For a few moments this evening, I sat in class pondering, "What are we actually debating about here?" On the literal side, I grasp all of the concepts that were brought up. I guess what we discussed is just the progression of morality issues through time, but what bothers me about the discussion is I am not sure if people understand what they are getting themselves into when they are to become teachers in the schools of today's society. As for myself, I am a white female. The morality issue of whether or not I was going to hit someone or strike back was never in issue. Even in New Orleans. I guess no one (thankfully)has ever wanted to hit me. I come from a middle class family of all girls. My point here is that I knew even without the speech that hitting is/was wrong. I assist in teaching photography classes to high school ESL kids. One of the assignments was for the kids to write a narrative about a personal memory. The stories I heard yesterday were ones I will never forget, and at the same time one in particular had to do with a young man's morality. This student is now 17 and a senior, but when he was younger, in his native town, he was in a gang. The student morally knew and knows that gangs were/are bad, but in a Darwin-survival-of-the-fittest way, had no choice but to be in a gang. The particular story he told was a circumstance in which, in a gang related incident, he was put in jail at the age of 14 for a crime, murder none the less, that he didn't commit. At 15 he was let out for good behavior, but after he was out, his gang tried to get him back. Once you are in, you are in for life, or get killed. So he escaped to America. What he went through before the murder, what he went through in the jail, and what he has gone through since then are all issues hopefully none of us will ever face. He is very candid about this story, with many more details that I do not feel it is my MORAL obligation to tell.
Point here: kids/students, I feel, do know the basic rights and wrongs in our society. But I really feel that worrying about one student hitting another-though not to be trivialized-is not as significant as other issues that may be going on in these kids pasts and presents. As teachers, we would be remiss if we neglected these facts.
I guess my main thought in all this digression is that as teachers we will be faced with many issues that Dewey's classrooms and peers would have never had. Does this make anyone's opinion or baggage more or less right or wrong? That's up to the individual to decide. Maybe I did miss the point of the class discussion on morality. I didn't touch base on the morality of robbing a bank; that is worse than hitting I guess. I can only hope that with all of the craziness going on in society today that worrying about one student hitting another is the worst situation I will be faced with in my own classroom.
5 comments:
The discussion was interesting to me in the sense that everyone who spoke out in class about the issue seemed to share Dewey's view. All comments were based on society and its rules. I do somewhat feel this way also and find Dewey's philosophy very insightful. I just needed clarification that Dewey does not believe that we have inherent moral views and strong feelings that are not influenced by society. I also think that experience and society will mold individual moral views. Religion is a perfect example because a lot of moral views may be molded by religion. Something inside me just tells me that there is something in us that goes beyond society and rules (and I'm not talking about obeying or breaking rules). I'm talking about an untouched and unshakable foundation of moral views as minute as it may be.
I agree Jose. Sometimes I lose focus when I am trying to make a point and ramble. I enjoyed the Dewey text greatly and would like to read more of his works and/or philosophies.
It is ironic that I accused Dewey of being naive regarding student behavior and issues and, yet, we did some of the same in our discussion. Thanks for reminding us of that, Audrey.
Re: Dewey and morality, a point I may not have made strong enough is that, for Dewey, moral beliefs are secondary to moral activity and moral activity is always, to some extent, transactional. That is, we certainly have moral beliefs -- do not lie -- but those beliefs, like any beliefs, only have meaning when/if they are involved in activity. Lying is a complex and complicated issue, and so our do not lie belief will be actualized in different ways in different situations even if that belief is regarded as unshakable.
Excellent post.
I definitely see your point. Especially when we see kids plotting against their teachers, and articles about the socioeconomic status of our area. Poverty levels and drop-out numbers are high. S.C. has fallen to the bottom of the barrel in child advocacy according to the Herald newspaper. Obviously we will be teaching children with a wide variety of backgrounds, and sometimes I think we are given a sunshine version of the classroom.
As for the morality according to Dewey, I do think he would see it somewhat as a learned behavior according to social environment. That is not necessarily my own belief. I think that there are things that we know are right or wrong that are innate feelings. The question I have is, is it really John Dewey's responsibility or prerogative to answer the question of morality?
I think this discussion is going to connect into to our next reading on ethics. It reminds me of what I would consider levels of maturity defined in 2 stages of behavior: not doing something 1-because you might get caught, or 2-because it's wrong.
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