Rethinking "moral"

By Gianna Suppa
College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
March, 2011

“Moral” is a word that I find very hard to define. As a class we agreed that being “moral” or having “moral” behaviors is know what is right or wrong. Who decides what is right or wrong? We also agreed as a class that what is “moral” is created by society but can be perceived differently from everybody. We discussed if it is immoral for a man to steal milk if he has a baby at home? Personally, I believe that he is doing what he has to do for his family and such an action is not immoral if this man is not lazy and has a job. It is a completely different story if he does not have a job because he does not want to work and then steels. After our class debated this for a while I realized that “moral” was a harder word to define then I thought originally.

I thought to myself do adolescents know what “moral” is? As a future teacher, I hope that my students are instilled with basic values and qualities to better society such as being kind, generous, loyal, hardworking, and trustworthy, etc. I feel that all adolescents could be capable of having such values if they were brought up in a safe and caring environment and had a role model in their lives. The role of a role model I feel plays a big part in adolescents doing the right thing, because if you don’t have anyone to tell you what you are doing or may do is wrong, then how will you know?

I consider myself to be a pretty moral person but I feel that everyone is human and makes mistakes sometimes. I would not say that I have never done something that is not immoral but if I did do something immoral, I could look back as an adult now and understand why what I did was wrong. As an adolescent I believe you learn from your mistakes and experiences so if you do something immoral it is a lesson for you in the future. Overall, I enjoyed our lecture and discussion in today’s class and I feel it helped to give me a better outlook on being “moral” and what “moral” actually means to today’s adolescents.