QuotesShowing Kohlberg`sStages ofMoralityDevelopment
‘Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers and its first victim is the moral probity of your cause’ Steven Erickson
‘It`s not hard to make Decisions once you know what your values are’ Roy E. Disney
‘Learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers’ Vygotsky L.
‘Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure’ Albert Bandura
‘The principal goal of education is to create individuals who are capable of doing new things not simply of repeating what others have done’ Jean Piaget
‘You have freedom of choice you don`t have freedom of consequence’ Eric Chester
Ichose the above quotes on the basis that they are familiar and alsothe authors are familiar. That way, I can easily relate their contextwith their earlier school of thoughts so as to put the quotes inrespective stages of Kohlberg`s moral developmental stages. In myopinion, the choices of my quotes affected the results I acquiredfrom my interviewees. Some arranged the quotes depending on ease tointerpret, as well as familiarity.
Onanalyzing the results of my five interviewees, two females and threemales, the arrangement that was closest to Kohlberg`s moraldevelopment stages was a male`s. It was followed by the arrangementof a female then two males and the one that was furthest fromKohlberg`s moral development stages was a female. Therefore, myresults stood to prove that Kohlberg`s development stages reflect themorality of males more than that of the females. However, as notedabove, most individuals associated with familiar quotes as well asthose they would easily associate with through ease ininterpretation. That way, the arrangement was not entirely out of acritical analysis of all quotes. I believe a critical analysis wouldgive different results.
Oneof the females associated best with Jean Piaget`s quote ‘Theprincipal goal of education is to create individuals who are capableof doing new things not simply of repeating what others have done`which is more of caring morality. On the other hand, two malesassociated best with Eric Chester`s quote ‘you have freedom ofchoice you don`t have freedom of consequence` that happens to be ajustice quote. Therefore, out of the results, though it is notentirely accurate, we can conclude that females are more connected tocaring morality while males associate most with justice morality.
Useof quotes in moral development research has its advantages as well asdisadvantages. On the advantage, it is a reflection of how one bestunderstands the Kohlberg`s six stages of moral development. Quotescan be used to reflect a reality of stages in real life situation. Inaddition, one tends to explore famous writers who are familiar withthese stages hence, it stands out as an encouragement to havelearners have an internal motivation to understand the stages better.It is the application part of the theory studied in class. The use ofquotes also has some disadvantages. It is difficult to sort quotesdepending on the stages of moral development. Therefore, one may geta challenge in identifying the stage that a quote fits. Some quotesalso have hidden meaning that may not come automatically to simplyreading. They require a critical analysis for them to becomerealistic. Such quotes are termed as difficult to understand and mostpeople may prefer not to associate with them.