MacRichment
It's September still but had to add...

Have you ever read something that just opens your eyes? Yeah, you've been getting along just great but then you get enlightened through a book or another's opinion and it's like a REVELATION! I have had one and I want to share it!

I hope you will remember in my last post I mentioned (strongly!) a couple of books by Rafe Esquith for parents (& teachers!!). In them he mentions Lawrence Kohlberg's Six Levels of Moral Development as one of his tools for teaching for excellence. Kohlberg, a professor at the University of Chicago and later Harvard, subscribed to the ideas of Piaget, especially that development manifests in rigidly defined stages, one after the other, in succession, no variation. One article I read said he went about his research differently than other psychologists of his time - he looked for the process through which his research subjects came to their moral reasoning, not the product of it. When asked a moral question such as is it okay for a man to steal drugs if his wife needs them and he doesn't have enough money to pay for them, he looked at the reasoning behind the answer, not just the answer itself. He also suggests that few of us ever get to the 5th and 6th levels. I must have been distracted if his work was mentioned in any of my classes because I do not remember learning about Kohlberg & his theory before. Synchronicity (things come around when you need them)??

Anyway, the levels are:
Pre=Conventional
1. I don't want to get in trouble. This is beginning stage of knowledge of right and wrong, the stage you learn from the adults around you. Everyone starts here.
2. I want to get a reward. This is doing what is right for a reward, a sort of behavior modification.

Conventional
3. I want to please someone. I want to step outside of myself and please another: my teacher, my boss, my sweetheart. You can see the maturational progression but it still isn't necessarily a moral one.
4. I follow the rules. I believe that the United States is at this stage of development. Which is why we have to have so many laws (rules) to "guide" our behavior. And if we don't follow the rules, we will get in trouble.

Post-Conventional (Kohlberg felt few people actually reach these levels)
5. I am considerate of other people. Wouldn't the world be a great place if we all were at this level? We would have empathy for others, be considerate of other's feelings, possibly not need so many laws to keep us from harming others, maybe even to the point of considering the environment because it affects us all.
6. I have a personal code of behavior and I follow it. This is one's conscience and the need to satisfy one's own universal principals of right and wrong. Esquith likes to use Atticus Finch, a key character from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Phineas, from John Knowles' A Separate Peace as examples of people who exhibit Level VI behavior, but because it IS Level VI behavior, don't need other people's recognition for it.

Okay, so now you know my new soapbox! While trying to calm the students in the gym for carpool the other day, I told them about these 6 levels; that none of us want them to get in trouble, that we give them spots to recognize (Spotted! silently) that they are doing the right thing, that we know they would like to please us (though sometimes by the end of the day it's tough!), that they DO know the rules and that I want them to do what is right just because it is right without anyone being there to watch. They are still just children, so our (yours and mine) work is going to be continuing, an ongoing process!! What we have to do is guide them through all of the stages of moral development and help instill in them is their own concept of empathy for others and the universal right and wrong and their own strength of conviction to satisfy their internal conscience.

Go rest. This was heavy!
XXOO!!
MM