Peer Relationships and Moral Development
I have always had a hard time with the perspective concept. Even through perspective taking skills begin in early infancy, we see young preschool children still using false belief. I think that some people just do not get the concept. Some people will argue with you forever and not even try to see someone else’s point of view. I have a new understanding about the different levels listed in the focus on development on pg. 404. One of the things that I find interesting is the characteristic at the different ages on the levels of social perspective taking. As for understand the race and ethnicity issues I agree that many teacher are faced with helping all children understand and respect others. I believe that most of the prejudices come from the home before the child ever comes to school. Younger children in the first and second grades now have peers and sometimes older siblings that influence their ideas and prejudices, as well as the good roles that both peers and older siblings play for example: children learn to make decisions without adult help, enhance personal feeling of self-worth. As we all know not all peer involvement is positive. As a teacher I have seen how mean children can be to one another. Children tend to pick on children who are different than them. Changes in Adolescent Crowds is a new concept for me as I only work with young children, wow that is hard core. I can remember seeing the different crowds in my high school years. Peer popularity and rejection is a hard lesson that does in fact stay with you for life, I moved a lot as a child and never did fit into any groups at the many schools that I attended. My dad was in the services and my family moves based every 18 to 24 months. I agree with all the different forms of aggression listed on pg 424 and have seen kindergartners and first grades doing many if not all of these aggression behaviors. The chart on pg 429 was helpful in understanding some of the triggers that the aggression in some children. I like the idea that some teachers are being trained in conflict resolution and hopefully they can and will use different strategic plans to promote children to learn the same skills.
Moral development is certainly developed at school through the social action that they have with other students. We can all do more to help students learn about moral judgment. I found Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and his stages were useful in understanding the stages the student move through. I believe that moral reasoning is very much linked to behavior. Some adolescents will engage in illegal behavior to be part of the group, not a good idea, but teenagers think that they know everything, and parents/teacher/adults are just getting on their face. I try to create a moral community in my classroom, being a good role model for my preschoolers, helping them understand why we have rules.
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I agree, Cathy, that moral reasoning is linked to behavior, but as we've learned, your preschoolers are going to have a different take on moral reasoning than teenagers. Yes, teenagers sometimes think they have all the answers, but at the same time, it's best not to brush off their set of morals just because they're young. There are things that are illegal that teenagers do because their parents instill it in them - not because they're going through a particular stage where 'illegal stuff is cool.' Marijuana's up there - kids as young as ten smoke 'grass' because their parents think it shouldn't be illegal, so they develop a moral system that justifies it. The same thing goes, on the other side of the scale, for unrestricted gun rights. A teen may bring a gun to school because he thinks he should be able to, not because he's threatening someone[this happened when I was growing up in Kentucky at my school... he was sent home with a warning].
ReplyDeleteI suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's best not to paint an entire group like 'teenagers' as being all of one mind - as in, 'teenagers think that they know everything.' As the adults in their lives, we can bend and shape what they 'know' and what they think they know, but we should also realize that even though they're young, they might be able to teach us a thing or two.