CHAPTER OUTLINE—November 27, 2010
TITLE: ETHICS FOR CHILDREN BECOMING ADOLESCENTS
Jerome S. Allender and Donna Sclarow Allender
MESSY ETHICS
Chapter 1: In-between Laws and Compassion
Chapter 2: Right Versus Right
Chapter 3: Conversation
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
Chapter 4: The Many Faces of Bullying
Chapter 5: Community Ethics
Chapter 6: Work Ethic
Chapter 7: Global Concerns
COLLABORATIVE TEACHING
Chapter 8: You Are the Ethics Teacher
Chapter 9: Learning Ethics by Teaching Ethics
Chapter 10: An Exhibit
2
0CHAPTER OUTLINE—September 27, 2010
TITLE: ETHICS FOR CHILDREN BECOMING ADOLESCENTS
Jerome S. Allender and Donna Sclarow Allender
******
MESSY ETHICS
Chapter 1: In-between Laws and Compassion
Laws, majority rules, minority concerns and compassion are all apart of ethical
behavior, and often combinations of them come into play at the same time.
Ethical behavior requires learning how to choose and blend these viewpoints. It’s
messy. Children, particularly, need opportunities for thinking about, discussing,
and acting upon ethical decision-making with these different viewpoints in mind.
It also helps to pay attention to the specifics of the injustices that they feel. In
these ways, we can provide guidance for dealing with problems that directly are
affecting children’s lives. This then becomes the foundation of ethical behavior
now and later in life. Learning to negotiate the messiness, rather than attempting
to be righteous, helps them and us to abide by our decisions.
Chapter 2: Right Versus Right
Believing that both sides of a conflict are in the right provokes dilemmas—in the
grey areas of ethical inquiry—that necessarily create confusion. Mistakenly, the
standard goal of studying ethics is to help young people to make simple choices
between right and wrong. Knowing right from wrong is usually not the problem for
young people. Acting on this knowledge is the difficulty. But more difficult, yet
instructive for acting ethically are the situations that require arbitrating where right
versus right. It is for national and global conflicts; it is as much a part of children’s
lives in their homes, schools, and playgrounds. To recognize that conflicting
views are normal even if problematic and potentially generative is good learning.
3
Chapter 3: Conversations
The study of ethics requires conversation that includes thinking, talking, listening,
and most importantly, an openness to change. Ethical knowledge is much more
than a set of rules. It is the opportunity to articulate one’s own thinking and be
understood. It carries the responsibility to imagine that what one is hearing is
plausible—what is called, in contrast to a methodology of doubt, a methodology
of belief. The goal is to grow with others in ways that reflect change in each and
everyone who is participating. Understanding ethics and learning to behave
ethically is a group effort. Learning focused on the individual will transmit the
words but not their impact in relationship.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
Chapter 4: The Many Faces of Bullying
Tackling problems that are facing children right now can arouse engaging
conversations. These conversations might be antagonistic, even hot, but for sure
the talk is fertile ground for approaching the topic of ethics. Bullying is not just
one big student threatening or being violent with one smaller child. It can emerge
out of teasing, exclusion, slandering, what we call othering like racial and sexual
slurs, threats of all kinds, and anything else meant to intimidate. There is
abundant advice on how victims can confront bullies that include asking for adult
help. And, there are smart ways to help a victim and a bully to resolve the
injustice. The characteristics of every context are different. There is more to
know. There are the elements of successful confrontation: speaking out,
mediating, peer group influence. We have found that a community resolving its
own problems is best.
Chapter 5: Community Ethics
Ethics is about people getting along. This is what we say to our students, and no
one challenges this simple definition. In the long run, the aim is to achieve a
4
more complex understanding of interdependency. It is possible with this
agreeable starting point, plus the reading of compelling books and writing about
personal experience, to introduce more complexity over time. Utmost, toughminded discussions and activities within a small community of friends, fellow
students, troublemakers, and leaders can change behaviors. Cheating and
plagiarizing become irrelevant as children are called upon to voice their personal
thoughts. The power of the community is best understood in action, particularly
with adolescents—who are inclined to act strongly for ill or for good.
Chapter 6: Work Ethic
Developing a work ethic is less about social interaction than it is an internalized
sense of responsibility. Yet, without this development, other kinds of ethics are
seriously handicapped. They all require commitment, and this is what a work
ethic fundamentally is. Addressing global concerns, bullying, and community
dysfunction requires diligent attention. Furthermore, the work involves
confronting conflicting knowledge, desires, and goals—essentially an internal
process, not a social one. To learn about commitment, we have found that
children must be engaged in a mix of academic work and personal expression
that is clearly experienced as hard work, including the completion of quality
academic work within a reasonable length of time. Commitment in this way
becomes a building block for ethical thinking and behavior.
Chapter 7: Global Concerns
Communities and schools everywhere sponsor programs whose goals address
problems that are insurmountable without worldwide participation. Children’s
involvement in conserving the planet’s resources, protecting hum an rights,
addressing poverty, advocating for peace, and working toward righting any other
worldwide malaise is actually newsworthy. These activities, because they are
commonplace, broadly support a sense of ethical behavior. It is true that the full
success of global community work is usually not knowable, and it is likely not to
be accompanied by a complete understanding of the underlying ethics. The good
5
news, however, is that children will find the engagement in community activities
like these rewarding in and of itself, and opportunities for meaningful
conversations about ethics are enhanced—a fine basis for further learning.
COLLABORATIVE TEACHING
Chapter 8: You Are the Ethics Teacher
Responsibly or inadvertently, everyone reading this book is an ethics teacher. On
the job, at home, and everywhere else, we all are modeling connected, caring,
and concerned behavior or not. We always teach young people with our actions
and sometimes with our words. And other times, we are remiss in our failure to
act. To be responsible, it is best when we are not a know-it-all and not imagining
that the difference between ethical and unethical has to be clear-cut. Good
judgment requires an understanding of the contexts. Ethical behavior is best
assured when it is taught through guided conversations between children
themselves. No doubt, adults have to impose boundaries, all along, but these
boundaries should be ones that include the exploration of possibilities. No citizen,
parent, or teacher is excused from this work.
Chapter 9: Learning Ethics by Teaching Ethics
By the time children are of junior high age, they have enough knowledge to
engage younger children in their understanding of ethics. They are able to teach
if the tasks are simplified. They can readily assist in reading, writing, arithmetic,
and any other subject with their more advanced skills. This applies as well to the
teaching of ethics when, for example, an older child is asked to read and discuss
a story that has a moral at the end. It is not a difficult task. Junior high students
have demonstrated to us that they are able to take this responsibility seriously;
they are kind teachers who increase their own understanding of ethical behavior
by acting in the role of a teacher. Indeed, children like to teach.
6
Chapter 10: An Exhibit
Among all kinds of learning, the study of ethics is especially important. It can be
related to most every subject taught: science, social studies, humanities, history,
early reading and writing, you name it. It is more fully understood if it stands out
as the fundamental glue that holds a community together—allowing all other
learning to make better sense. To signify this importance, we concluded an
ethics course with the creation of an art exhibit. Teachers, art teachers, artists,
and the students collaborated in transforming ideas, definitions of ethics, and
essays into visual drawings, paintings and objects for installation at a local coffee
house. This Ethics Exhibit, with the visual enhancing the written, evoked two
weeks of community dialogue. Clearly, the children, and the adults, experienced
and expressed the many points of pride that they deserved.