The Importance of Student Characters in the Digital Era
The development of technology can affect in various aspects. From social, politics, education to culture and it also gives effect to the attitude that leads to a person's character. Good attitudes that have been taught by the family environment may be decreased by an bad environment both virtual and reality, however there are two possibilities of character’s changes those are, good and bad. The industrial revolution 4.0 can be a tool in achieving the goals or vice versa as the weapon to break it. As part of the growth of a child physically or psychologically, the teacher has an important role to participate in monitoring and mentoring students, because it is becoming the general fact that most of the student's time is spent at school. The Indonesian government in education field has also launched a program or movement to shape the character of students in the 21st century. Through the process of feeling, heart, thought and sports, it is expected that students can have good character so they can adjust to being a good person in social life. This is good for developing a country and a nation with a positive mentality. As mentioned above, teachers must help shape the character of students. There are two things teachers can do in shaping student character through monitoring and becoming a mentor. The following two things will be explained below.
First, the teacher must monitor students during in the school and it would be even better if done not only in the classroom but also outside the classroom. As recommended by the Indonesian government, teachers can take part in monitoring students in the learning process that trains them to cultivate their feelings, hearts, minds and bodies. Managing feelings can be done during learning activities, students are emphasized to always be tolerant of others, eliminate hatred and explain that hatred will only bring negative things. In this digital era students can be easily influenced and provoked by hoax news that makes them into intolerance. For example hating a group because of differences in understanding things or believing religion. It can be started by updating the status or giving hate comments on some social media. This makes the other party uncomfortable that it often leads to mutual hatred and causes a dispute. Worse yet, it could bring one of the parties or both victims into bullying.
Therefore, as an important part of student life, the teacher must carry out the second stage of monitoring the student that is in managing their heart. After a variety of feelings can be treated so well that there is no sense of hate, resentment, pride and arrogance. Students must be able to cultivate their hearts to continue to apply kindness and eliminate hatred. Their hearts must always be clean. As a teacher, can be done by inserting or linking subject matter with character formation. Like discipline, honesty and responsibility. Furthermore, in the case of managing their thought, the teacher must be able to make students think forward but still consider their hearts and feelings. Strengthening character through thought actually has been applied by teachers in learning activities. What the teacher must do is prepare and execute the best possible learning so that the students can think and the material can be well received, it would be better if the teacher could bring up high order thinking skills from a student.
The last thing the teacher must do in strengthening the character of students is to participate in managing students’ vitality of their body. Activities that were previously carried out physically, now begun to be replaced as technology involve in students life. Again, digitization makes students prefer to interact in the network. The students prefer social media for interacting. Even though it is indeed easier and more practical, digitalization is also influential in learning activities. At present students sit more and more attention to the teacher's explanation, their physical activities are only carried out during physical class. Not only that, when they returned home many of them chose to play for hours with their devices or gadgets. Of course this triggers various diseases due to lack of movement activity. For this reason the teacher can occasionally carry out teaching and learning activities outside the classroom or every few hours the teachers asks the student to do stretches so that students can process their bodies and it makes them active and healthy.
The second step after monitoring students is mentoring. The teacher as the second student's parent has the right to be a mentor in the process of forming students' characters. But what must be considered is that as a teacher, the teacher must be an example in applying character formation. It can be started with small things and simple things, such as instilling discipline character, the teacher can start from coming on time to class so students will follow. In this case if the teacher wants to succeed in implementing good character for students we must also believing in ourselves that we are mentors who can be the role model for the students.
All in all character education requires collaboration from all parties, starting from the students themselves and fully accompanied by various parties such as families, communities, schools and of course the teacher who has the task to always monitor and mentor students in strengthening the character in order to become a person of good character. Furthermore even though digitalization is inevitable, as a modern teacher we must be able to make our students modern but still have good character.