The honorable Miss Desi Gumirna

And all my beloved classmates

I am going to start my speech with a question. Which one is better, doing the right thing or doing the
good thing? I give you 20 seconds to decide your choice. Now what is your answer? I believe most of you
still can’t decide. Don’t worry about it, I still couldn’t decide it myself.

Do you know why it is difficult for us to choose between the two options that I just mentioned to you
just now? Because the question is not really about what we decide to choose, but it is about whether or
not we have strong morality inside us.

My name is Cokrodinoto Surya Aditama and today I would like to deliver my speech about “Moral
Education” specifically about “several ideas that we can use to implement Moral Education at school”.

Ladies and Gentleman,

Before I talk about my ideas on how we can possibly implement Moral Education in our school, I would
like to tell you what I have in my mind about Moral and Moral Education. When we talk about Morality, I
don’t think there is a fixed definition about it. Morality for me is not only about right or wrong, but it is
also about whether or not something that we do is kind or good. If we rely on this definition, there will
be a question in our mind. The question is what is good and what is not? What is the basis for us to tell
whether an action is kind or not?

Well, that is just how difficult it is for us to define Morality. For me, Morality is not about a definition
from dictionary, because the only thing that can help us to tell whether something is good or not is
heart, and as much as we want to believe that the heart is a pure thing, we have to admit that it is also
influenced by various external concepts that is exposed to us over and over again. What does it mean
Ladies and Gentleman? It means that the heart can be corrupted if it is exposed to negative concepts
repeatedly.
Looking at this condition, as the place where children spend most of their time, the school surely holds
responsibility to take part in their character building, and in this case, it is through moral education. I
have several ideas on how we may be able implement moral education at our school easily.

The first one is to start the day by praying or doing something to remember the God. I believe that our
parents have introduced us to the concept of God since we were kids. That’s why I also believe that we
know that we are actually accountable for everything that we do in our life. This may sounds like a
simple concept for us, but the fact is that, if we don’t try to keep remembering it, sometimes we can just
forget that we are accountable for our actions and do anything that we like carelessly. If we start our
day at school by praying, we will remember that the God is watching our acts so that we will try to do
our best and behave ourselves towards each other.

A leading trainer and also a writer of many books related to character building Ippho Santosa has proven
this to be true. Around five years ago, he started a kindergarten. Since the day one of the opening, as
the owner of the kindergarten, he asked all people in the school to pray Duha. It turned out that the
students, the staff and also the teacher became calmer and ease in doing their activity at the school. As
the result, in less than five months, he managed to open five branch of kindergarten with the same
concept.

This act cost us nothing to implement in our school, it means that we have nothing to lose if we want to
give it a shoot. We just have to be willing to do it together.

The second one is to make the first hour of the school to be the time for all students to work together
and clean the classroom and its environment. The cleaning process is not merely taking out the garbage,
but also sweeping and mopping the floor, cleaning the window and put everything in the classroom in
order and make it look tidy.

This activity will make the student to be discipline especially in keeping their environment clean. They
will also learn how important cooperation is. Hopefully through this activity, the student will appreciate
their environment and other people more.

This kind of activity has been implemented in Japan. The result shows that their students become more
appreciative toward others and also their environment. It is because they finally learn from their own
experience that keeping an area clean is not as easy as it may look. It took effort and cooperation to do
so, and since they are doing this activity every day, it becomes a part of them.

The third one is to say greeting to all teachers when they first arrive at school and also when they want
to go home in the afternoon. This activity will grow a deeper connection between teachers and
students, because just like the wise word says, to get closer to someone, you need conversations, and
the shortest conversation is greeting. I believe this is so true, because if we really want to think about it,
how can we really get closer to our teacher if we never even talk to them or greet them.

I think that’s all from me. I hope you find something useful from my speech. Thank you very much for
your attention and see you again.

Wassalamu’alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh.