The recent discovery that you have a 90 percent chance of getting your lost wallet back in Japan, compared to a 25 percent chance in the UK, was quite shocking. Although this knowledge came about through a British documentary show about children from 2019, recorded for a wide television audience, behind it are two researchers, doctors Chris and Sand Van Tulleken, so we assume that everything said in it has some scientific weight. How the above-mentioned percentages were reached in this show is not said, but it still remains surprising for the viewer that the difference in ethics, let's put it that way, between these two developed societies is so great. What is it actually about?
It is about the fact that in the case of Japanese children, ethics and morality are already included as a kind of compulsory subject from kindergarten, that is, from an early age. Who is behind everything, especially who puts this subject into practice, we don't find out much in this show. But that's why some other research points to what makes the Japanese educational model so highly ethical. First of all, this social model is based on a very strong relationship of trust between mother and child from the earliest stage. This trust is later transferred to the relationship between the child and society. As a value of the Japanese educational model, the application of dialogue as a very important educational method stands out.
Through a kind of hermeneutics, the child is brought to know what is good and what is wrong, instead of being punished and under pressure. In this milieu, in which mothers are directed to nurture an emotional relationship with their children in a very focused way, little Japanese children develop emphatic empathy and respect for the feelings of others. The activity of pre-school and school institutions is built on such a basis, which already have a solid chance of building highly ethical personalities out of children.
And yet, such a large percentage difference in the case of a possible return of a lost wallet when it comes to two developed societies, leads to some other thoughts. First of all, to think about how it is possible that a society built on Protestant norms, and English society it is, is no longer able to highlight these values more transparently as socially relevant. Of course, no longer as exclusively religious values, but above all as civilizational and humane values.
Critics of the Anglo-Saxon educational model point the finger at the excessive relaxation and inconsistency of today's English parents, who, compared to French parents, for example, are much more relaxed and far from disciplining children and insisting on the adoption of moral norms. Even adopting good manners in their behavior is not easy. There are numerous examples of parents in Britain going so far in giving in to their children that it is often impossible to have a dialogue at the table when you come to visit them as guests. Among the French, for whom good manners in ordinary life situations have retained their value, this kind of relaxation causes disbelief and disgust.
Of course, it is not out of place to remind that today's British society is not as coherent as it used to be and that migrations have permeated the earlier ethnic base, which in turn had the effect of loosening the strictness of the traditional Puritan upbringing.
Somewhere between the English and French models, there is a Scandinavian educational model that tries to incorporate the so-called soft values such as empathy and understanding of others, and treating children as equal subjects, with the fence that not everything is allowed and that the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior is clearly drawn. But what is typical of the Scandinavian model is that conflict escalation is avoided. Parents do not use the power they already have as adults by definition to impose on children how to behave, but patiently and understandingly try to understand children's actions and follow their intentions.
It is difficult to say whether this attitude increases the ethics of children, as well as whether the probability of recovering a lost wallet in one of the countries of Scandinavia approaches the Japanese model, but the belief that punishments and prisons do not improve the personality of criminals is more than widespread in this part of the world. . Such an understanding most certainly came from an educational model in which the mentioned soft values are very high, and where, as in the Japanese case, the basic trust between parents and children was transferred to relations in society, strengthening faith in its institutions.
It is difficult to say what the situation is in this area in other European countries, especially in those that went through the phase of communism/socialism, such as the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The disappearance of the category that we have known for half a century as socialist morality for whom the educational ideal was a man who puts common and social goals before individual and personal ones, in any case he opened a big gap. How the social entities that filled that void have performed that task so far, in these three decades of transition, remains to be re-examined and given a final assessment. One can only hope that all involved entities such as the family, the state, the church, and numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations, have understood how serious and complex the task of shaping a society on solid ethical principles is. A task in which they themselves have to learn a lot and work on themselves.
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