ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a process model of moral education consistent with a constructivist view of children as collaborators in their own development. In an effort to foster full character development, this model balances a Platonic concern for cognition with an Aristotelian concern for moral action. Teachers are encouraged to develop children's self-respect with reference to their prosocial behavior as well as achievement; their capacity for social perspective-taking; moral reasoning; empathy; the skills and attitudes needed for social cooperation; and stable, character dispositions to respond to varied life situations in moral ways. As means to these goals, four interlocking classroom processes are advanced and illustrated: (1) Building moral community and self-esteem; (2) Cooperative learning; (3) Moral reflection; and (4) Participatory decision-making.
A teacher in a suburban school system describes her fifth graders:
It's a difficult class. Lots of behavior problems. One problem is that the class is being led by the wrong kind of leader. I've got two really tough kids; during recess they're part of a small gang of boys who terrorize others kids on the playground. When they're confronted, they say, “We were just kidding.”
There's a lot of name-calling in the class. Boys who aren't tough or athletic get called “fags.” The name-calling has been hardest of all on the three Japanese children, who get called “egg roll,” “wonton soup,” and other such names. It got so bad that one Japanese boy was terrified to come to school. Boys also call girls 144names—”fat,” “pancake face,” and the like. They don't do it when I'm around, only when I'm not. Says a kindergarten teacher in a rural community:
I started teaching a few years ago. I was amazed at what these 5-year-olds call each other—“dummy,” “stupid,” “queer,” “homo.” They quarrel, bicker, can't play together. “She took my marker!” “He pushed me!” Today I had a girl hit in the head by a swing because another child pushed her.…
In moral education, the question has been debated, is morality a subject to be studied or a process to be experienced? It is clearly both. We can study—think about, research, debate—moral questions just as we can study scientific or any other kind of questions. But because morality has to do with how we live our lives in relationship to other people, the most basic source of our morality is our social experience.
Social experience, however, can be for good or for ill. The fifth-grade and kindergarten classrooms just described indicate that children, left to their own devices, do not necessarily interact in ways that are conducive to the moral progress of the group or its individual members. Children have the capacity for both prosocial and antisocial behavior. Their social environment influences which tendency is brought to the fore.
How can the classroom be structured so as to elicit children's capacity for positive social interactions? How can those interactions be used to stimulate moral character development? How can the conflicts that occur even in a cooperative environment be made the occasion for moral growth? What are reasonable goals for moral education during this period of children's development? These questions provide the focus of this chapter.
