Moral Degeneration of Students & Africanised Christian-Muslim Chaplaincy Curriculum: Learner-Moral-Shaping Challenges for the Education Institutions in Uganda

The study examined the extent to which Christian and Muslim chaplaincy philosophies can be Africanised, amalgamated, and implemented to minimise moral degeneration among learners in academic institutions in Uganda. To unearth the influencers of moral decadence among students, historical literary analysis and archival research methods that investigate past and contemporary voices were relied on. Findings indicate that due to poor family upbringing and household economic poverty, many teenagers have adopted lifestyles that are risky and beyond their financial means. In the process of navigating life, many get involved in drug abuse, alcoholism, consumption of pornography, sexual indulgences, hooliganisms, fierce strikes, and gambling businesses. Immoral lifestyles have resulted in: teenage marriages, abortions, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, drug addiction, mental health illnesses, premature death, and criminality. In Uganda, 1000 teenage pregnancies are recorded by public health institutions every day. To make matters worse, drug and substance abuse among teenagers stands at 70.1 percent. Young people involved in drugs and substance abuse have been diagnosed with: heart diseases, liver cirrhosis, mouth and throat cancer, alcohol poisoning, depression and stress disorders, and suicidal thoughts. Many of them are associated with poor academic performance, memory loss problems, intentional injuries, school absenteeism, sexual violence, and legal arrests for assaulting others while under the influence of drugs. At the national referral psychiatric hospital in Uganda, records show that every week, 100 teenagers are diagnosed with mental illness. To minimise moral decadence challenges among students, it is recommended that Senior Women and Senior Men teachers tasked with the roles of offering counselling services to learners are theologically trained in Africanised Christian-Muslim ethics, well remunerated, and elevated to serve as the overall school chaplains whose duty would be to handle challenging child moral shaping situations that may not be managed by classroom teachers.

• Students
• Chaplaincy
• Africanism
• Christian
• Muslim

1. Introduction

Moral shaping of children is a phenomenon that has been operational among diverse earthly cultures since ancient times. Recorded literature reveals that in prehistoric Egypt, young people were instructed in the art and science of virtuous living. It was a must for children to memorise and recite wisdom poetry in their public confessions before they became involved in the youthful and adult open-market business transactions. Among the Hebrew community, young people were drilled in Mosaic Law that emphasised undivided loyalty to display behavioural lifestyles that promoted godliness, social order, and community transformation ([28]).

Unlike in the Hebrew community, moral shaping of children in antediluvian India was caged in caste systems. Young people under the guardianship of their caregivers underwent moral formation training until they were ritually initiated to participate in matters of public importance. In India, household moral trainings coupled with moral ethics emphasised in the community and at educational institutions inculcated in young people the virtues of: focused hard work, life of simplicity, love for humanity, friendship connections, truth telling, broad-minded thinking, and pursuance of a life of self-sufficiency ([28]).

Just like in India, ancient Greece inculcated in young people the works of great poets that crack the brain. Children were required to learn by heart the admonitions, tales, praises, moral-shaping music, and encomia of the great philosophers and to strive to become like them or better than them. Likewise, in China, five virtues were imparted to children: constructive public display, behavioural lifestyles, truthfulness, respect for humanity and the divine order, compassion for the vulnerable, and the pursuit of knowledge ([28]).

Similarly, in primeval African society, the methods used to instil responsible living among children included storytelling, legends, myths, riddles, taboos, rituals, totems, sacred symbols, and proverbs. Morality was enforced orally within the family units and extended to the wider community that comprised relatives, neighbours, peers, and the divinely appointed cultural leaders. When it came to vocational training, the approach was practical and participatory. The process involved staged hands-on skill pieces of training under the mentorship of seasoned community elders. The oral curriculum comprised of: military drills, religious ethics, historical narratives, crop and livestock farming, family management antiquities, disputes handling, and business engagements. At the end of every staged moral and vocational trainings, rituals that involved animal sacrifices and festivities were conducted to graduate young people. Young people who had acquired moral and practical life skills were commissioned by the divinely appointed community elders to contribute respectfully and responsibly to the physical, spiritual, and economic needs of society ([1]).

In fact, every earthly cultural community had a distinct curriculum for child-moral shaping. The manifestations of the acceptable moral lifestyles were tagged to rewards, and measures were in place to minimise unacceptable behaviours. Without doubt, ancient communities, even when they might have had isolated cases of hostile and barbaric children, and probably oppressive means of surpassing illicit lifestyles, had systems in place that regulated the behavioural public displays of young people. However, with the cross-border movements and the digital world becoming a global village, traditional child moral value shaping seems to be at the crossroads. Cross-cultural intrusions have catalysed the rise of immoral lifestyles among schooling-going young people ([16]).

On the global scene, the study that assessed the sexually immoral lifestyles of school-going children aged 12 to 15 years in 2023 revealed that 52 percent had been involved in multiple sexual encounters. Multiple sexual relationship encounters were found to be higher among boys (58 percent) as compared to girls (41.1 percent). It was established that teenagers aged 14 to 15 years (53.5 percent) were highly involved in sexual immorality as compared to those aged 12 to 13 years, rated at 49.7 percent ([15]). Besides sexual immorality, 275 million people, with the majority being teenagers, were involved in drug and substance abuse worldwide. It was established that illicit drug use had affected the educational career of young people and resulted in morbidity and mortality ([16]).

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 6,114,000 girls aged 15 - 19 years and 332,000 girls aged 10 - 14 years gave birth to babies in 2021. It was noted that on the global scene, every year, Africa registers the highest number of young people involved in premarital sex ([25]). Furthermore, it was established that in Africa, the drugs and substances that are commonly abused by boys as compared to girls include: alcohol (40 percent), khat (25 percent), and cigarettes (16 percent). In addition, studies found out that school-going teenage populations in Africa consume: ‘cannabis, cocaine, inhalants, sedatives, shisha, hallucinogens, steroids, and mastics’ ([11]).

In Uganda, 1000 teenage pregnancies are recorded by public health institutions every day ([48]). To make matters worse, drug and substance abuse among teenagers stands at 70.1 percent, an alarming percentage higher than 45.5 percent registered across the partner East African countries ([34]). Disappointingly, teenage children’s sexual encounters and drug abuse have led to school dropouts, mental health challenges, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, teenage marriages, maternal and infant mortalities, increasing numbers of stunted children, criminalities, and endless moral decadence ([9]). It is against this backdrop that a historical literary analysis methodology that investigates past voices to align them with the present life realities ([45]) and archival research methodology which examines contemporary statistics and policy documents to acquire new insights ([41]), were relied on to examine the extent Christian and Muslim chaplaincy philosophies can be Africanised, amalgamated, and implemented to minimise moral degeneration of children who are nurtured by the educational institutions in Uganda. To strengthen the paper’s linguistic expression, the AI Grammar Checker was applied.

2. History of Christian and Muslim Chaplaincy Services

Christianity and Islam, characterised by diverse denominational sects, are the policy-formalised, curriculum-aligned, and taught religions in educational institutions, and are the major practised religions in Uganda ([47]). Although Christian and Muslim chaplaincy moral-building curricula are less emphasized and academically zero-graded in public educational institutions in Uganda, the two religions are recorded in history as having played significant roles in shaping the moral well-being of people in social institutions. Their historical roots are thus:

Christian Chaplaincy: The historical roots of Christian chaplaincy are connected to the legendary cloak crafted in 337 CE. It is recorded that Martin of Tours, a Roman military officer, during the night of a cold winter, left the military camp and had a ride on a horse around the neighbourhood. On his way, he came across a beggar shivering uncontrollably from the cold. The beggar pleaded for help from the by-passers, but no one had compassion on him. The groaning voice of the beggar stirred the caring, lifesaving consciousness of Martin. Martin had no extra clothes to rescue the dwindling life of the beggar, but using a sword, he cut his vestment into two and shared half of his precious military cloak with the beggar. It is recorded that, while asleep at night, Jesus appeared to Martin dressed in the very cloak he had given to the beggar. In the night’s sleep, Martin witnessed multitudes of angels celebrating the offering of the piece of cloth wrapped around Jesus. When Martin woke up, his mind was disturbed. Diving into his Christian religious experience, he reflected on the parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mathew 25: 31-46) and that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) narrated by Jesus, pointing out the eternal privileges inherited by those who selflessly make use of their competencies, life opportunities, and monetary resources to extend compassionate support to the genuine struggling poor. Later, Martin resigned from his military career, set apart his beggar’s shared cloak as a relic, and joined a Christian theological college to be equipped with priestly skills ([31]).

As years rolled by, even when the life episodes of the beggar in the post-Martin-Jesus encounter storyline could not be traced, the vibrant testimony of Martin is documented to have influenced many people to give up their careers to serve traumatized people and the struggling poor. Immediately after his death, the half cloak was kept in a sacred space called ‘Chapel’, and the person charged with custodianship of the cloak came to be called ‘Chaplain.’ Since then, chaplaincy work has occupied space, and Chaplains have come to be regarded as men and women called by God and prepared intellectually to offer compassionate services to the disadvantaged and traumatized people in the world ([31]).

Currently, Christian Chaplaincy services take place in diverse social environments, including the military, hospitals, embassies, parliament, and academic institutions. The work of chaplains is to: offer counselling services to those experiencing traumatic life challenges, disorganise mental illness and make referrals, equip individuals with life coping skills, empower individuals to avoid moral lifestyles that may affect their physical health and social capital building, and provide therapeutic support to those in critical need of life’s basic necessities. In fact, Christian Chaplaincy work is ecumenical, cross-cultural, interfaith, and pluralistic. Its primary aim is to rescue people affected by life-robbing challenges and to facilitate their self-discovery of practical remedies for their traumatic life experiences ([31]).

Muslim Chaplaincy:In the Islamic culture, Chaplaincy work, a pastoral care concept, is rooted in Jewish traditions and Christian chaplaincy legend. The concept of pastoral care is not found in Islamic traditions, but the associated religious activities are reflected in the Qur’an, which implore believers to offer lifesaving services to society ([40]).

Since the inception of Islam in Arabia, pastoral care towards the vulnerable groups of society and those confronted with traumatic life distress has been regarded as a pious and sacred duty ordained by God. Islamic teachings encourage believing Muslims to offer portions of their monetary resources to support the needs of orphans, widows, the homeless, strangers, the hungry, and travellers. In addition, the Muslim community is obligated to identify with family members, neighbours, and friends affected by sickness and in circumstances when death occurs ([22]; [40]). Qur’anic scriptures attest to the effect:

…and be good to the parents, and the relatives, and the orphans, and the poor, and the neighbour next door, and the distant neighbour, and the close associate, and the traveller, and your servants… (Qur’an 4: 36).

The believing men and believing women are friends of one another. They advocate virtue, forbid evil, perform the prayers, practice charity… (Qur’an 9: 71).

Therefore, do not mistreat the orphan. Nor rebuff the seeker (Qur’an 93: 9-10)

While the above lifesaving scriptures are taught by Imams, Muslim chaplains are distinct from Imams. They are gendered and pastoral care-focused in multicultural, interfaith, and ecumenical environments, whereas Imams are congregational-focused ([17]). Other than the Qur’anic Mosque caged teachings, public space formal Muslim chaplaincy is recorded to have begun in the 1940s in the United States of America. Muslim clerics were influenced by the pastoral support that Christian chaplains had extended, which had restored hope among prisoners, patients in hospitals, and crisis-stricken employees across various sectors. Chaplaincy spiritual mentorship at that time was Christian-skewed, and traumatised Muslims benefited less. As such, knowledgeable Muslim men and women mobilised themselves and visited imprisoned Muslims to offer them spiritual and psychological support ([22]).

As the years unfolded, the 1960s witnessed the rise of Muslim chaplaincy consciousness and legal activism in pursuit of Muslim chaplaincy rights to extend spiritual and moral shaping services to all Muslims across diverse civic and social sectors. As a result, with effect from 1984, just like Christians, many Muslim chaplains with specialised professional competences were hired by American formal sector institutions to offer spiritual and psychological support to the crisis-stricken individuals ([22]).

In the current decade, Muslim chaplains play key roles in society, influencing the development of religious education curricula, fighting social injustices, advocating for the positive moral development of young people, and offering material and spiritual support to the traumatized. The pastoral inputs of Muslim chaplains include teaching, interfaith dialogue, and cross-cultural engagement to foster mental health, spiritual growth, and a peaceful environment where interreligious neighbours cooperate and respect one another. In educational institutions, teachers and learners are supported to examine their social-cultural beliefs and practices, religious identities in society, and intellectual contributions to the pluralistic wellbeing of society ([39]).

Even when Christian and Muslim chaplaincy is recognised in other parts of the world, their coexistence manifestations and emphasis are thinly felt in Ugandan educational institutions. On the ground, most public educational institutions in Uganda are Christian- or Muslim-founded, but they are secular, government-programmed, and controlled ([29]). Chaplaincy work without a well-crafted, staged moral-building and accountability curriculum is evident in private schools where the proprietors are religious leaders. In these schools, the proprietors’ Abrahamic religion is emphasised. Any other religion is not given space to be practised, even when young people from other religious faiths join the school community to access education services. In religiously founded private schools, all learners are forced to participate in the religious routines of the institution’s proprietors. Nonetheless, the government of Uganda has granted religious freedom ([46]).

To the dismay, in the arena of Christian and Muslim chaplaincy work, the pastoral care approaches in Uganda are wrapped in European Christianity and Arabian Islamic traditions. The foreign tradition pastoral care approaches have never been Africanised to meet the ever-changing, diverse moral and spiritual needs of the indigenous people. To make it worse, there is no staged Christian-Muslim contextualised moral building curriculum intended to empower learners to: memorise, avoid distractive pitfalls, and take on constructive behavioural lifestyles.

3. Formal Education in Uganda and Chaplaincy Work

The introduction of formal education as a means of colonising Africa was one of the key strategies emphasised by Western colonial powers at the Berlin Conference in 1888. It was theorised that it was easier to indoctrinate children into adapting to European culture than adults. Mandated by the Berlin conference resolutions, European education, under the custodianship of Christian missionaries, was rolled out all over Africa by the colonialists. Missionary centres became associated with: the spiritual nurturing of adults and children, the moral formation of Christian converts, the equipping of learners enrolled in schools with literacy and numeracy skills, hands-on vocational empowerment, and the dissemination of curative and preventive remedies against disease epidemics. At every missionary centre, there were Christian chaplains equipped with multiple professional skills who attended to the diverse physical and psychological needs of Christian converts and young people enrolled in schools ([8]).

Missionary schools were driven by the major aim of converting indigenous people to European Christianity. The intention of enforcing Christianity was to inculcate in the learners Westernised spiritual moral values that were much needed to influence intellectual social engagements in the monetary economy. After acquiring the basics of Christianity, young people were offered a European secular education integrated with Christian moral formation. However, some Africans attended schools not to be enlightened but to benefit from the intellectual privileges that accompanied missionary programme outreaches. A number of Africans were Christians as long as they were employed, offered medical treatment, and supplied with several prestigious life dishes, but they retained their African religious beliefs, customs, and expressions ([8]).

At the missionary centres, Africans were empowered to attain spiritual and moral values, literacy skills, and to adapt to European Christianised intellectual knowledge mining and packaging. Knowledge of the basic tenets of Christianity was a requirement for anyone to benefit from the European tailored services in Uganda ([8]). As a result, young people graduated from Christian missionary led schools as champions of community transformation. The spiritual and professional skills they had attained made them stand out as icons of society that every school-going child admired and aped. However, with the colonial government takeover of education management, missionary schools were disarmed from enforcing Christian religious indoctrinations. Next, teachers who were custodians of children’s spiritual, moral, and academic upbringing were disengaged from being equipped with Christian chaplaincy skills. Consequently, the omissions led to the breeding of hooligans, drug addicts, thieves, and corrupt intellectuals who took over the country’s business economy and public offices ([8]).

The colonial government takeover of Christian missionary schools and the phasing out of Christian religious indoctrinations of children in schools was because the intellectual knowledge transmission methodology in Uganda locked out African Muslim converts. Every Ugandan who needed secular education services had to convert to Christianity, and for that reason, Muslims refused to send their children to Christian missionary schools. Instead, children from Muslim households were sent to madrassas to learn the Arabic language and memorise Qur’anic scriptures that were not tailored to produce intellectuals to participate in the open-market business economy ([32]).

The exclusivist anomaly exhibited by Christian missionaries and the intolerable mind-set manifested by Muslims left many Muslims limping intellectually and economically. To balance the equation and to minimise Christian and Muslim hostilities that were blossoming, the colonial government in Uganda took over the oversight role of all schools and made them public. Forceful religious conversions were prohibited. Instead, separatist Christian and Muslim education curricula were developed to be taught by professional teachers in schools, a loose child moral shaping approach that is in force to this day. The aim of introducing a separatist religious curriculum in schools was to ensure that children had the liberty to learn the basic tenets of their family adopted foreign religions, and uphold constructive moral values in society ([32]).

Nonetheless, a study carried out in Uganda to establish the impact of Christian and Muslim religious education on the morality of learners in schools found that even when young people were exposed to religious moral formation topics, such subjects did not have impact on shaping their public moral lives ([6]). This then meant that students, studied religious subjects for the purposes of excelling in their exams but not to attain acceptable social moral values. Besides, Christianity and Islamic religious moral outputs are not among the yardsticks required of an individual to be recruited in government regulated public offices in Uganda, but then, for the purposes of promoting acceptable social moral values and respectful interfaith coexistence, basic knowledge of Christian-Muslim relations would be very necessary for an employee to offer services to all people equitably. In Uganda, Christianity and Islam are the major faiths (Table 1), and their adherents mingle in society; as such, basic knowledge of their beliefs and practices by students deserves critical attention.

Table 1. Religious distribution in Uganda.

Table 1

Religion	Population	Percent
Roman Catholic	16,612,537	36.2
Anglican/Church of Uganda	13,311,801	29
Pentecostal/Evangelicals	6,543,196	14.3
Seventh Day Adventist	911,153	2
Orthodox	65,150	0.1
Jehovah’s Witness	46,147	0.1
Subtotal Christians 37,489,984 (81.7%)
Islam	6,051,317	13.2
African Traditional	56,332	0.1
Other religions Hindus, Bahai, Buddhists, and Owobusobozi	704,334	1.5
No Religion	85,559	0.2
Unclassified (non-housed population)	1,517,891	3.3
Not stated	24,387	0.1
Total	45,905,417	100

Source: [47].

As it can be observed in Table 1, Christians in Uganda make up 81.7 percent and Muslims 13.2 percent. This then means that 94.9 percent of the indigenous population are Christians and Muslims. In Uganda, even when the constitution declares it as a secular state, the population is predominantly Christian and Muslim. In reality, Christian and Muslim festivity events dominate and are highly celebrated as compared to the Europeanised public holidays ([30]). But then, celebrated moral values derived from Abrahamic religions have never been amalgamated into African language concepts. So it is with the entire Ugandan education curriculum. The learning process in schools is customised in European language concepts ([5]).

Hearteningly, in Uganda, religious bodies that share the same African religiosity are divided along the lines of European Christianity and Arabian Islam. The interfaith hostile divide has made it difficult for the indigenous educationists to come up with Africanised Christian-Muslim moral shaping curriculum. Instead separatist Christianity and Islamic religious subjects that are not morally binding are taught in schools as optional disciplines ([21]).

In Uganda, Christian, Muslim, and secular moral ethics that are foreign are promoted in schools but African social heritage curriculum has never been crafted and promoted in schools. As a matter of fact, separatist religious education needs to be upheld in schools because there are moral ethics that are necessary for the faith adherents to uphold and at the same time, individuals need to take on academic religious specialisations. However, Africanised Christian-Muslim faith beliefs need to be promoted at all education transition levels so as to build a pluralist society that respects and understands the faith beliefs of the religious neighbours.

In actual fact, moral skilling of learners in Uganda is relegated to Senior Women Teachers and Senior Men Teachers. The qualities required of such teachers are that they should possess European crafted counselling skills ([24]). Given the fact that teachers are of African ancestry and some subscribe to Christianity or Islam, then, educationists do not perceive religious moral value shaping as a much-needed intellectual skill for teachers to attain in order to support children to minimise messy lifestyles and overcome traumatic life challenges.

Under certain circumstances, among the religiously founded schools, a clergy is posted to offer chaplaincy services to thousands of clients. To make matters worse, such clergy are inadequately remunerated and they are not recognised by the government. To the extreme, the services are voluntary. But even those who have a willing heart to execute voluntary chaplaincy services in schools that house diverse religious denominations, they lack interfaith ecumenical skills that are much needed to offer guidance and care that respects religious diversity. Certainly, such a gap has led to increasing moral decadence among students in Uganda ([3]).

4. Moral Decadence among Students in Learning Institutions in Uganda

Several factors have been noted by researchers in Uganda to be responsible for moral decadence of students and two of them are singled out, sexually immorality and drug abuse.

Sexual Immorality:Study results put to public display by Uganda Bureau of Statistics in 2022 revealed that 25.8 percent of teenage school going girls were getting pregnant every year and more than 180 girls were found to be delivering babies every month among the districts of Bukedi sub-region ([20]). The Statistics to the effect are displayed in Table 2.

Table 2. Teenage girl baby deliveries in Bukedi Sub-region.

Table 2

Year	2019	2020	2021
Number of babies delivered	23,829	25,066	33,789

Source: [20].

Similarly, studies conducted in Uganda in 2020 revealed that 53.9 percent of teenage girls gave birth every year. Many of such girls succumbed to death in the process of childbirth, while others got fistula complications and pelvic disabilities ([37]). In addition, sexual violence among primary school-going children in Uganda has been reported at 77.7 percent, while that of young people in secondary schools is at 82 percent ([24]).

Several push factors have been brought to display that influence young people to engage in sexual immorality, and the most lethal factor is pornography. A study carried out by the Pornography Control Committee among 32,000 secondary school students in Uganda found that 13,440 young people consumed pornographic filth through print and electronic media, social media platforms, neighbourhoods, and contact with peers and extended family members. Worst of all, parents were found to be the top enablers of pornography exposure to their children through negligence and involvement in irresponsible sexual behaviours ([36]).

As a result of parental negligence, teenage children’s exposure to wrong sources of sexuality knowledge has resulted in pregnancies, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, school dropouts, and early marriages ([36]).

Teenage children giving birth and many getting married is catastrophic to society. Marriage is an institution that young people ought to join when they are mature and prepared mentally to withstand the demands and shocks of family life. Few teenagers, if at all they exist, have well-developed family life management skills that are much needed in child moral upbringing.

To the contrary, empowerment of young people with family life management skills is thinly handled by: religious bodies, cultural leaders, health workers, and teachers. Young people, who are lucky to graduate from colleges, join the institution of marriage without adequate knowledge on how to withstand the challenges associated with marital relationships and child moral upbringing. In Uganda, even when policies are in place that regulate marital relationships and child custody ([10]), there are no standardised, Africanised learner transition moral-building curricula that can be utilised in academic institutions to prepare young people to progressively adopt healthy-seeking sexual behaviours and to build a futuristic, principled family.

Drugs and Substance Abuse:A study conducted in 2020 among 2392 primary school pupils and 2765 secondary school students in Uganda revealed that learners were involved in drugs and substance abuse ([26]; [33]). The most consumed drugs and substances unearthed in the study are recorded as displayed in Table 3.

Table 3. Drug and substance abuse in schools.

Table 3

Drug/Substance	Percent
Energy drinks Sting and Rock Boom	65
Local alcoholic drinks	60
Wines	47
Bottled alcohol	32
Alcoholic spirits	25
Cigarettes	12
Inhalants petrol and jet fuel	11
Marijuana	9
Cocaine	8
Khat ( Mayilungi )	8
Shisha	7
Heroin	6

Source: [26]. N = 5157.

As displayed in Table 3, the most consumed drugs and substances by school-going children in Uganda are alcoholic and energy drinks, followed by cigarettes and inhalants.

Several factors were established that were contributing to drug and substance abuse among students, and these are recorded in Table 4.

Table 4. Factors responsible for drug and substance abuse among students.

Table 4

Factor	Percent
Peer pressure	87.6
Family influence	75.2
Irreligious students	70.8
Relaxed school rules and regulations	69.8
Irresponsible parents	67.4
Insufficient checking of students as they report to school	66.7
Inability of schools to enforce discipline and appropriate punishment	64.6
Drugs/substance supplies located adjacent to schools	64
Drugs/substance smuggling into boarding schools	63.7
Lack of routine supervision of students in boarding schools	63.6
Affordable drugs and substances	62.2
Less concerned teachers about students risky lifestyles	60.7
Insufficient security in schools	58.4
Availability of pocket money	53.1
Frustrated students	52.6
Idleness among students	47.9

Source: [26]. N = 5157.

Results tabulated in Table 4 clearly reveal that peer pressure, irreligious teens, irresponsible families, relaxed school environments, and the social environments are the enabling factors that are influencing young people to engage in drugs and substance abuse. In the study, the religious nurturing was brought to attention, meaning that young people who were spiritually moulded by their caregivers or through their self-driven initiatives were less involved in drug and substance abuse.

Researchers in Uganda observe the moral decadence of students in academic institutions to be a serious challenge. Due to poor family upbringing and household economic poverty, many young people have adopted lifestyles that are risky and beyond their financial means. In the process of navigating life, many get involved in drug abuse, alcoholism, consumption of pornography, sexual indulgences, hooliganisms, fierce strikes, and gambling businesses. Immoral lifestyles have resulted in: teenage marriages, abortions, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, drug addiction, mental health illnesses, premature death, criminalities, and destruction of public property ([3]).

In order to minimise drug and substance abuse among students, researchers in Uganda recommended that there was a need for the government to upgrade the education curriculum and slot in staged prevention topics on the side effects of “drugs and substance abuse”. The researchers noted that for the countries that had taken education curriculum contextualisation to sensitize communities and young people about the dangers of drug and substance abuse, such countries registered few cases of mental illnesses, chronic diseases, and moral decadence among learners ([26]).

5. Mental Health Challenges among School-Going Children in Uganda

As a result of drug and substance abuse, at the national referral psychiatric hospital in Uganda, records show that on a weekly basis, 100 teenagers are diagnosed with mental illness. It has been noted that Uganda has the highest prevalence of drug and substance abuse among adolescents as compared to other East African countries ([33].).

Young people involved in drugs and substance abuse have been diagnosed with: heart diseases, liver cirrhosis, mouth and throat cancer, alcohol poisoning, sexually transmitted diseases, depression and stress disorders, and suicidal thoughts. Many of them are associated with poor academic performance, memory loss problems, intentional injuries, school absenteeism, robbery and burglary, sexual and physical violence, and legal arrests for assaulting others while under the influence of drugs ([33].).

Besides drugs and substance abuse by students that have resulted in mental health challenges, many school-going young people in Uganda live in households that are associated with: child physical abuse (80 percent), malaria diseases (80 percent), stress disorders (39 percent), chronic household poverty (38 percent), and domestic violence (30 percent). In a study carried out in Uganda among learners to ascertain the levels of depression, 29 percent were found with mental health challenges; 21 percent had depression symptoms, 26.6 percent had anxiety disorders, and suicidal attempts were reported by all ([43]).

Uganda is grappling with mental health challenges. Studies carried out in 2022 revealed that 22.9 percent of children and 24.2 percent of adults were suffering from mental disorders. Countrywide, one in every four citizens was affected by depression and anxiety mental health symptoms. Anxiety disorders among adults were rated at 20.2 percent, and that of children at 14.4 percent ([4]).

Subsequent studies carried out on mental health in Uganda from July 2023 to July 2024, among 400 high schools, to ascertain the factors responsible for the skyrocketing mental health challenges that had climbed to 70 percent in 2018, unearthed several factors, as indicated in Table 5 ([38]).

Table 5. Factors responsible for increasing mental health.

Table 5

Factor	Percent
Poor academic performance stress	44
Domestic violence	26
School bullying	22
Depression and anxiety	19
Death of family members	13
Suicidal thoughts	5
Sexual violence	4

Source: [38].

In addition to drugs and substance abuse, the traumatic life encounters, as pointed out in Table 5, at schools and homes, affect the educational career of young people. Nonetheless, the relationship between immoral lifestyles, mental health, and immoral lifestyle-poor academic performance is a complex one. Several factors associated with behavioural formation, influence factors, and household economic poverty may be other causes for multiple mental health challenges.

In some countries, failure of the state and stakeholders to address the igniters of mental health challenges among adolescents resulted in increased social disruptions and economic costs for households and governments. As young people dropped out of school, they encountered legal challenges, unemployment, and chronic illnesses in adulthood. Most mental health challenges diagnosed in adulthood were linked to adolescent immoral life encounters and childhood physical abuse ([43]).

To address mental health challenges, the government of Uganda has deployed social workers, nurses, psychologists, and psychiatrists. Mental health workers are deployed in regional hospitals and public health units. Others work in non-government organisations that provide charitable support to vulnerable groups. Nonetheless, studies show that mental health workers in Uganda are few and many of them lack skills in adolescent mental health care and spiritual nurturing ([43]).

At all costs, professionals in mental health are much needed to: provide specialised treatment to the affected individuals, train support teams, and supervise non-specialists; but to have them deployed in education institutions to address the traumatic needs of learners may take decades. The population of learners grows every year, so there is a need to have teachers empowered with Africanised Christian-Muslim moral nurturing skills that they can rely on to address child and adolescent mental health challenges. In addition, chaplaincy curriculum with well-programmed activities needs to be encouraged and promoted in schools. Mental health is perceived negatively among Africans, and this needs to be sorted out. To Africans, mental health is a disease associated with immoral lifestyles, witchcraft, and demonic manifestations. Certainly, Africanised Christian-Muslim Chaplaincy work in schools needs to address mental health among children and adolescents ([43]).

6. Moral Education in Ugandan Schools

To solve the moral degeneration of learners in Uganda, a handbook that stipulates the roles of every classroom teacher to empower learners with life survival skills was rolled out by the government in 1995. The handbook was developed in response to the 1986 Ottawa Charter, which emphasized promoting health-seeking behaviour and life skills among learners, and the 1989 Child Rights Convention, which linked life skills development to the progressive education attainment of learners. In response, the Jomtien Declaration of 1990 and the Dakar World Education Conference of 2000, which promoted education for all, advocated the inclusion of life skills in the curriculum to foster acceptable social behaviours and the intellectual development of learners. Accordingly, in line with the international treaties, Uganda enacted policies that enforced countrywide promotion and empowerment of learners in education institutions with life skills ([23]).

The aim of promoting life skills empowerment among learners in educational institutions was to address moral decadence among young people, which was affecting their physical health, academic progress, and social capital building in the communities. Life skills empowerment was observed by scholars as competencies that young people needed to acquire in school settings to interact constructively and productively with their mental well-being, physical environment, neighbours, and the wider interconnected society. To the scholars, once young people are empowered with life skills, they can make wise decisions, adopt positive lifestyles, and avoid pitfalls that can harm their bodies and cause imbalances in society ([23]).

To align moral education with international treaties, Uganda rolled out a Teacher’s Handbook to equip teachers with competencies to facilitate progressive life skill development among learners in classroom and out-of-class interactions. However, the study carried out in Northern Uganda in 2010 revealed that teachers lacked the competencies that were much needed to support learners who exhibited hostile lifestyles and those affected with bizarre life traumatic manifestations ([23]).

In addition to the Teacher’s learner-life-skilling Handbook, the government of Uganda passed a policy in 2008 that banned corporal punishment in schools. The cruel assault of learners at the hands of teachers in schools was alarming, and this had made many young people desert schools. Instead of corporal punishments, school administration-learner negotiated discipline approaches were emphasised. According to the policy framework, a teacher is supposed to be compassionate, guided by the assumption that stubborn children need guidance, counselling, mentoring, rehabilitation, and empathetic care, rather than humiliation and retribution ([7]).

While the policy guidelines empower teachers to create a friendly, corporal-punishment-free learning environment for children to flourish, the positive punishments that can be given to hostile children who engage in stealing, disrespecting teachers, hooliganism, sexual immorality, and vandalising school property are not reflected. In every society, there are naturally hostile children who, with the cooperation of their guardians, need to be tamed using a friendly parental stick. Such extreme cases need to be made clear in the policy guidelines for teachers to avoid litigation related to upholding children’s rights. While it is paramount to protect children from brutal physical abuse, some young people change for the better when well-calculated retribution and humiliation measures are enforced.

To avoid legal action, hostile children are expelled from schools, and, in certain instances, when parents become protective of their children’s wrongdoings, teachers distance themselves from such learners ([35]). The resulting outcomes, as measured in schools that register hooliganism and violent student strikes, have been poor academic performance and school dropouts ([2]). Certainly, the government’s overemphasis on zero corporal punishment in schools has never yielded the anticipated results in shaping students’ moral discipline.

Studies carried out in Uganda to establish the influencers of learners’ discipline found that the geographical location, family background, financial status of parents, religious and irreligious families, and rural and urban settings have a significant impact on the moral lifestyles of learners. The same study went on to show that academic institutions that had well-developed school administration-parent-student involved crafted school cultures that enforced student discipline, and they were strict in ensuring that learners adhered to school rules and regulations. However, academic institutions that lacked contextualised school philosophy compromised school discipline. Such schools produced poor academic results, and young people associated with anti-social behaviour. For such schools, they were after attracting and retaining customers, not nurturing responsible citizens ([6]).

To further address the moral challenges that educational institutions faced among learners, the year 2020 saw the Ministry of Education elevate two senior teachers, a woman and a man, in every school in the country to play the dual roles of classroom teachers and child counsellors. The identified teachers were equipped with client-counsellor interactive approaches, local language communication concepts, and confidentiality leadership skills. In order to quicken the implementation process, guidelines were developed by the government to guide Senior Women and Senior Men Teachers to create conducive and friendly school learning environments for young people to have their traumatic life identity struggles and mental health challenges addressed. To their dismay, the two teachers are stretched beyond measure to attend to large numbers of students while also balancing their routine professional classroom work. To make matters worse, their additional services are not remunerated ([24]).

Sadly, the government of Uganda’s intentional efforts to craft and roll out an Africanised Christian-Muslim moral development curriculum intended to equip young people with acceptable moral etiquette remain unclear ([3]). Instead, academic institutions are fragmented by intra-Christian and intra-Muslim religious groups that operate under the guise of the freedom of worship accorded to all Ugandans ([14]). Such religious groups, even when they inculcate moral values among their adherents, attract few young people.

Disappointingly, in Uganda, teachers are not equipped with stage-managed Africanised moral development mentorship tools necessary to empower students with moral integrity. In reality, the nation’s Europeanised education curriculum is focused on equipping students with specialised skills aligned with professional ethics. The moral building aspects that align with African social heritages are not curriculum-crafted, examined, and graded at every academic transition stage. As such, many students enter the vocational market environments with deformed moral integrity that has resulted in cancerous moral evils reflected among the professional players in the open market environments ([3]).

7. Africanised Christian-Muslim Chaplaincy Curriculum

Chaplaincy work focuses on empowering individuals to develop self-awareness and moral skills necessary for productive social capital engagement ([31]). Morality, then, is a display of acceptable and unacceptable behaviours in a given cultural setting. This means that right and wrong behaviours are relative. What may be viewed as an immoral lifestyle in one cultural setting might be celebrated in another. However, if the moral outputs expose individuals to disease epidemics, chronic poverty, and rigid ignorance, thereby affecting the common good of everyone in society, then such inhuman lifestyles must be condemned in the strongest terms ([6]).

Before the advent of Islam and Christianity in Uganda, the moral shaping of young people was the obligation of cultural leaders, community elders, role models, parents, extended family members, peers, and neighbours. The rewards and punishments associated with divinities were context-driven and central to the indoctrination of acceptable moral behaviour among children. Rituals, symbols, songs, stories, legends, myths, proverbs, totems, taboos, etc., were the vehicles of moral skilling and transmission of social traditions to subsequent generations. Any deviant lifestyles were resisted through community rejection, punishments, expulsions, and the invocation of wrathful punishments from the divinities ([8]).

When Christianity and Islam became rooted in Uganda, the intellectual learning and moral formation nurturing environments were decorated with symbolic expressions. The Christian and Muslim intellectual development environments were designed to address several activities that met the spiritual, economic, physical health, and social relational needs of knowledge seekers. In essence, the two religions attach importance to: the divine force, God similar to African Supreme Being, biblical prophets similar to African divine prophets, Angels similar to African gods and goddesses, demons/spirits similar to African spirits that cause misfortunes and diseases epidemics, religious/intellectual leaders similar to African elders, martyrs/saints similar to African ancestors, colours, sacred days, icons, sounds, and architectural setups of worship buildings that have divine meanings and connections. It is such Christian and Islamic moral formation tenets that need to be integrated with African language concepts ([8]).

Contrastingly, Muslims dispute the usage of the cross, biblical icons, and saintly icons by Christians. Usage of icons is regarded as idolatry and paganism. To the Christian understanding, icons, static, audio, and visual are instructional tools that aid the worshippers to connect with the divine ([19]). In dispute, Christians attach negativities to the black stone in the Kabah, the moon, and the star that are iconic of Islamic identity. Crescent icons are associated with the trickery of sorcerers and fortune-tellers ([44]).

Viewed from the tensional opinions that fuel Christian and Muslim rivalries, it is paramount to build a pluralistic society that respects diversity and celebrates religious commonalities. Certainly, Africanising the converging ethics of Christianity and Islam is paramount. In the African setting, each tribe has unique sacred spaces and symbolisms that they attach meaning to as points of moral formation in contact with the divine. Huts or shrines located under huge trees, beside water bodies, or adjacent to monuments and graves are sites of ceremonial worship. It is at these points that the living come in close contact with the ancestors, equivalent to martyrs/saints, who reside in the spiritual domain. The buildings are iconized with totems that represent the divine roles of different clans. Attributes of African gods, goddesses, and ancestors responsible for diverse societal undertakings are displayed in the worship environments. At the shrines, people commune with the voices of their ancestors, stored in books, visual displays, and audio devices, to listen to wise instructions, stories, and proverbs, and to perform rituals that enable them to attain mystical energy ([42]).

The shrines, people’s dressings, and household articles are beautified with moral formation colours. Red colour represents the continuity of life in the blood of ancestors. Black is symbolic of painful past experiences and inspirational struggle to uphold life-sustaining communal values. White is symbolic of a successful transition to life beginnings. It is such African heritages that need to be amalgamated with Christianity and Islamic colours to shape the morals of school-going children in Uganda ([12]).

Furthermore, every African tribe consists of clans that are defined by totems. Totems are plants and animals whose characteristic colourings are paralleled by unique contributions of a specific clan to the development of society. For instance, the parrot in certain tribes is symbolic of eloquent public persuasions. The crow is a symbol for wisdom in building social networks. A buffalo stands for industriousness. Totems are regarded as food taboos by the concerned clans. Any person who identifies with a particular taboo across tribes in a given geographical location is regarded as a blood relative, and as such, marital relationships are discouraged. Animal tails held in the hand, animal-skin/feather-striped dresses, and walking sticks from an individual’s totem are symbolic of cultural royalty ([42]).

In addition to totems, seeds such as coffee and kola nuts are offered to strangers and eaten as part of the covenant sealing of friendship, acceptability, and peace. Next are beads, which, when joined in different shapes and dressed around the neck, on the forehead, or on the arms, are symbolic of romantic love relationships married, searching, or engaged ([12]).

Other African symbolisms are talking musical instruments. The instruments are symbolic of a particular tribe’s uniqueness. When musical instruments are sounded, ancestors are invoked. Response to musical melodies in correlation with words, actions, dancing, stirring of the soul, and deep emotional cries transports people to communicate with the ancestors and gods in the spiritual domain ([13]).

To the contrary, to shape the morals of school-going children in Uganda, teachers are empowered with skills in educational psychology to support children’s learning ([18]), but such approaches are European-constructed behavioural management theories. On a sad note, the African moral values shaping approaches are not reflected in the education curriculum, the Teacher’s Child Life Skill Handbook, and the Teacher’s Free Corporal Punishment Handbook.

Teachers in Uganda are of African descent, but not all African cultures use the same yardsticks to shape the moral values of children. However, there are cross-cutting moral value-shaping yardsticks, such as storytelling, wise instructions from African elders, taboos, totems, and collective responsiveness, that Africans utilize ([8]). If then, moral values are to be adequately inculcated in the children, then Africanised Christian-Muslim values need to be incorporated into the Teacher’s child-skilling and free corporal punishment handbooks. In this way, teachers will serve as classroom chaplains.

But before teachers take on the role of classroom chaplains, they need to undergo professional training in Africanised Christian-Muslim ecumenism engagements. Knowledge of religious ecumenism is important in that schools house diverse interfaith and intra-faith religions. Certainly, if an Africanised Christian-Muslim chaplaincy curriculum is crafted by the government and teachers are equipped with chaplaincy moral-sharpening skills for young people, then the incidence of moral decadence in academic institutions can be minimized.

Nonetheless, for the Africanised Christian-Muslim chaplaincy moral-shaping curriculum to be effective, the government of Uganda needs to get religious leaders, educationists, and cultural leaders on board to develop a staged Africanised Christian-Muslim ecumenical religious subject. The process of developing an Africanised Christian-Muslim chaplaincy curriculum is likely to be expensive in terms of time, logistics, political will to cement Christian-Muslim relationships, community acceptance, the development of common African-Christian-Muslim moral formation values, and the training of personnel. However, with patience and persistence, if the endeavours are championed by the government and piloted at a snail’s pace, then the successes registered can be accepted by the general public.

Definitely, if a pluralistic society that respects religious diversity is to be built, then the Africanised ecumenical Christian-Muslim religious subject needs to be compulsory at all levels of academic advancement.

Within Uganda’s education policy systems, there exist Senior Women and Senior Men teachers tasked with offering counselling services to learners ([24]). Such a good government initiative needs to be strengthened by ensuring that such teachers are theologically trained in Africanised Christian-Muslim ethics, well remunerated, and elevated to serve as the school’s overall chaplains, whose duty would be to handle challenging situations involving the moral shaping of children that may not be managed by classroom teachers.

To ease chaplaincy work in schools, learners’ handbooks need to be crafted to align with Africanised Christian-Muslim life skill development lessons. These books need to be given to learners at the age of transition to the literacy stages. Once a book reaches the hands of learners, they are most likely to engage with the Africanised Christian-Muslim voices reflected in stories, taboos, legends, myths, and proverbs. In addition to the books, the school learning environments need to be iconized with visual displays that inculcate moral values from biblical, Qur’anic, and secular perspectives, incarnated in African moral formation perspectives.

Beyond the school learning environment, character formation milestones among indigenous Africans are marked by livestock and monetary rewards joyfully given to outstanding character achievers. The prestigious rewards are aligned with ritualistic festivities. The ritualistic celebrations are characterised by the sharing of communal meals, symbolic drumming, and the projection of carefully crafted music. Songs that inspire: life transition responsibilities, respect for elders and social order, hard work, innovative thinking, enterprise engagements, family life management, communal responsibilities, courage to confront life challenges, and striving to attain fortunes associated with the observance of cultural social traditions; are reflected in music melodies, expressed in dancing styles, and responded to loudly by every participant ([27]). This means that to strengthen the moral fibres of school-going children, annual festivities, coloured with African child moral psychological empowerment techniques distinct to the diverse Ugandan cultures, need to be encouraged by the government and organised by schools.

8. Conclusion

Unlike a child’s home environment, school learning environments are equipped with the tools necessary to nurture young people’s morals. Young people spend many more days interacting with teachers than with their caregivers, and as such, schools are expected to shape their moral outlook. However, the moral decadence among school-going children in Uganda is on the increase. Many young people are involved in drug and substance abuse coupled with sexual immorality. Such involvements have resulted in irreparable physical and community life damages. If there is no deliberate step taken by the government to ensure that Christian and Muslim chaplaincy philosophies are Africanised, amalgamated, and implemented to minimise the moral degeneration of learners in the academic institutions in Uganda, then the country will continue registering high incidences of mental illnesses, violent strikes in schools, school dropouts, juvenile criminalities, and teenage marriages.

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