Cultivating elementary school students’ characters through Neo-Humanistic Education

Abstract

Character education has become a primary concern in the national curriculum in Indonesia. Values should be cultivated through actions. However, most schools teach character education theoretically. Thus, this study describes the humanistic education that promotes character education through activities in one of the private elementary schools in Bali, Indonesia. Based on the objective of the study, this study can be classified into a case study. The researchers collected the data through observations and interviews. The collected data were then analyzed qualitatively using an interactive data analysis model. This study found that humanism education was conducted through seven programs that require the students to get involved physically and do actual actions. In other words, the school implemented humanistic education through the ‘learning by doing’ concept to cultivate students’ characters. To give a vivid picture of the implementation of humanistic education at that school, those seven programs are discussed in this article using current theories and empirical studies.