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 | ROBERT COLES |
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Questions asked in this forum:
Click here for Dr. Robert Coles' answers to your questions.
NewsHour Links:
February 21, 1997:
David Gergen interviews Dr. Robert Coles, author of "The Moral Intelligence of Children."
January 30, 1997:
David Gergen talks with Richard Murnane and Frank Levy, authors of "Teaching the New Basic Skills: Principles for Educating Children to Thrive in a Changing Economy."
January 22, 1997:
David Gergen talks with Anne Roiphe, author of "Fruitful: A Real Mother In The Modern World."
May 3, 1996:
A dialogue with David Popenoe, author of "Life Without Father" a look at fatherless families in America.
Outside Links:
"Moral intelligence means how we behave. It's moral behavior tested by life, lived out in the course of our everyday experience."
Dr. Robert ColesWelcome to a new Online NewsHour feature: Authors' Corner. This new service allows you to pose questions to the authors interviewed in the Gergen Dialogues broadcast regularly on The NewsHour. Our first guest is Robert Coles, a Harvard professor and noted child psychiatrist.
In his latest book, "The Moral Intelligence of Children," Coles urges that building moral intelligence is as important as encouraging other kinds of human development such as emotional, psychological and intellectual growth.
How do we promote morality in our students, in our children, and in ourselves?
According to Coles, we do it by living it out.
"I'm trying to insist... as a parent and a teacher and for all of us, that we remember that any lesson offered a child in (the) abstract...is not going to work very well. We live out what we presumably want taught to our children. And our children are taking constant notice, and they're measuring us not by what we say but what we do," he told David Gergen.
A specialist in field work in social psychiatry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dr. Robert Coles has been working with and writing about children for more than thirty years. His fifty-six books examine children caught in racial struggles, children of migrant workers, children and drugs, and children of poverty and privilege. His five-volume "Children of Crisis" series won the Pulitzer in 1973. The final edition in that series, published in 1990, is an extended study of the spiritual and religious lives of children.
Our forum asks: Can "goodness" really be taught? Does moral life begin in infancy, even before language? What should you do when a child cheats? How do children begin to interpret abstract religious and ethical philosophies, and how do they apply them to everyday life?
Click here for Dr. Robert Coles' answers to your questions.
- How can you prevent self-centeredness in your child?
- How can we guard our children against the influence of the media?
- How can we convince parents to be mentors, not buddies?
- How important is religion to raising moral children?
- What can a single, divorced mother do to raise a moral child?
- What lessons can we learn from nature?
- What is the best way to explain our moral failings to our children?
- Additional Comments.
A question from Elizabeth Drahman of Bangkok, Thailand:When does a child internalize lessons taught or modeled? We live in a multicultural educational community of an international school. We are trying to teach global humanist values and yet "cool American" kids seems to be the role models that are still most desirable. Can we link the self-centered attitute of a l0 year old who forgets rules and limits when around friends to breaching more important internal values when she gets older? People say that it is impossible to raise a moral adolscent in Bangkok. We are worried about how far will be too far. Aids is rampant as well as alcohol and drug abuse.
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
A child starts absorbing lessons even in the first year of life, and continues to do so thereafter. You can, indeed, challenge self-centeredness - by making the very connections between small moments of self-absorption and larger ones, and by letting the child know that it matters to you as a teacher to care for others.
A question from John M.Keller of State College, PA:
I teach university students about mass communication. While the current generation of students has lived closely with the mass media, particularly television, rock music, and new media technolgies like the Internet, they are convinced that they themselves can resist media influence, even if much of the rest of the society cannot. I notice that you recommend that we talk about societal influences like the mass media in a "we" mode rather than simply inveighing against harmful media influences. I'd like to hear some recommendations about how "we" go about doing that as well as to know more about what your studies show about media influence on the moral development of children. Thank you.
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
Children pay enormous attention to the mass media - they constantly make reference to what they have seen on television or the movies in the midst of our classroom discussions. What has worked best for me is to be self-critical - hence my use of the word "we." I will show children how I feel I have been influenced, even manipulated, by television or the movies. This way, I try not to be one more adult separating himself morally from children I try to let them know that this is a shared problem.
A question from Joan Carris of McLean, VA:
As a teacher, children's author and a regular guest in the schools, I have observed that few children have secure, knowledgeable parents. Today's parents try to be buddies, not mentors. How can we convince parents that it is consistency and fair, well-understood rules that give children security and eventually, happiness? It is truly a case of, "You'll thank me later!"
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
I agree with what you say - that parents have to have a kind of moral authority that is all its own. Moreover, we have to exert that authority at certain crucial times. I think that the best thing for us to do is to say that directly to our children - without apologies make the distinction to them between friends (and even teachers) and ourselves as parents.
A question from Paul Bowman of Papillion (Omaha suburb), Nebraska:
Although America remains the most religious Western society, my observation is that fewer and fewer people view the church as an important part of a child's moral education. My parents raised me as a Methodist, and I know it was very important to my education in matters of morality. I have many friends who are raising children, and are of different faiths or choose not to belong to any religious organization, whether Christian, Jewish or other. Where do people derive moral values for their children if not in a religious context of some sort? Is it not much harder to raise children to be morally aware without the support of a religious community? Aristotle derived a system of ethics without reference to religion, but I doubt that most parents are reading from the Nichomachean ethics to their children at bedtime.
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
I agree that religion can be a powerful force in the moral and spiritual life of children. But there are certainly many parents who managesuccessfully to bring up their children to be morally decent and spiritually reflective without recourse to a specific religious tradition. Spiritual inwardness can be developed by people who don't go to church or synagogue - even as some people who do go to church and synagogue may, in important ways, overlook the moral and spiritual significance and demands of the religious tradition they have embraced. In The Siritual Life of Children, I describe my own discovery of a powerful moral tradition in many agnostic and atheistic homes.
A question from Kate Riley of Columbus, OH:
I am a single mother of an adopted 6 year old daughter from Korea; my marriage was annulled (after a civil divorce - it still pains me to think of myself as divorced and Emily as the child of a broken marriage) two years after she arrived, after a bizarre legal resolution ( my husband had been leading a double life, and even committed bigamy - the responsibilities of a child brought too much pressure to bear on his facade of husband and father, so I resolved to dissolve the marriage) - he has no contact, legal claim etc - I even had her name changed to my maiden name, as this is the only family she has ever known. So, now I find myself dealing with the difficult questions - her status as an adopted child pales in comparison to the "NO DAD AT ALL" issue. She has good role models- a Grandfather and five uncles - but we live out of state. How can I best compensate for the cards she has been dealt, through no fault of her own, and foster a devotion to the values of family and marriage (we are devout Catholics). And how can I tell her the truth as she grows older, and shield her from the rude childhood jibes?
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
I think you can handle the problem you describe by being as honest and forthright as possible - the very moral energy that prompts you to ask the question of me will, I suspect carry you through with your daughter! If you pay attention to her psychological and moral life, and teach her by your own daily example (what matters and why) - well, you'll be way ahead, I fear, of all too many parents in traditional two-parent families!
A question from Joseph Siry of Winter Park, FL:
I am concerned that young people respect the natural world as the nourishing parent that it is as opposed to the playground or trash heap it often appears to be. How does nature provide us with a moral guide for renourishing one another and the earth?
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
I think we as members of the "natural world" have to take the initiative in showing the kind of respect you mention to our children. Children learn any kind of respect by seeing it lived out daily. As a matter of fact, I remember taking walks with my father, and seeing him pick up pieces of trash left in the woods where we walked. What a demonstration that was by him - a huge moral lesson I have never forgotten! He was, really, the "moral guide" you refer to in your question.
A question from Jennifer Phelps of Wayne, NE:
My husband and I are expecting in a few weeks and we have been doing a lot of thinking about the moral education of our child, especially since viewing your interview with David Gergen. My question is this: As a whole, I believe we are both morally intelligent people who practice our morality, but we are obviously not perfect. What do you think is the best method for explaining in an educational sense, our moral failings to a small child. By morral failings, I mean "Yes Mommy did tell daddy to tell the caller she wasn't here. She knows there was a better way to handle her desire to be undisturbed, but today, she just didn't use it. Instead she told a lie." We all do things we're not proud of. How do you teach children how much failing is allowed before a person becomes "immoral?"
Dr. Robert Coles responds:
That's a wonderfully candid question you posed me - and I think the very candor you can now summon will stand you in good stead! Put differently, I would keep in mind the very moral ambiguities you so pointedly addressed in your question, and when your child is old enough to observe them, in the sense of figuring them out, I would make a point of having a moral conversation of sorts with the child. I sure remember explaining to my children, as they got older, why at times I was asking their mother to say that I was not at home when in fact I was at home! I think we all have a way of understanding the difference between a hurtful misdemeanor and the kind of "white lie" you describe - but you're absolutely right, we ought to spell that difference out for ourselves first and later, at the right time, with our children.
Additional Comments...
William R. Fronk of Midland, MI
My compliments to PBS and David Gergen for the excellent and very helpful interviews. And I am very impressed with Dr. Coles. We really must do a better job in raising moral children. I feel it is impossible to really teach morality in the absence of any religion whatsoever. Almost any of the worlds great religions underpin moral teachings better than the distortions that result from our misguided efforts to "separate church and state." What we have really done is to attempt to live an illusion that there has never been any religion. Yes there are problems with teaching any religion, but I would like to see us try to incorporate a balanced approach to covering religious based morality. Morality without transcendental religious authority is building a house on sand. Keep up the good work!
Kathy Mele of Yuma, AZ
I am a first and second grade teacher in a multi-age classroom. For the past two years I have done away with a discipline policy in my classroom in favor of teaching lifeskills, ie, responsibility, friendship, caring, cooperation, patience, initiative, perseverance, etc. We find these lifeskills in each other, in the characters in books and in movies. The lifeskills have become a very positive way to focus on behavior. It seems that discipline policies such as assertive discipline focus too much on unacceptable behaviors without teaching the acceptable behaviors. Has there been any research done on the teaching of lifeskills in the classroom? I tell my students that these are the behaviors they will be using all their lives and they have become important to all aspects of their lives, not just the classroom. I am looking forward to your discussion on whether goodness can be taught. I think it can, when students see enough goodness modeled and can recognize it in others. . . and when it's purpose is broadened beyond the classroom.
Lizabeth Horton of Atascadero, Ca
Thank-you for your comments. I do believe worshipping together is very helpful. Always stress the fairness of giving every human being the potential to be your friend. If the grocery checker gives you back the wrong change by even a dime, give it back. Set the example of the right way to live. Be honest in all your dealings in life and the kids will see.
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