Character Values of Elementary School Education from the Perspective of Local Wisdom of Sundanese Culture

Abstract

Global culture is currently still growing and developing massively in countries all over the world. It allegedly causes more harm to develop countries, including Indonesia. It is feared that Indonesia will increasingly lose its national identity, which should be maintained. To date, some Indonesians think that values from foreign countries are the best, while local cultural values are outdated. This research aimed to assess the Sundanese cultural values as part of Indonesian culture to be used as a reference for developing indicators of achieving character education goals, especially for elementary school students. The method used was an exploratory method with an ethnographic approach. The stages of research were: 1) observing the socio-cultural activities of Naga Village community related to the cultivation of family educational values; 2) creating descriptive narratives in the context of cultivating parental educational values for their children in Naga Village community; and 3) analyzing the findings on the educational values in Naga Village community to be integrated into the development of the indicators of educational character values at elementary schools. The research findings indicated that in the perspective of Sundanese cultural wisdom, to become a human with character, from an early age, children should be instilled with the character values of obedience, patience, humility, honesty, sociability, and deliberation. These values could be integrated for the development of the indicators in achieving learning objectives to shape the character of elementary school students.

Received: 17 October 2022 / Accepted: 5 April 2023 / Published: 5 May 2023