The centrality of character and integrity education in Kenya's Institutions of Higher Learning

Abstract

Education remains an important enterprise and asset by which any society models and determines its existence. It consists in a process of propagating desirable survival skills to succeeding generations. Through education, society sets and defines its basic survival needs. Thus, besides other components such as cognitive, creative and dialogical, the overriding significance of education can be summed up in its normative definitions. This is due to the fact that its impact is to be identified in the extent to w hich it affects and modifies one’s behavior in society. Based on this understanding, this paper focuses on the place of character and integrity education in institutions of learning. Its aim is to define, justify and affirm the importance of character as an irreplaceable component in holistic development of learners. Being a library-based study, its data is mainly obtained from internet sources and from discussions with educationists. A purely qualitative method was adopted so as to gain deeper understanding of the pertinent issues involved in character and integrity education. Thus, the principle methods used included critical analysis, speculative and dialectic methods of investigation. On the overall, the normative essence of education is critically discussed. Similarly, an exploration of various trends in character and integrity education has been made. Finally, the role of the teacher in character education of the learner is examined. The study concludes by making practical recommendations on possible ways and avenues through which character and integrity education can be enhanced in learning institutions.