectfulness of teachers, parents, and elders vary in large proportion to the moral content on sense of democracy, responsibility, and equality in society. Analysis of school textbooks shows addressing each moral value in different way at different level of understanding. Each moral value of truthfulness, honesty, sympathy, and tolerance presents ratios of different values. Furthermore, the school textbooks content is closer to the experiences of students in cities and lacks the content related to the experiences of rural students. No doubt, a great deal of historical and geographical knowledge is available as compared to the moral knowledge. The content of these textbooks need to include good proportion of each moral value as the moral and character building is important aim of education. Different conceptions of moral education exist to answer various questions regarding the extent to which moral education should comprise of. Some focus on the learning and teaching of moral virtues while others promote the moral practice. Some still consider development of moral reasoning and education as an emotional upbringing. Whichever these of conceptions about moral education in textbooks is right, it is not wrong saying that all conceptions strive towards the same objective. Despite addressing moral education different at different level of learning, its only objective is the education of mature individuals who have the abilities of independent action moral reasoning. Estimation of content addressing moral virtues among students School textbooks content address moral virtues among students to great extent. Some of the exercises and practical activities given in the textbooks encourage students to participate in moral development of their character. The main objective of these activities is to offer moral education for students and develop clear understanding of different aspects of real world. However, the internal moral education of students is considered to be abstract. Teaching learning methods for carrying out the activities and resolving problems provided in textbooks develop creative capabilities in students and help them in understanding and experiencing the problems in real life. The key problem of whether a student changes attitudes, and fills the gap between moral knowledge and moral practice along with forming good habits is not much paid attention or examined in detail. Improving the moral content of curriculum is necessary in some schools. Each student must set clear objectives based on cognitive and physical development in every grade. Teachers are responsible for knowing what the students require to achieve in each of their grades in school. They should force students to participate excessively in such activities that plays important role in the moral development. The responsibility for moral education sometimes lies with parents and followed by other social organizations and institutions, among which primary and secondary schools lead the way certainly. Although moral education is not considered as a subject course, it is clear that it is central part of any educational process. Conclusion/Recommendations The moral content should be capable of penetrating the past and connecting with the future. Therefore, the students can develop clear understanding of each moral virtue and its practice. The teaching staff should be trained about the content of morality. Understanding of the morality standards is essential for teachers for improving the multi-disciplinary knowledge and moral information. Policy makers are in need of empowering moral education teachers through organizing various workshops that stress on relevant approaches. The recommendation that teachers Moral education and development stimulates the students to high level of moral understanding. Embedding large ratio of moral content in the school textbooks content is considered much relevant and important because of the decline in social capital. Another reason is the lack of interest in some national issues, weak community bonds, loosening of family, and decline in sense of trust among most of people. One form of moral education is based on liberal thinking that targets to educate both heart and mind. Students can learn and internalize logical moral thinking for analyzing moral issues in logical and consistent ways.