Preliminary Study: Understanding Corruption in Children as the Basis of Anti-Corruption Education Program in Elementary School

Abstract

The act of Corruption indicates a moral destruction in a society. In general, corruption is defined as the abuse essentially violates any applicable law or regulation. The form of corruption also varies from the of power for personal gain and is usually done by individuals in which the decision is in his favor and destruction of public facilities, accepting bribes, and using state facilities for personal gain, but many of us are unaware of these forms of corrupt behavior. There is a need for intervention in young generation especially for individual in elementary school. In this research the respondents are elementary school students from underprivileged school. This preliminary study was aimed to find out how the grade 2 to 5 graders students understand the context of corruption. In the initial study, Focus Groups Discussion was conducted on 12 primary school children ages 8 to 11 years. FGD results indicate that they know that corruption is a criminal and sinful act, but the children does not know the meaning of corruption and the form of corruption. In this case it can be concluded that their understanding of corruption is very limited. The researcher also identified the moral identity of students. The scale of moral identity used is the scale developed by Baker (2015). Primary school age is the age at which individual moral identity develops. Moral identity itself develops through the interaction between the children and their social environment. From the results of this preliminary study, researchers will create an intervention program that is anticorruption education for children. This intervention is aimed to form the mental of anticorruption in children. It is expected that students can improve their moral understanding including understanding anticorruption behavior. In this case, the science of psychology is needed in the making of training modules, the implementation and delivery of the materials, while communication science will help the selection of appropriate media in the learning process. Keyword: Corruption, Moral Identity, Intervention 260 Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). International Conference on Psychology and Communication 2018 (ICPC 2018) Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 219