Cambridge English 8
IELTS Writing Task 2 ielts360toefl@hotmail.com
Topic:
Some people think that parents should teach children how to be good members of society. Others, however, think that school is the best place to learn this.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
Essay:
Any attempts to teach children to be good members of society would do well to involve both parenting and schooling. What principles can parents and teachers bring to the moral education of very young children? To have good citizens, it is necessary for parents and teachers alike to join forces in instilling overlapping moral values to children at an early age.
On the one hand, teachers at schools have a vital role to play in nurturing moral virtues. Indeed, a major purpose of schooling is to help develop good citizenship. Among those socially recognized virtues are about being honest, being responsible, and being respectful of one another’s wellbeing. Obviously, if students are to be morally educated, they must have some understanding of moral frameworks of what they ought to do, and of what kind of a person they should be. In practice, moral education and academic education cannot be isolated in single courses but should be integrated into the curriculum as a whole. That is to say, the curriculum should include room for a moral capstone course that students might take, in which they learn about the most important moral values.
On the other hand, it goes without saying that moral education begins at home, but what are the deepest held moral values that parents should teach their children? In order for the children to act morally, they need to know the good, care about the good and practice doing the good; and, as expected, they become good members of society. Typically, on top of the chief moral virtues are honesty, kindness, generosity, fairness, and compassion. To be more specific, parents should see to it that their children should be truthful, considerate, charitable, just, and understanding the suffering of others. It is worth pointing out that moralities are embedded in family traditions, in conceptions of what it means to be a good member of the family as well as the society. These moral virtues will turn out to be helpful in preparing younger generations for modern life.
In conclusion, not only teachers but also parents should earnestly teach children how to be good members of society. Although moral education begins at an early age and it does not end at maturity. It should be taken for granted that both parents and teachers should get involved in children’s moral education.
Related topic:
The older generations tend to have very traditional ideas about how people should live, think and behave. However, some people believe that these ideas are not helpful in preparing younger generations for modern life. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this view?
