THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Culture in the broadest sense shows social environment in which a person was born and where he or she  lived. Culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, science, law, customs, and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society (Elly, et al, 2005:27). Culture is closely related to human life, this is due to culture involving all aspects of human life both materially and non-materially, where culture is always going develop of simple steps to a more complex stage.

Every culture in the region will have an important role in improving a person's moral development. The good culture, full norms will help the development of one's moral, especially children’s moral. unwittingly, culture can influence moral behavior. If the culture in a place is good, the better a person's behavior. But if the culture in a place is bad, so will be bad a person’s behavior.

Moral development focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. In the field of moral development, morality is defined as principles for how individuals ought to treat one another, with respect to justice, others’ welfare, and rights. In order to investigate how individuals understand morality, it is essential to measure their beliefs, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors that contribute to moral understanding. The field of moral development studies the role of peers and parents in facilitating moral development, the role of conscience and values, socialization and cultural influences, empathy and altruism, and positive development. The interest in morality spans many disciplines (e.g., philosophy, economics, biology, and political science) and specializations within psychology (e.g., social, cognitive, and cultural). Moral developmental psychology research focuses on questions of origins and change in morality across the lifespan.

The role of culture on moral development is an important topic which raises fundamental questions about what is universal and what is culturally specific regarding morality and moral development. Many research traditions have examined this question, with social-cognitive and structural developmental positions theorizing that morality has a universal requirement to it, drawing from moral philosophy. The expectation is that if morality exists, it has to do with those values that are generalizable across groups and cultures. Alternatively, cultural relativistic positions have been put forth mostly by socialization theories which focus on how cultures transmit values rather than what values are applied across groups and individuals.

Daniel Pekarsky, a professor in University of Wisconsin-Madison, defines culture as the social environment where human beings live in. Every place on earth has different culture and according to Pekarsky, this includes any specific institutional arrangement, such as social, political, and economic status. While culture resembles the root of certain practices of one particular place, Pekarsky asserts that it plays a significant role in moral development of a particular group of people living in one place.

Basically, the moral development of a certain place also reflects the type of culture a country has. For example, in Riau, the moral of a person is very good, although not all of them. Community riau so cling to the traditions and customs they have, manners of speech, have good morals. This reflects that culture can shape possessed moral character, can make better personal. An example of this new view of Riau province in Indonesia that is quite a lot, maybe in other provinces, especially in the villages, the culture that they have also had an important role, which could form the moral character. So, in Indonesia it can be said that culture has a role in an area that could shape the development of one's moral character, but it also depends on one's personal and cultures in one place.

Through the culture or the embedded beliefs of a particular group of people or specific population, psychologists are able to determine what kind of culture a certain place has.

For instance, the Indonesian culture did not spring up in just one snap, but came from other countries for example western culture. From the conservative culture of the ancient times, people have acquired varying attitudes and beliefs, by moving from one place to another. This is the reason how and why the western culture has evolved into a more liberated one. During the ancient times, when both women wear longs sleeves and long skirts to hide their body, while men simply hunt for animals in the wilds for food, people have more superstitions rather than scientific beliefs. They are more conservative and most of them believe in one God, who saved the nations from sin. Those who do not believe in God are referred to as pagans or atheist in the contemporary period.

However, as people migrated from one place to another, culture has also evolved. People have come to assimilate and accommodate new cultures leading to a new form of moral development. From the patriarchal culture of the ancient times, people have acquired new skills knowledge, and dispositions, which made them morally mature. Although superstitions have been important parts of every place’s culture, people learned to perceive and explain certain phenomena in a scientific way. They started to engage in experimentations and inventions to improve life. By then, education had also become a part of the culture.

By the time education has been considered as an important responsibility of a man, everyone starts to gain knowledge. This also marked the start of a rapid moral development, as people have become more exposed into varying cultures of one country to another. People learned to travel by vehicles, interpret things through the use of theories, and adapt to the changes that happen every day.

Because of the different culture men has become accustomed through migration, education, and adaption, every country in the world had experienced varying state of moral development. Today, western culture has become more liberated. The women of today have already adopted jobs, which only men are able to do in the ancient times. Some important indications of moral development also include the rise of many religions, foundation of groups and stereotypical organizations, adherence to the varying laws from the smallest community to the highest law of the land, formulation of new beliefs through researches and studies, and the good communication between different races of one country to another.

So if the culture in a place is good, someone has a good moral and will have a good personality. But if the culture in a place is bad, an individual has a bad moral  and then  has a bad personality anyway. That's because in a person is often a state of stability, so someone must be able to determine where the good and bad with a view of culture is happening in their environment and in accordance with the rules applicable under the conscience.