Midnight Mutterings | Kohlberg’s stages

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

Recently, I stumbled across (on the web) mention of Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development. I realized I hadn’t thought about his work in decades and so I took another look. Here’s one article describing Kohlberg’s work:

https://practicalpie.com/kohlbergs-stages-of-moral-development/

I think, those decades ago, I swallowed the information whole cloth, possibly in stages I and 2, when my self interest (stage 2) meant I needed to learn the material and remember it long enough to write a reasonable paper (which I do not recall in detail now) to pass the graduate course with a decent grade. And there’s my stage I response: avoiding the punishment of not doing well in the class.

Ah, if only life were so simple.

In my current stage of being, I’m still trying to understand the actions and reactions of myself and others to public and private events. Kohlberg’s teachings don’t help me as much as they once did. For example, I now have to take my and others’ inward responses and outward actions in a way my earlier self assumed they were more or less the same.

In my earlier life it was easy to give my all (including my money) to support whatever thing I and the people I respected were confronting. The money part was easy as there wasn’t much to think about and the future was wide open. Yes, I had family, children and friends, but we were all the in same bubble, looking out into the world from that safe cocoon. Now my own future is contracted as well as my bubble. And I understand that not everyone, even my near and dear, have had the same experiences and have not necessarily reached the same conclusions I have. (Of course, that has always been true, but I recognize it more clearly now.)

Now that I am thinking about Kohlberg specifically again, I am recalling personal events that are interesting to dissect retrospectively. Here’s one of my favorites that occurred several decades ago.

Two children six years old (which I am going to call A and B to protect their genders as ‘they’ seems too confusing in this context) are in the classroom. Child A has surreptitiously taken and eaten B’s snack. B is in tears, understandably brokenhearted, angry. I find B another, less attractive snack, and partially mollified, B joins the class at recess.

I asked A to stay behind for a moment. A is clearly in the wrong in this case and I want to do something, not to punish but to try to clarify the situation. I, on principle, do not require children to apologize for misbehavior as, in my mind, it only teaches them to lie, to not take responsibility. To say some practiced words to get them out of the situation. So I asked A, as gently as possible to tell me what had happened. A looked me straight in the eye and simply stated, referring to B’s snack: ‘Looked good.’ We had a mild discussion about B’s point of view in the situation and I sent A to join the group.

The situation, to me, was a clear example of Kohlberg’s stages One and Two. Crime and Punishment, and Putting One’s Interests in Primary Position. And a fair bit of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

And I do sometimes think of our current POTUS and how he seems to me to frequently reside in Kohlberg’s Stage Two, even expressing it aloud from his prominent podium. How many years ago was it that then-candidate Trump seemingly accurately bragged that he ‘could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single vote.’ (Alas, I cannot punctuate that sentence.)

Kohlberg states that only a small percentage of the population reaches Stages Five and Six. What is not clear to me is whether Kohlberg was speaking of thinking or practice, when he refers to reaching a particular Stage of Moral Development. Unfortunately’ Kohlberg drowned in Boston Harbor many years before I could have asked him.

The following Wiki article addresses some of the questions I have raised here. Yes, I should have read it first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg