Morality and ethics are some of the most important social features humans can have in today’s society. No literature can give an exact answer as to what is right or wrong in every situation but there are some works that give guidelines. Writings like The Allegory of the Cave and Kohlberg’s Moral Development: A Review of the Theory are examples of works that give a guideline to morality and ethics. When first reading these two articles they may seem unrelated but there are more similarities than one might think. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the narrator describes a situation in which there are human beings stuck in a cave. “…here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can
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Essentially, the separation of church, state, and education has resulted in a false sense of neutrality that overshadows teachings such as obedience to authority. This minimizes students’ understanding of justice and is, on the whole, an ineffective education because it does not teach students morality, rather it teaches them to be selfish. This separation has lulled educators and parents into a false sense of security, of which “the result has been a moral education curriculum which has lurked beneath the surface in schools, hidden as it were from both educators and the public” (54). Kolhberg explains the six stages of a moral education in accordance to different developmental stages of children. The first stage is that children are punished or rewarded based on the goodness or badness of their actions, very black and white. The second and third stages consist of the idea that correct action is basically how one satisfies their own needs and benefit themselves, while they must conform to what is approved of by their culture. The student must then learn to obey authority, as well as adhere to what is right based on what their society thinks as the fourth and fifth stages. The sixth and final stage is that of abstract principles that are considered to be universal but are rather against what is valued by their society’s law and values (54-55). The author states that the …show more content…
Both texts explain the detriments of only presenting one reality to people, in Plato’s it is the reality of the shadows, in Kolhberg’s it is the reality of societal conformity. Both discourage original thought and may end in, what Plato refers to, as murder of the individual. Basically, because students are only taught one sense of morality and rules, once they run across something that is different from their way of thinking they will immediately reject the idea and ostracize the principles of another society or way of thinking. Plato very blatantly describes the harm in this, by saying that the single-minded people will essentially kill off the original and different thought of the person who is actually enlightened to reality. The same applies to modern education. Children who are not taught how to reason through moral dilemmas will focus on a single-minded set of ideas that will cause them to reject other ways of thinking and discourage
Essentially, the separation of church, state, and education has resulted in a false sense of neutrality that overshadows teachings such as obedience to authority. This minimizes students’ understanding of justice and is, on the whole, an ineffective education because it does not teach students morality, rather it teaches them to be selfish. This separation has lulled educators and parents into a false sense of security, of which “the result has been a moral education curriculum which has lurked beneath the surface in schools, hidden as it were from both educators and the public” (54). Kolhberg explains the six stages of a moral education in accordance to different developmental stages of children. The first stage is that children are punished or rewarded based on the goodness or badness of their actions, very black and white. The second and third stages consist of the idea that correct action is basically how one satisfies their own needs and benefit themselves, while they must conform to what is approved of by their culture. The student must then learn to obey authority, as well as adhere to what is right based on what their society thinks as the fourth and fifth stages. The sixth and final stage is that of abstract principles that are considered to be universal but are rather against what is valued by their society’s law and values (54-55). The author states that the …show more content…
Both texts explain the detriments of only presenting one reality to people, in Plato’s it is the reality of the shadows, in Kolhberg’s it is the reality of societal conformity. Both discourage original thought and may end in, what Plato refers to, as murder of the individual. Basically, because students are only taught one sense of morality and rules, once they run across something that is different from their way of thinking they will immediately reject the idea and ostracize the principles of another society or way of thinking. Plato very blatantly describes the harm in this, by saying that the single-minded people will essentially kill off the original and different thought of the person who is actually enlightened to reality. The same applies to modern education. Children who are not taught how to reason through moral dilemmas will focus on a single-minded set of ideas that will cause them to reject other ways of thinking and discourage