Analysis Of Robert Coles's I Listen To My Parents And I Wonder What They Believe

Superior Essays
People are shaped by the world. In today’s society, people are shaped through social media, surrounding environments, various religious views, and people’s personal worldviews and convictions. But where do these ideas come from? Why does one worldview differ from an opposing worldview, where do those morals come from? Robert Coles, a psychologist in the mid-nineteen hundreds, studied a few of these questions. In his work “I Listen to My parents and I Wonder What They Believe”, Coles had case studies where he interacted with children and the issues they faced. The question he dealt with primarily in his interactions was the question about morals. Adults assumed children did not have the mental capacity to think about strenuous ethical questions; adults subconsciously assumed children showcased innocents and brushed away deep questions children pondered. In Coles written work he exemplified children do have deep questions and …show more content…
They must learn right from wrong. They must have direction and boundaries instead of letting them loose to do as they please. Kids do not want that. Coles states “Children need and long for words of moral advice” (Coles, 2003, p. 441.), he has conversed with many kids and learned from their experiences and about their thought process that they must have a parents’ stability and support in their lives. Children long for the stern and helpful hand parents can provide for them, but parents fail at providing the helpful hand. Children cannot live wild and free to become morally educated to make ethical decision— “They need to be told what they must do and what they must not do.” (Coles, 2003, p. 441.). The young people require rules and standards to follow, along with consequences for when they stray from those rules. Parents must provide those rules and regulations and abide by the rules they create for their children. To do this parents must become morally strong educators for their children, which requires

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