Moral realism or moral relativism—In the middle

Moral realism or moral relativism—In the middle

By Tisje Pediford
EDI 15A Psychological Perspective: Teaching & Learning

School of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
February 4, 2010

Today’s class was about Kohlberg and his moral development stages, as well as Piaget’s two types of morals. In Piaget’s moral realism there are three types of people. There are people with a morality of constraint. Then there are people who believe consequences count. Lastly are the ones who are strict. I myself am a person who believes in consequences and strictness. However, at the same time I do fall in the category of moral relativism because I feel that motivation/ intention count. But for the most part I am also very flexible/ accommodating/ understanding.

I feel that as a teacher you would have to fall in the middle of being a moral realist or moral relativist. For instance, there will always be that one child who always feels the need to want to act out in the class. You as a teacher have to be strict and enforce your rules on that one child so that they won’t want to act out again. However, there are other situations where the children might argue with each other and hurt someone’s feelings in the act. Once again you as a teacher have to be able to show that your understanding/flexible/ and accommodating to the child who’s feeling were hurt in the argument.

Kohlberg’s moral development stages were very interesting because I remember going through some of the stages. The punishment- obedience stage was one of the ones I remember most. I was the kind of child who had an evil mind but wasn’t too sure to act on them because of the consequences. It was like I knew it was wrong to do it but sometimes I would just want to chance it to see if I could get away with it and I never did I always seemed to get punished.