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Role of family, society and education in inculcating values - Part 2
3.0 ROLE OF THE PARENTS IN DEVELOPING VALUES
Parents or home plays a dominant role in educating a child.
Adult behaviour: Children usually model their behaviour on the behaviour of the parents and that of other adult family members, with whom they frequently come into contact. Honesty and lying, for example, are child behaviours commonly influenced by parents’ own behaviour, say psychology professors at Arizona State University, Nancy Eisenberg and Carlos Valiente. We know this by common intuition also. If a child sees her father lying all the time, she may start assuming that to be the normal behaviour.
Children and adolescents are more likely to exhibit acceptable prosocial behaviours and moral judgment, such as empathy, sympathy and sharing, if their parents do. Otherwise, it is very tough for them to do so.
The influence of siblings: Sibling behaviour, and how parents respond to it, contributes to moral development in younger children. An older sibling might set and maintain moral standards and provide advice for younger siblings. How siblings interact with each other can also influence morality and prosocial behaviour by teaching how to interact in social relationships. These types of interactions can help a child learn sharing, problem solving techniques, communication patterns, and conflict resolution skills that are fair and not hurtful to others.
4.0 ROLE OF SOCIETY IN MORAL DEVELOPMET
Modern societies have partially differentiated the political from the moral domain, developing areas of superficially moral-free political pragmatism. This is reflected in the popular distinction between “political” and “moral” questions: pragmatic compromising is considered acceptable in the former but unacceptable in the latter. A key mechanism for creating these relatively moral-free areas of politics is framing the issues in terms of continuous variables, first of all money. Continuous variables invite compromise and take the moral sting out of the issues. The moral difference between alternative tax-hike proposals of 2% and 4% is not obvious, and a compromise is generally welcomed. However, the absence of conspicuous morals in the political sphere of power-play and haggling is possible only on the basis of a widely-shared and unquestioned background belief that such politicking is justified within the given parameters.
4.1 Kohlbergs’ stages of morality
The preconventional period (Moral Stages 1 and 2) begins in early childhood and extends through elementary school. At Moral Stages 1 and 2, people justify actions in terms of avoiding punishment and obtaining rewards. At these stages, people are particular persons (“myself” or “my parents”) who do particular things (“If I don’t keep my promises, then my parents won’t trust me anymore”). Adults generally consider the moral reasoning of this period inadequate.
The conventional period (Moral Stages 3 and 4) begins at the onset of post-elementary school education and extends across the life-span of all but a small portion of the population. This period generates the conventional norms of adulthood. Reasoning at each stage of this period contains enough logic that it can find its most elaborate expression in some current adult philosophy.
At Moral Stage 3, the Group stage, action is justified in terms of the reputation and characterization of the groups or individuals that are involved. Groups and people can, for instance, be good or bad, nice or nasty. Action is often judged on the basis of groups’ or individuals’ underlying sentiments or motives. Role and person may be confused.
At Moral Stage 3/4, the Bureaucratic stage, the reasons given for labeling an action as fair and good are logical and abstract. Bureaucratic norms, laws, rules, and regulations guide behaviour and are seen as “given”; they cannot be changed to fit particular situations or individual needs. Role and person are no longer confused as they were at the previous stage.
At Moral Stage 4, the Institutional stage, the yardstick for evaluating the morality of an action is the preservation (or destruction) of a system—or a society. Norms, laws, rules and regulations now form a logically coherent system. Societal law is seen as a meaningful way of regulating rights or duties of individuals or groups. People at this stage reason in terms of how an action would affect their individual role and status within the system, or how it would affect the system’s capability to function. Hence, there are tensions between societal and personal rights, and between societal and personal duties.
The postconventional period (Moral Stages 5 and 6) begins sometime after adolescence; however, fully postconventional thinking and action appear only after early adulthood (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987). Some contemporary philosophies use postconventional arguments. In fact, Armon (1984b, 1989) has reinterpreted philosophical debates in terms of conventional versus postconventional arguments. In any known society, only a small portion of members achieve postconventional stages of reasoning.
At Moral Stage 5, the Universal stage, universal abstract principles form the basis of moral and political action. They emerge from notions of universal human rights and dignity. These principles have been articulated by members of a number of modern societies (Reiser et al., 1987). They have found their fullest expression in the works of philosophic, political, and religious thinkers. For example, a principle in Rawls’ (1971) theory of justice posits that actions should not worsen the situation of the least advantaged.
Moral Stage 5 principles are universal and general in their application, irrespective of the particular persons affected. At this stage, society is seen first as a creation of individuals and second as the environment in which people develop. Emphasis on the interdependence between individuals and society reconciles the dependence stances and the corresponding independence stances of the previous stage. Moral Stage 5 principles not only serve the interest of individuals but also that of society. From a developmental-stage perspective, the principles coordinate the rights and the duties of the individual with those of society. The methods of decision-making are due processes ranging from lotteries to voting, with a preference for joint decision-making. Unconventional decisions may be sanctioned as long as they appear reasonable in the light of higher principles.
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