Conflict, Contradiction,

and Contrarian Elements

in Moral Development
and Education
Conflict, Contradiction,
and Contrarian Elements
in Moral Development
and Education
Edited by

Larry Nucci
University of Illinois at Chicago

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conflict, contradiction, and contrarian elements in moral development
and education/edited by Larry Nucci.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-4848-7 (cloth)
1. Moral education—United States. 2. Socialization—United States.
3. Conflict (Psychology) in adolescence—United States. 4. Inter
action analysis in education. I. Nucci, Larry P.

LC311.C49 2005
370.11’4—dc22 2004047106
CIP

ISBN 1-4106-1195-7 Master e-book ISBN

 Contents

Preface vii

Part I: Resistance and Conflict at a Societal Level

in Relation to Socialization and Educational Practice
1 Resistance and Subversion in Everyday Life
Elliot Turiel 3

2 Taking a Stand in a Morally Pluralistic Society: Constructive 21

Obedience and Responsible Dissent in Moral/Character
Education
Diana Baumrind

Part II: Resistance, Conflict, and Contrarianism

in Youth: Implications for Education and Parenting
3 Who in the World Am I? Reflecting on the Heart of Teaching 53
William Ayers

4 Adolescent-Parent Conflict: Resistance and Subversion 69

as Developmental Process
Judith G.Smetana

v
vi CONTENTS

5 Risk Taking, Carnival, and the Novelistic Self: Adolescents 93

Avenues to Moral Being and Integrity
Cynthia Lightfoot

6 Adolescents’ Peer Interactions: Conflict and Coordination 113

Among Personal Expression, Social Norms, and Moral Reasoning
Stacey S.Horn

7. Negative Morality and the Goals of Moral Education 129

Fritz K.Oser

Part III: Moral Education When Social Injustice

and Youth Resistance Converge to Produce
Negative Outcomes
8 The Rise of Right-Wing Extremist Youth Culture 157
in Postunification Germany
Wolfgang Edelstein

9 Race and Morality: Shaping the Myth 173

William H.Watkins

10 Moral Competence Promotion Among African American 194

Children: Conceptual Underpinnings and Programmatic
Efforts
Robert J.Jagers

Author Index 214

Subject Index 222
 Preface

There has been a surge in interest over the past two decades in issues of moral
development and what is referred to as character education. That interest in the
topic of moral development and character formation has not abated. A quick
search on Amazon.com, for example, turned up 1,026 resuits for “moral
education.” Nearly all of these books present a picture of moral growth and
education that conforms to the general notion that children should get morally
“better” as they develop, and that moral education entails either a process of
gradual building up of virtue through socialization into one’s cultural norms
(Bennett, 1993; Lickona, 1991; Wynne & Ryan 1993), or movement toward
more adequate (better) forms of moral reasoning (Lickona, 1991; Nucci, 2001;
Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). This understandable emphasis on moral
education as moral improvement belies the role of resistance, conflict, and
contrarian elements in both the course of individual moral development and
moral “progress” at a societal level.
The focus of this volume, in contrast, is on the nature and functional value of
conflicts and challenges to the dominant moral and social values framework.
These challenges emerge in two realms that are not often thought of as relating
to one another. On the one hand are the conflicts, challenges, and contradictions
that children and adolescents raise in the process of their development. On the
other hand are the challenges and contradictions to the dominant social order
that occur at the level of society. Both sets of challenges can be viewed as
disruptions to normalcy that need to be repaired or suppressed. For example,
many social commentators have written about the current period as one of moral
decay or decline (Bennett, 1992, Etzioni, 1993). The source of this moral decay
is generally traced to the period of social upheaval during the 1960s and the
subsequent changes in family structure and public mores. These sentiments were
perhaps best expressed by my late colleague Edward Wynne (1987) when he
wrote that “By many measures youth conduct was at its best in 1955” (p. 56).
From the point of view of such cultural analysts, moral education is sorely
needed as an antidote to the perceived moral degeneracy of contemporary
society.
Alternatively, such resistances can be seen as essential to moral growth at an
individual level and moral progress at the societal level. It is the latter
perspective that has been overlooked in recent attention to children’s moral
development and education, and it is that positive role of resistance that the bulk
of the chapters in this volume zero in on. This is not to say that all of the

vii
viii PREFACE

chapters in this volume take a purely sanguine view of moral and social conflict.
In fact some of the chapters pointedly address the risks entailed by social
instability and adolescent antinomianism. On balance, however, the volume
presents a new look at the role of conflict and resistance for moral development,
and its implications for moral education.
The book is divided into three parts to help frame the discussion. The first
part directly takes up the issue of resistance as it occurs at a cultural level, and
the implications of such resistance for moral education and socialization. The
second part explores the normative forms of adolescent resistance and contrarian
behavior that vex parents and teachers alike. This discussion is within the
context of chapters that look at the ways in which parenting and teaching for
moral development can positively make use of these normative challenges. The
final part brings back the issue of societal structure and culture to illustrate how
negative features of society, such as racial discrimination and economic
disparity, can feed into the construction of negative moral identity in youth
posing challenges to moral education. The book concludes with a chapter
presenting an educational program designed to respond to such challenges
among African American youth in the United States.

RESISTANCE AND CONFLICT AT A SOCIETAL LEVEL

IN RELATION TO SOCIALIZATION AND
EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

The first section contains two chapters that explore the connections between
resistances at a sociocultural level and implications for moral education and
socialization.
In the first chapter, Elliot Turiel makes the case that resistance and
subversion are part of everyday life in most cultures, and that they are integral to
the process of development. Turiel argues that as an integral part of
development, it is necessary that moral education incorporate the ideas of
resistance and subversion into their programs. It is also necessary that they be
integrated into theories of social and moral development. According to Turiel,
most of our theories either fail to account for resistance, and largely treat it as
antisocial, or view it as unusual activity sometimes undertaken by those who
have reached a high level of development. By contrast, research has
demonstrated that social conflict and resistance based on moral aims occur in
childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Turiel draws on research done within
hierarchical societies in the Middle East, and from his own childhood
experiences growing up in the Mediterranean during World War II to illustrate
his points. His position is that especially among adults, conflicts occur over
 PREFACE ix

inequalities embedded in the structure of social systems: the inequalities

inherent in social hierarchies that allow greater power and personal entitlements
to some groups (e.g., social hierarchies based on gender, socioeconomic class,
ethnic or racial status). In their everyday lives adults come into conflict with
others and resist moral wrongs embedded in cultural practices that serve to
further the interests of those in higher positions in the social hierarchy.
Resistance frequently entails hidden and deceptive actions aimed at
transforming aspects of the social system judged unfair and detrimental to the
welfare of groups of people. Over the long term, conflict, resistance, and
subversion are sources of the transformation of culture.
The second chapter is by Diana Baumrind, who is widely known for her work
on children’s socialization in relation to patterns of parenting and adult
authority. In this chapter she combines those issues with a neo-Marxist analysis
of morality and social hierarchy. Many Americans given the outcome of the
Cold War have a knee-jerk response to anything labeled Marxist. In Baumrind’s
hands, however, the theory speaks to fundamental questions of moral relativism,
individual moral growth, and the definitions of moral progress and character. As
Baumrind argues, moral ambiguities and uncertainties affecting praxis are not
resolvable by appeal to either universalizable, certain, and fixed principles of
justice or to cultural norms, but arise from historically and personally situated
divergent worldviews that guide actual decision making as well as accepted
criteria for validating beliefs. Cultures then may construct radically different
moral codes and value systems. Rather than simply accept these irreconcilable
differences as a fait accompli, individuals and groups are obliged to adopt and
justify a standpoint that should then mandate their moral praxis. In cases where
power disparities privilege one group, one is obliged to take the standpoint of
the least advantaged. From Baumrind’s point of view, deontologists, such as
Kohlberg, fail to acknowledge sufficiently the plurality of real value systems
arising from irreconcilable worldviews, whereas culturalists fail to recognize the
multiple conflicting standpoints within a culture arising from divergent class
interests. She argues that the development of optimal competence and character
in children requires the cultivation of the ability to responsibly dissent and
accept unpleasant consequences, as well as to constructively comply with
legitimate authoritative directives. Baumrind reminds us that the authoritative
model of childrearing that she developed was to serve as a viable alternative to
both the conservative (authoritarian) model and the liberal (permissive) model of
childrearing. From this she makes the case that effective moral and character
education must coordinate flexibility, and adult authority in the face of the
inevitable and essential challenges from children and youth.
x PREFACE

RESISTANCE, CONFLICT, AND CONTRARIANISM IN

YOUTH: IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION AND
PARENTING

Five chapters explore the normative conflicts and contrarian actions of youth in
relation to peer relations, parenting, and moral education. Two of the chapters
deal primarily with schools and teaching, and three chapters focus primarily on
issues of youth.
In his chapter William Ayers presents an inspirational challenge to teachers
and schools to respond to the ethical dimensions of teaching. He employs
selections from media, poetry, and his own work with teachers to make the case
that all students bring a powerful, expansive question into their classrooms: Who
in the world am I? As Ayers makes clear, this question remains largely unstated
and implicit. It is, according to Ayers, nonetheless an essential question, opening
to the moral in surprising ways on several dimensions. It is a question on one
level of identity in formation, but it is also a question that can reveal issues of
social ethics as opposed to rule following, convention as opposed to moral
reflection, and misbehavior as a sometimes productive form of resistance. With
a captivating use of language and examples, Ayers concludes that educators who
are animated by this and related questions can find ways to resist the arid, half
language that dominates so much of the educational discourse, to activate the
intellectual and ethical aspects of classroom life more fully.
Ayers’s chapter, which could have been renamed “Talk With Teachers,” is
followed by Judith Smetana’s detailed, research-based account of the normal
process of adolescent-parent conflict that has its parallel in the classroom
resistances of students. Some theoretical viewpoints have stressed the
problematic nature of adolescent-parent relationships and have described
adolescents as normatively rebellious and as rejecting parental and societal
moral values. Smetana’s chapter presents an alternative view. She asserts that
adolescent-parent conflict (particularly moderate conflict in the context of warm,
accepting relationships with parents) is functional for adolescent development
because it promotes the development of adolescents’ greater agency and
autonomy. Conflict provides a context for the renegotiation of the boundaries of
parental and adult authority, transforming adolescent-parent relationships from
hierarchical to more mutual forms and allowing adolescents to construct a more
autonomous self. In support of her claims, Smetana presents a rich compendium
of research conducted with European American and African American families
demonstrating that adolescents’ resistance to adult authority is selective, limited,
and developmentally appropriate, and that although adolescents contest adult
authority in some domains, they continue to uphold parental and societal
authority moral values. This aspect of Smetana’s work is especially provocative
and important for moral education because it provides a clear analytic
 PREFACE xi

framework for knowing when to exert authority, when to negotiate, and when to
say “yes” when dealing with adolescent students. Smetana’s chapter moves
Baumrind’s agenda forward by more clearly defining the realm of authoritative
teaching, and more clearly identifying the moral domain.
Cynthia Lightfoot’s chapter extends the issues raised by Smetana by
exploring the functional role of adolescent risk taking. Lightfoot’s chapter
broadens the scope of inquiry that has examined the developmental significance
of risk taking by outlining and illustrating an interdisciplinary, theoretical
perspective from which adolescent risk taking is viewed as a moral enterprise. In
particular, she employs insights from interpretive developmental approaches,
including narrative and cultural psychology and literary theory, that permit an
exploration of adolescent risk taking as a meaningmaking process through which
different moral discourses are brought into dialogical contact. Lightfoot employs
Bakhtin’s distinction between a prior, acknowledged, authoritative discourse and
an emerging, experimental, internally persuasive discourse, to argue that
adolescent risk taking contributes directly to the further development and
articulation of the young person’s future social identity, as well as the awareness
that one has a social identity of moral consequence. The chapter makes liberal
use of examples from interviews to bring these issues to life. A notable aspect of
the chapter is Lightfoot’s account of the development of “low-rider” art among
Mexican American youth as a way of working through issues of identity and
morality.
Whereas Smetana and Lightfoot focus largely on the development of
individuals, Stacey Horn’s chapter addresses the problem of interpersonal
relations as they play out in the moral drama of peer exclusion and harassment.
Perhaps no single issue is as prevalent and as vexing for schools and teachers.
Horn’s chapter provides a theoretical framework for beginning to capture the
moral and nonmoral aspects of peer exclusion in ways that allow for teachers to
begin to sort out what components of such conduct fall within the legitimate
desire of children to control their own personal relationships and friendships,
and when such conduct goes over the line into psychological and physical harm.
Horn’s work demonstrates that children by and large have a moral framework
from which they interpret situations of peer exclusion, and that effective
educational attempts to regulate such things as bullying should be seen as an
aspect of a more general approach to moral and character education. Adding
complexity to this issue, Horn describes her recent work exploring issues of peer
harassment based on sexual orientation and gender expression.
As noted earlier, this section begins with a chapter written by Ayers, an
American educator whose focus is on ways in which teachers and schools can
make use of the positive tendencies of youth. The section ends with Swiss
educator Fritz Oser’s chapter, in which he develops the position that it is only by
engaging in moral wrongs and experiencing the effects of such wrongs on others
and on one’s self that genuine moral growth is possible. Oser’s radical view is
xii PREFACE

the result of a career of efforts to apply developmental discourse in classrooms

and schools. From those efforts and his reading of the research literature, Oser
concludes that moral discourse in the absence of a direct connection to negative
lived experience is superficial at best and wasteful at worst. In his chapter he
provides a critique of virtue-based character education as perhaps even more
benighted in its reliance on inculcation and traditional socialization. Oser’s
thesis is a rather simple one; that one can only grow from one’s mistakes. He
makes the point that all other areas of education, such as mathematics, anticipate
the negative as an explicit and necessary part of successful pedagogy. An
example of what Oser views as successful moral education entails making direct
use of lived moral conflicts such as peer harassment or theft as the basis for
genuine moral discourse. Through such discourse students are said to integrate
emotions within their moral judgments that serve to regulate future moral
conduct.

MORAL EDUCATION WHEN SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND

YOUTH RESISTANCE CONVERGE TO PRODUCE
NEGATIVE OUTCOMES

The final three chapters of the book explore cases where the social inequities of
society converge with normative youth resistance to produce negative outcomes
for the construction of personal identity and moral conduct. Each chapter
explores ways in which education can work toward the moral growth of youth
affected by these social cancers. Edelstein’s chapter explores these issues within
the context of German reunification. The remaining chapters by Watkins and
Jagers focus on racism in the United States.
This final section begins with German scholar Wolfgang Edelstein’s analysis
of the dismaying effects of reunification on some youth from the former East
Germany. As Edelstein describes the years since the downfall of the German
Democratic Republic and the reunification of Germany a xenophobic, racist, and
anti-Semitic youth movement has become increasingly, and at times,
murderously active, especially, but not uniquely, in eastern Germany.
Edelstein’s thesis is the conjoining of the two Germanys brought together two
greatly disparate economies that engendered both financial and personal
humiliation for scores of people from the former East Germany. The youth from
families who bore the brunt of this humiliation responded with personal anomie
and attendant moral deprivation. As an action of self-defense, these youth often
have banded together and treated other even more defenseless people, especially
Jews and foreigners, as objects of scorn and physical attack. Edelstein concludes
his rather sobering chapter with a discussion of approaches to moral education
 PREFACE xiii

that would reconstruct the personal identities and moral positions of these young
people.
William Watson follows Edelstein’s chapter with an equally sobering look at
the history of American racism as it has played out in the perspectives White
America has had of the morality of African Americans, Watson is an
educational historian and in his chapter he describes how many current views of
the morality of African Americans can be traced back to 19th-century “scientific
racists,” who argued that people of color were both intellectually and morally
inferior. As Watson argues, unable to conclusively “prove” genetic inferiority,
early 20th-century racist educators and eugenicists tenaciously clung to the
moral inferiority argument as a basis for subjugation of African Americans.
Watson develops the thesis that claims of moral deficiency have provided a
rationale for “deficit” theories and manufactured perceptions of people of color
for decades. In the chapter, Watson explores how this moral deficit argument
has been applied to the education of African Americans over the last 150 years.
Watson s chapter forms the backdrop for the chapter by Robert Jagers that
concludes the volume. Jagers’s chapter describes an evolving effort to promote
social and emotional competence development among school-age African
American children. The basis of his educational work builds from an analysis of
four racialized personal identities. These identities are discussed in terms of
oppression, morality, community violence, and liberation. The chapter explores
the developmental implications for children’s moral competence promotion in
school and extended hour settings. Jagers discusses student-teacher
relationships, curriculum content, and learning contexts as they relate to the
potential contributions of low-and middle-income children to the collective well
being of the African American community. This coordinated cultural approach
is described by Jagers as an avenue for engaging the normative resistance of
African American youth with its connection to reality-based judgments of the
inequities and injustices that remain within America’s racialized society as an
avenue for constructive moral growth.
Taken together, this collection of chapters presents a rich counterpoint to the
pictures of moral growth as the progressive sophistication of moral reasoning or
the gradual accretion of moral virtues and cultural values. Instead, we are
presented in this book with a series of chapters based on careful research that
moral life is not a straight forward journey, but rather a series of challenges,
setbacks, detours, and successes. What we also learn in chapters from Smetana
and Lightfoot, among others, is that the challenges posed by youth resistance,
including some of what amounts to risk taking, is a normative aspect of
development important to the establishment of autonomy and moral identity.
Finally, what we find, especially in the chapters by Turiel and Baumrind, is that
resistance to what is viewed by adults to be morally and socially right is often
morally justified. The task of moral education, as Ayers makes clear, is a
humbling endeavor. As we work to do what we think is best for the moral
xiv PREFACE

growth of our children and students, we must also keep one eye on ourselves
and an open mind to the prospect that their resistance to our values may indeed
be the more moral course.
—Larry Nucci

REFERENCES

Bennett, W. (1992). The de-valuing of America: The fight for our culture and our
children. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Bennett, W. (1993). The book of virtues: A treasury of great moral stories. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Etzioni, A. (1993). The spirit of community: The reinvention of American society. New
York: Touchstone.
Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and
responsibility. New York: Bantam Books.
Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Power, C., Higgins, A., & Kohlberg, L. (1989). Lawrence Kohlbergs approach to moral
education. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wynne, E., & Ryan, K. (1993). Reclaiming our schools: A handbook on teaching
character, academics, and discipline. New York: Macmillan.
 Part I
Resistance and Conflict
at a Societal Level
in Relation to Socialization
and Educational Practice
 1
Resistance and Subversion in Everyday
Life
Elliot Turiel
University of California, Berkeley

Opposition, resistance, and subversion are central aspects of social interactions

in most cultures that are largely neglected in most explanations of social and
moral development. The focus of research on moral development has been either
on socialization into the social system or on the types of judgments made at
different ages about matters like justice, welfare, and rights. In this chapter, I
present a position on morality that gives a central role to conflict, resistance, and
subversion in social relationships. Social relationships are many sided, entailing
the application of judgments from several domains. Even within the moral
domain, positive orientations to justice and concerns for the welfare of others
bring with them conflict, opposition, and resistance in the face of inequalities
and injustices. Resistance and subversion are common because social
arrangements and practices often embody inequalities.
Social resistance and subversion are, therefore, part of most people’s
everyday lives and have their roots in childhood. I discuss ways in which
resistance and subversion are manifested in childhood, become more salient in
adolescence, and are particularly common among adults in positions of lesser
power within social hierarchies—that is, people in lower social castes or classes,
minorities, and in much of the world, girls and women. Accordingly, moral
resistance is not reserved for those at supposed “higher” levels of development
or people supposedly classified as special or elite in their personal moral
characteristics. As part of everyday life, resistance is not re-stricted to organized
social and political movements. Social conditions embedded in cultural
practices, social norms, and societal arrangements motivate people to act.
However, this is not only in the usual sense of people acting in line with societal
expectations; social conditions evoke opposition, resistance, and subversion.

OPPOSITION IN CHILDHOOD AND ADULTHOOD

Martin Luther King, Jr. has long been recognized as a great moral leader who
spearheaded extremely significant changes toward social justice for African
Americans in the United States. However, King himself recognized that social

3
4 TURIEL

change is connected with the aspirations of large numbers of people affected by

societal injustices. As he put it in his famous letter from a Birmingham
(Alabama) jail (King, 1963), “We know through painful experience that freedom
is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the
oppressed…. Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for
freedom will come. This is what happened to the American Negro” (pp. 6, 12).
King wrote his letter while imprisoned for leading a nonviolent
demonstration in Birmingham, The letter was in response to a public letter sent
by eight prominent clergymen admonishing King for his civil rights activities. In
the response, King challenged religious and governmental authorities to support
protest and demonstrations to combat injustice. Conflict and tension, King
(1963) maintained, can serve positive moral ends:

I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but

there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for
growth…to create the kind of tension in society that will help
men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the
majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood, (p. 5)

King also levied a corresponding challenge to psychologists when he

addressed the American Psychological Association at its annual meeting in
1967. Recognizing the tendency for psychologists to focus on social adaptation
and adjustment, he pointed to the imperative to study ways it is not morally
beneficial to fit in socially. As he put it (King, 1968, p. 185), “There are some
things in our society, some things in our world, to which we should never be
adjusted. There are some things to which we must always be maladjusted if we
are to be people of good will.” Many explanations of social and moral
development are, indeed, tied mainly to social adjustment insofar as they focus
on compliance and internalization of societal norms. If tension in society is
needed for social change, and if resistance is part of everyday life, then those
theories have serious shortcomings. However, Piaget (1960/1995b) provided a
basis for an alternative view to compliance and in-ternalization in his
formulation of moral autonomy, by which he meant “that the subject participates
in the elaboration of norms instead of receiving them ready-made as happens in
the case of the norms of unilateral respect that lie behind heteronomous
morality” (p. 315).
Piaget proposed that the autonomous morality of late childhood is preceded
in early childhood by heteronomous morality, with its norms of unilateral
respect. Because norms are ready-made in heteronomous morality, young
children presumably do not oppose or defy authorities: “From this it follows, for
example, that if distributive justice is brought into conflict with authority…the
youngest subjects will believe authority right and justice wrong” (Piaget,
1960/1995b, p. 304). With regard to young children and the origins of morality,
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 5

Piaget’s proposition differs from my own. Young children begin to form moral
judgments that are not ready-made and that are not determined by authority,
rules, or the customs and conventions of society (Turiel, 1983, 1998, 2002).
Furthermore, the origins of opposition and resistance are in early childhood.
Young children do not accept authority as right when they contradict justice
(Laupa, 1991; Laupa & Turiel, 1986). As an illustrative example, consider the
judgments of a 5-year-old boy, as made in a study designed to examine
distinctions between the domains of morality (pertaining to welfare, justice, and
rights) and social convention (pertaining to uniformities coordinating
interactions within social systems). In that study (Weston & Turiel, 1980),
children from 5 to 11 years of age were presented with hypothetical stories of
preschools depicted as permitting certain actions. One example was that children
were allowed, in this school, to be without clothes on warm days (classified as a
conventional issues). A second example of an act permitted within a school
pertained to the moral issue of physical harm: Children were allowed to hit each
other. Whereas most of the children judged both types of acts as wrong prior to
the presentation of the hypothetical stories, the majority at all ages judged the
school rule regarding clothes acceptable and the one regarding hitting as
unacceptable. The findings of the study are consistent with findings from a large
body of research documenting that children’s moral judgments differ from their
judgments about conventions on a variety of dimensions (which I do not discuss
here). For the purposes here, it is judgments about authority in the context of the
study that are relevant. Consider the following excerpts of responses by the 5-
year-old boy. The first excerpt begins with his answer as to whether it is
acceptable for the school to allow children to remove their clothes; the second
excerpt begins with his answer as to whether it is all right to allow hitting.

Yes, because that is the rule. (WHY CAN THEY HAVE THAT
RULE?) If that’s what the boss wants to do, he can do that.
(HOW COME?) Because he’s the boss, he is in charge of the
school (BOB GOES TO GROVE SCHOOL. THIS IS A WARM
DAY AT GROVE SCHOOL. HE HAS BEEN RUNNING IN
THE PLAY AREA OUTSIDE AND HE IS HOT SO HE
DECIDES TO TAKE OFF HIS CLOTHES. IS IT OKAY FOR
BOB TO DO THAT?) Yes, if he wants to he can because it is the
rule.

***

No, it is not okay. (WHY NOT?) Because that is like making

other people unhappy. You can hurt them that way. It hurts other
people, hurting is not good. (MARK GOES TO PARK
SCHOOL. TODAY IN SCHOOL HE WANTS TO SWING
6 TURIEL

BUT HE FINDS THAT ALL THE SWINGS ARE BEING

USED BY OTHER CHILDREN. SO HE DECIDES TO HIT
ONE OF THE CHILDREN AND TAKE THE SWING. IS IT
OKAY FOR MARK TO DO THAT?) No. Because he is hurting
someone else. (Turiel, 1983, p. 62)

Even at the young age of 5 years this boy is of two minds about rules and
authority. With regard to clothing, he accepts the rules of the school as
stipulated, but with regard to hitting he does not. He judges permitting children
to remove their clothes as acceptable because of the rule and because the boss
(i.e., the head of the school) has the authority to impose the rule or practice.
When it comes to permitting children to hit each other, however, this boy is
unwilling to grant the boss the authority to institute or implement the rule. If we
looked only at this boy’s judgments about clothing, it might appear that he is
compliant (or heteronomous) about school rules and authorities. His judgments
about the act of hitting reveal that he makes discriminations between different
types of rules or commands and wants to place restrictions on the jurisdiction of
a person in a position of authority. In doing so, he expresses opposition to rules
and authority from a moral standpoint (autonomy).
The responses of this boy indicate that the origins of opposition are in early
childhood. Although that study was not designed to examine opposition, other
research has shown that children do engage in oppositional activities and get
into conflicts with siblings, peers, and parents (Dunn, 1987, 1988; Dunn, Brown,
& Maguire, 1995; Dunn & Munn, 1985, 1987; Dunn & Slomkowski, 1992).
These oppositional activities exist, in the same children, alongside positive,
prosocial actions and emotions.
Now consider two examples illustrative of opposition, resistance, and
subversion among adults—but implicate children as well. These examples do
not come from research, but from recollections in adulthood. The first are my
own recollections, and the second come from those of a sociologist from
Morocco, as reported in Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood
(Mernissi, 1994).
To place the first example into a cultural context, I need to provide some
personal background. I was born on the Greek island of Rhodes (my father’s
birthplace), where I lived until I was 6 years old. My family then lived in the
city of Izmir in Turkey (my mother’s birthplace) for 2 years. We then moved to
New York City. My contacts and knowledge of Greek and Turkish cultural
practices were maintained because we were part of a large community of people
who had immigrated from Greece and Turkey to New York, and because I went
back to those places for extended periods many times (I have also conducted
research in Turkey). The most relevant feature of cultural practices for the
present purposes is that, for the most part, men were in socially dominant
positions and women were in subordinate positions. In my parents’ generation,
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 7

women did not work outside of the home and men had almost exclusive control
of the family’s finances. Typically, women were given an allotted amount of
money (e.g., a weekly allowance) for household expenses.
In many respects, women were not content with the inequalities or the control
exerted by their husbands. One of the actions women took to subvert the
situation was to, when possible, put some money into places available to them
and secret from their husbands. Doing so involved elaborate deceptions, as well
as a fair amount of risk. Women had several reasons for maintaining secret
funds. It was done so they could have some control over their lives and make
purchases without the continual oversight of their husbands. It was done to have
resources to help members of their side of the family in times of need. It was
also done to ensure that resources would be available in the case of a husband’s
death. The last reason was particularly important because laws were highly
unfavorable toward widows.
The hidden activities I have described were not done in isolation. Women
conspired with other women they could trust. In addition, they often discussed
their concerns and activities with their children. The second illustrative example,
from Fatima Mernissi’s published childhood recollections, shared some of the
same features. Mernissi recounted stories from her childhood living in a harem
in the city of Fez during the 1940s (Mernissi, 1994). Before relating her story,
let me mention that our research has identified another domain that stands
alongside the moral and conventional—the domain of judgments about
autonomy of persons and boundaries of their jurisdiction (Nucci, 2001).
Children form judgments about various activities, including recreational ones
that are considered up to individual choice. Although resistance and subversion
are grounded in moral judgments, the personal domain can be part of it. When
personal prerogatives are systematically restricted in unequal ways, the
inequality can turn the personal into moral issues. This can be seen in Mernissi’s
story—which on the surface is about the desire of some women to listen to
music and dance. On a deeper level, the story is about how in everyday activities
there is commitment to combating injustices and inequalities, as well as defiance
of those in positions of power.
According to Mernissi (1994), the women, who were confined within the
walls of the compound they lived in, were prohibited from listening on their own
to a radio in the men’s salon; the men kept the radio locked in a cabinet. It
seems, however, that while the men were away the women listened to music on
that very radio. As it happened, one day Fatima (when she was 9 years old) and
her cousin were asked by her father what they had done that day. They answered
that they had listened to the radio. Mernissi told the rest of the story as follows:

Our answer indicated that there was an unlawful key going

around…indicated that the women had stolen the key and made a
copy of it…. A huge dispute ensued, with the women being
8 TURIEL

interviewed in the men’s salon one at a time. But after two days
of inquiry, it turned out the key must have fallen from the sky.
No one knew where it had come from.
Even so, following the inquiry, the women took their revenge on
us children. They said that we were traitors, and ought to be
excluded from their games. That was a horrifying prospect, so
we defended ourselves by explaining that all we had done was
tell the truth. Mother retorted by saying that some things were
true, indeed, but you still could not say them: you had to keep
them secret. And then she added that what you say and what you
keep secret has nothing to do with truth and lies. (pp. 7–8)

Mernissi’s tale is a good example of persistence in the pursuit of what is

regarded as right. In addition to violating the rules imposed by the men by
listening to the radio, the women resisted by refusing to say how the key was
obtained in spite of 2 days of interrogation. As told by Mernissi, resistance on
the part of the women went beyond recreational activities like listening to music.
The women desired freedoms and rights in many respects, and especially the
freedom to venture beyond the walls of the compound. The women also desired
a future for their daughters with greater freedoms and opportunities than had
been available to them. The women conveyed their goals to their daughters
directly and indirectly. As an example, one of the lessons Fatima received from
her mother pertained to symbolic ways of resistance toward the goal of social
change. Fatima’s mother told her

the whole crusade against chewing gum and American cigarettes

was in fact a crusade against women’s rights as well…“so you
see,” said Mother, “a woman who chews gum is in part making a
revolutionary gesture. Not because she chews gum per se, but
because chewing gum is not prescribed by the code.” (Mernissi,
1994, p. 187)

The use of seemingly trivial actions, such as chewing gum, for symbolic
purposes occurred in other places and times. Another example can be seen in the
activities of women in contemporary Iran. In Iran, women are required to dress
in certain ways and cover their faces with veils. They are also prohibited from
wearing makeup. However, it is not uncommon for women to defy, in safe
public places, the requirements to keep their faces covered and free of makeup.
As was the case with the mother’s use of chewing gum, makeup is seen to serve
broader purposes in Irart As one woman put it, “Lipstick is not just lipstick in
Iran. It transmits political messages” (“Lipstick Politics in Iran”).
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 9

The restrictions imposed by Iranian governmental and religious authorities on

women and men are extensive, including prohibitions on ways of dressing,
watching videos, listening to music, use of alcohol, and relations between
women and men. Moreover, there are serious efforts to enforce these policies, as
vividly told by Naipul (1997): “And helicopters flew over Northern Tehran
looking for satellite disks, just as the Guards walked in the park to watch boys
and girls, or entered houses to look for alcohol and opium” (p. 65). In spite of
the risks of detection, many people engage in hidden activities in violation of the
prohibitions. There is widespread use of satellite dishes, videocassettes, compact
disks, and alcohol. In Iran, too, parents worry about the future of their children.
The reflections of an Iranian woman are informative (“Beating the System, With
Bribes and the Big Lie,” 1997):

We live a double-life in this country. My children know that

when their school teachers ask whether we drink at home, they
have to say no. If they are asked whether we dance or play cards,
they have to say no. But the fact is we do drink, dance, and play
cards, and the kids know it. So they are growing to be liars and
knowing that to survive in this country we have to be. That’s a
terrible thing, and I want to change it. (p. A4)

OPPRESSION AND THE URGE FOR FREEDOM

The features exemplified in the various examples I have discussed thus far were
writ large in events in Afghanistan that came to great public attention toward the
end of 2001. As is well known, the Taliban, which had ruled Afghanistan since
1996, fell in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,
D.C. on September 11, 2001. While in power, the Taliban imposed severe
restrictions on people’s activities. They banned televisions, VCRs, most music,
movies, kites, and much more. They banned depictions of living creatures, and
required men to have beards. The restrictions imposed on women were the most
severe. Women were confined to their homes unless accompanied by a male
relative. When venturing out, women were required to be totally covered by a
burka. Females were denied schooling and the opportunity to work.
Furthermore, females could not receive medical treatment from male
physicians—but women could not work as physicians. As a consequence, the
health of women suffered greatly.
Immediately after the fall of the Taliban, the sense of liberation felt by many
women and men was striking. As told in media accounts day after day, the
reaction was strong and swift. There was widespread use of the previously
banned videos, audiocassettes, televisions, VCRs, musical instruments, birds,
and kites. People flocked to newly reopened cinemas and barber shops did a
10 TURIEL

brisk business with men shaving their beards. Women quickly mobilized to
reopen schools for girls. Women also began looking for work and sometimes
participated in organized demonstrations for their rights. Many women did shed
their burkas, although there was still fear of the reactions of men to their doing
so.
It certainly appeared, to use Martin Luther King’s words, that the urge for
freedom had come. It also appeared that the urge for freedom had been there, but
in a hidden, underground, subversive form. This becomes evident if we merely
ask where all the objects (televisions, VCRs, kites, etc.) brought out in such
quantities came from. The answer, of course, is that the people had resisted the
dictates of the Taliban by hiding many banned objects (e.g., difficult-to-hide
objects like televisions were buried in backyards). There were several other
examples of resistance and subversive activities that emerged at the time.
Artworks, for instance, were preserved by businessmen and museum directors
who hid them in basements of their homes and museums (sometimes having
secured paintings with bribes). One artist, at least, managed to save many
banned paintings of living creatures from destruction by covering them over
with watercolors. Women, too, resisted at great personal risks by running, in
their homes, secret schools for girls or beauty shops for women.
It is still not well publicized that resistance on the part of women from
Afghanistan took an organized form. As early as 1977, women organized to
fight for human rights and social justice by forming the Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). Their objective was
explicitly to involve women in social and political activities pertaining to areas
like education, health, work, and politics. RAWA worked within Afghanistan
until the Taliban took over (even after the group’s founder and leader was
assassinated in 1987). After 1996, RAWA was forced to work in other countries
like Pakistan, where they held several demonstrations. Within Afghanistan,
members of RAWA documented the activities of the Taliban by surreptitiously
taking photographs and making videos to smuggle to members in other
countries. Those activities involved great risks, because taking such photographs
was illegal and punishable by death. The photographs and videos (which can be
found on the group’s Web site, http://www.rawa.org/) reveal the harsh
conditions of people’s lives, executions and amputations in sports stadiums,
beatings of women for showing a little hair from beneath the burka, and much
more.
If it were the only example, the reactions of the women and men of
Afghanistan could be interpreted as an uncommon reaction provoked by the
extreme restrictions imposed by the Taliban. However, all the other examples I
have presented (from Morocco, Iran, Greece, Turkey; see also Nussbaum, 1999,
2000, for examples from India and Bangladesh) share key features with the ones
from Afghanistan. The examples demonstrate that people resist in social
conditions of inequality, injustice, and oppression. Resistance and subversion
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 11

are connected with the domains of moral and personal judgments. Moreover, the
examples point to the ways in which children are exposed to a multitude of
social experiences. They often receive mixed messages about social norms,
laws, cultural practices, relations among authorities (e.g., mother and father,
parents and governmental authorities), and about matters portrayed by some as
moral virtues (especially honesty and dishonesty, truth and lies). The complex
and multifaceted nature of children’s social interactions was captured by Piaget
(1951 1/1995a) in his assertion that:

Socialization in no way constitutes the result of a unidirectional

cause such as the pressure of the adult community upon the child
through such means as education in the family, and subsequently
in the school…it involves the intervention of a multiplicity of
interactions of different types and sometimes with opposed
effects, (p. 276)

THE INFLUENCES OF MORALITY ON CULTURES

The idea that children’s social and moral development is a function of a

multiplicity of different types of interactions is in accord with the proposition
that resistance and subversion reflect individuals’ heterogeneous relations to
cultural practices, including individuals’ efforts to evaluate and transform those
practices. In discussing the multiplicity of social interactions, Piaget
(1951/1995a) went on to caution about “sweeping generalizations” in attempting
to “make sense of the systems of relations and interdependencies actually
involved” (p. 276). However, sweeping generalizations are by no means
uncommon when psychologists and others attempt to draw contrasts between
cultures. The most familiar set of generalizations is seen in descriptions of
differences between Western and non-Western cultures; it is said that Western
cultures are primarily individualistic and non-Western cultures are primarily
collectivistic (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder & Bourne, 1982;
Triandis, 1989). By virtue of an individualistic orientation, Westerners place at
the forefront freedoms, independence, and rights. Given the emphasis on the
individual rather than the group, it may well be that Westerners engage in
resistance to cultural practices. It is not expected that non-Westerners would
typically engage in resistance, let alone subversive activities, given their
emphasis on the group rather than individuals. Within that viewpoint, non-
Westerners accept their prescribed social roles, which in turn produces social
harmony.
The various examples I have presented contradict the proposition that there
are shared understandings regarding social roles in a system of interde-pendence
in non-Western cultures. Conflicts occur when people are treated unequally,
12 TURIEL

hold subordinate positions, and are restricted from exercising their freedoms and
rights. People in subordinate positions are not simply content to accept the
perspectives of those in positions of power. As put by Okin (1989), “Oppressors
and oppressed—when the voice of the latter can be heard at all—often disagree
fundamentally” (p. 67). With such fundamental disagreements and the
associated conflicts, it does not make sense to characterize cultures through any
kind of orientation meant to portray a general set of perspectives held by the
group. Philosophers and anthropologists have voiced objections to the prevalent
mode of attempting to characterize cultures or communities in these ways. As
one example, Nussbaum (1999) asserted that

Cultures are not monoliths, people are not stamped out like coins
by the power machine of social convention. They are constructed
by social norms, but norms are plural and people are devious.
Even in societies that nourish problematic roles for men and
women, real men and women can find spaces in which to subvert
those conventions, (p. H)

From an anthropological perspective, Wikan (1991) stated that “the concept of

culture as a seamless whole and society as a bounded group manifesting
inherently valued order and normatively regulated response, effectively masked
human misery and quenched dissenting voices” (p. 290).
Research has documented that fundamental disagreements occur within
cultures and that resistance and subversion are everyday activities. Studies
among Druze Arabs in Northern Israel (Turiel & Wainryb, 1998; Wainryb &
Turiel, 1994) and in India (Neff, 2001) have shown that judgments about
decision making in the family include many of the features attributed to both
individualism and collectivism. For instance, the Druze, who maintain a strong
patriarchic structure, do make judgments about duties and social roles. These are
attributed especially to females. Druze adolescents and adults think that a wife
needs to follow her husband’s directives on the grounds that she should fulfill
her duties and social roles. By contrast, they think that a husband does not need
to follow his wife’s directives and that he is entitled to freedom of choice,
independence, and autonomy. Members of the Druze community are quite aware
of cultural expectations regarding male independence. They use terms like
freedom, self-reliance, and rights to characterize the cultural perspective on
males (see Turiel, 2002; Turiel & Wainryb, 2000). They are also quite aware
that holding a subordinate position in the social hierarchy makes deviation
difficult because of the serious consequences that might ensue. Nevertheless,
adolescent and adult females are critical of those practices, judging them as
unfair.
Other studies have examined how people act to counter restrictions judged
unfair (Abu-Lughod, 1993; Wikan, 1996). Spending considerable time with
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 13

Bedouin groups in a small hamlet on the northwest coast of Egypt, Abu-Lughod

(1993) demonstrated that women employ a variety of strategies to get around the
unequal restrictions imposed on them by men (husbands, fathers, and brothers).
Those strategies pertained to matters like educational opportunities and goals,
arranged marriages, polygamy, and the distribution of resources. The Bedouin
women did not always obey their fathers or husbands; they did not always
adhere to cultural expectations; and disagreements, conflicts, and struggles
between females and males were common. As articulated by Abu-Lughod
(1993), “The Awlad Ali are patrilineal, but reckoning descent, tribal affiliation,
and inheritance through the male line does not foreclose women’s opportunities
or desires to shape their own lives or those of their sons and daughters, or to
oppose the decisions of their fathers” (p. 19).

DEVIOUSNESS, SUBVERSION, AND THE QUESTION OF

HONESTY

Opposing decisions of those in positions of power appears to often involve

deception. When Nussbaum (1999) stated, “people are devious,” she did so in
the context of subversion of conventions (p. 14). In most of the examples I have
discussed, there has been an element of deception (e.g., in Mernissi’s [1994]
account, in the use of secret bank accounts, in the description by the Iranian
mother, and in the activities of people in Afghanistan and RAWA). In several of
these examples, the deceptions were apparent to children—and it was even
conveyed by parents that dishonesties were necessary and right. Yet, honesty is
considered one of the hallmarks of morality in many accounts of virtues and
character (Bennett, 1993; Sommers, 1984; Wynne, 1989). From the perspective
of virtues and habits of character, honesty is to be highly valued and not to be
violated. As the examples I have conveyed suggest, however, honesty and
dishonesty entail highly complex philosophical and psychological issues that
have been debated for a long time (Bok, 1978/1999). Some philosophers have
maintained that the prohibition against lying is absolute (e.g., Kant), whereas
others argue that it depends on how it may conflict with other moral ends, such
as if truth telling would result in harm. A classic example used in these debates
is whether one is obligated to tell the truth to a murderer who asks to be told
where his intended victim has gone.
These types of musings among philosophers do sometimes have real-life
relevance. A well-known example is that people frequently had to decide
whether to engage in deception to save people from concentration camps during
World War II. The activities of Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg have
been well publicized. Many others, including diplomats from several countries
(e.g., Japan, Turkey, Holland) and people who were not in official positions,
used deception to save lives. This type of deception has received little attention
14 TURIEL

in developmental research. The bulk of the research on honesty has looked at

children cheating in games or tests (Grinder, 1961,1964; Hartshorne & May,
1928–1930). A little research has examined what are referred to as white lies—
that is, lies to spare the feelings of others (Lewis & Saarni, 1993). There is not
much research on judgments about deception to prevent harm or promote
justice.
Research of that type has been conducted in the realm of medicine. One
study, published in a medical journal (Freeman, Rathore, Weinfurt, Schulman,
& Sulmasy, 1999) examined the judgments of physicians about deception in the
context of medical care. A sample of physicians was presented with a series of
hypothetical situations that depicted a doctor who considers deceiving a third-
party payer (an insurance company or a health maintenance organization) to
obtain treatment or a diagnostic procedure for a patient who would otherwise be
unable to receive it. Six situations were presented, depicting different medical
needs of varying severity (from the most severe of the need of coronary bypass
surgery and arterial revascularization to the least severe of cosmetic
rhinoplasty). Whereas very few (3%) of the physicians judged deception
acceptable for cosmetic surgery, the majority (58% and 56%) judged it
acceptable for the two most severe conditions (percentages for the other
conditions fell in between).
Judgments about honesty and dishonesty, therefore, varied by the situation.
We can assume that, in the abstract, the physicians would judge honesty to be
good and dishonesty wrong. Nevertheless, many judged deception acceptable in
some situations but not other situations. Honesty is not a habit of character
applied in a nonreflective fashion. People approach social situations with the
type of flexibility of mind that entails a weighing of their various features. In
these types of situations physicians judged it necessary to engage in deception to
attain the greater good of their patients. (There is evidence that physicians
actually do engage in this type of deception; see Wynia, Cummins, VanGeest, &
Wilson, 2000.) Perhaps it was the ability to have flexibility of mind that
Mernissi’s (1994) mother tried to convey to her when she said that “what you
say and what you keep secret has nothing to do with truth and lies” (p. 8).
Flexibility of mind is also reflected in the subversive activities of women and
men in Afghanistan and Iran, as well as in the deceptive activities of those who
saved people from German concentration camps.
It is likely that the physicians’ judgments about deception involve a
willingness to subvert a system that is perceived to unduly grant power to
insurance companies and too little power to the medical judgments of
physicians. Nevertheless, the societal context for judgments about deception by
the physicians differs from the types I discussed because it does not involve
societal arrangements of inequality and dominance and subordination in the
social hierarchy. However, we have begun conducting research on judgments
about deceptions in the context of inequalities. In that research, which was
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 15

conducted with adults in the United States, we obtained judgments about several
situations involving deceptions between wives and husbands. In one version of
the situations presented it is only the husband who works outside the home and
the wife who engages in deception; in another version of each situation only the
wife works and it is the husband who engages in deception.
Analyses of the results of this study are still underway. For now, consider
findings from two of the situations involving deception. In one, a spouse keeps a
bank account secret from the working spouse who controls all the finances. In
the other, a spouse with a drinking problem attends meetings of Alcoholics
Anonymous without telling the working spouse who disapproves of attending
such meetings. With regard to finances (i.e., maintaining a secret bank account),
it makes a difference if it is a wife or husband who engages in the deception.
The majority of participants (64%) thought that it is acceptable for a wife to
have a bank account secret from her working husband who controls the finances.
However, the majority (66%) also thought that it is not acceptable for a husband
to do so, even when the wife works and the husband does not. It appears,
therefore, the structure of power outside the family is taken into account in
making these judgments. In other words, a nonworking husband is viewed as
having more influence and power than a nonworking wife. The differences in
judgments about deception by wives and husbands do not extend to all
situations. The large majority (over 90%) judged that deception is acceptable by
both wives and husbands when dealing with a drinking problem by attending
meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. In that situation, like situations involving
physicians’ deception of insurance companies, judgments about welfare override
the value of maintaining honesty.
I should stress that people in the study were not sanguine about deception
between spouses—just as physicians are not content that they may sometimes be
compelled to deceive insurance companies. They view deception as undesirable
but sometimes necessary to deal with unfair restrictions, especially restrictions
imposed by those in greater power and control. The results of these studies
indicate that issues revolving around honesty and deception are far from
straightforward from a psychological standpoint. To be sure, deception
sometimes occurs for self-serving purposes. Nevertheless, the reasons people in
engage in deception are multidimensional and motivated by moral goals. The
complexities and moral reasons in people’s decisions regarding honesty and
dishonesty are often lost when people lament the decline of morality in our
youth because so many adolescents admit to dishonesties. This occurs when
survey takers, posing questions like, “Have you lied to your parents in the past
12 months?” find that most adolescents honestly admit to having done so. We
can ask, would the findings be different if physicians were posed with a similar
question: “Have you lied to an insurance company in the past 12 months?” A
more productive approach to honesty among youths would be to closely
16 TURIEL

examine how they understand moral and personal consideration in relation to

persons in authority, including parents and teachers.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The data on judgments about honesty and deception point to flexibilities of mind
in applying moral considerations to social situations. The contextual variations
in judgments do not reflect situational determinism, but weighing, balancing,
and coordinating different social and moral goals. More generally, the types of
acts of resistance and subversion evident in several of the nonresearch examples
I have described, along with findings from studies with Druze and Bedouin
women, reflect flexibilities of mind in the ways people relate to the social world.
Social relationships involve a multiplicity of features. Moral and social
development, as Martin Luther King, Jr. implied in his address to the American
Psychological Association, does not involve a straightforward adjustment to
social conditions. Social development is not a process of increasing acceptance
of or identification with culture and its norms or practices.
This is not to say that people are always or completely at odds with each
other, with the culture, or with societal arrangements. It is to say that there is
heterogeneity of orientations. Adjustment and acceptance coexist with resistance
and opposition. Social harmony coexists with social conflict, discontents, and
efforts at changing norms and established practices. The multiplicity of people’s
judgments and approaches to the social world means that to adequately
understand social development it is necessary, as Piaget proposed, to understand
children’s constructions stemming from many types of social experiences.
I return, then, to the main idea that resistance and subversion are part of
everyday life. As part of everyday life, most people have moral convictions and
commitments that they act on in the face of possible social disapproval and
serious repercussions. As I have indicated, moral resistance is not the province
of a limited number of individuals to be characterized as moral elites. The
commitment and conviction of many people to the viewpoints they hold results
in some complexities in evaluating differing positions in ongoing debates. If we
could say that the few—our moral leaders—have the courage of their
convictions in opposition to the many, who simply go along with system, that
would constitute a basis for discriminating sides on particular issues. However,
conviction and commitment appear in many guises and most often can be seen
in people holding opposing views. I can draw from some of my examples: The
women of RAWA, as well as many people of Afghanistan, had the courage of
their convictions, but so did the Taliban. In the civil rights movements in the
United States, Martin Luther King, Jr. had the courage of his convictions, as did
many who were involved in demonstrations and protests at the time; however,
counterdemonstrators in southern states and elsewhere also maintained their
 1. ESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION IN EVERYDAY LIFE 17

positions with conviction even in the face of opposition from the federal
government.
A clear example of conviction and commitment on opposing sides of civil
rights issues was evident in confrontations over the integration of the University
of Mississippi in the fall of 1962. Two individuals—James Meredith and
Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi—are illustrative. James Meredith, a Black
man, had attended Jackson State University (a Black school) but held back from
obtaining sufficient credits to graduate so that he could apply to the University
of Mississippi, which has been referred to as the pinnacle of Mississippi’s
wealthy segregationist plantation society. Meredith pursued the matter all the
way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered his admission to the
university. Meredith’s commitment to equality and integration was paralleled by
Governor Barnett’s commitment to segregation. Barnett physically blocked
Meredith’s efforts to register at the university several times and publicly
proclaimed, “I am a Mississippi segregationist and proud of it.” Moreover,
Governor Barnett was unresponsive to President Kennedy’s directives, so
Kennedy had to mobilize a large number (more than 30,000) of federal troops
and National Guardsmen to be sure that Meredith was safely enrolled in the
university. Conviction, commitment, and courage are not features that
distinguish between James Meredith and Ross Barnett, nor between the many
supporters of each side. We must look elsewhere for the distinguishing
features—to the nature of moral argumentation, moral struggle, and most
important to the details of the moral evaluations and moral judgments involved.
One incident surrounding James Meredith’s efforts to enroll in the University
of Mississippi poignantly demonstrates that resistance, subversion, and
commitment come from large numbers of people whose involvement often goes
unnoticed. Meredith spoke about the incident when he was interviewed on the
Morning Edition news show of National Public Radio on the occasion of the
40th anniversary of his enrollment at the University of Mississippi. As
introduced by the interviewer, “in the first minutes after he registered Meredith
got a message that still brings him to tears.” As told by James Meredith,

The most significant thing that happened when I finished

registering, came out to go my first class, there was a Black
standing in the hall. I thought that looked a little strange. And he
had a broom on his arm. When I walked by he turned his body so
the broom handle would touch me. And he was delivering,
probably, one of the most im-portant messages I ever got at Ole
Miss. The message was that we are looking after you—every
Black eye is looking after you. That was a greater act of defiance
than what I was doing because he could have lost his job for that.
18 TURIEL

So it is not only in the acts of famous figures like Socrates, Mahatma Ghandi,
and Martin Luther King, Jr. that we see moral defiance, resistance, and
subversion. We see it in many people, in people who were not well known as
moral leaders with outstanding personal characteristics, such as Oscar Schindler,
James Meredith, and an unnamed janitor working at the University of
Mississippi.

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Bok, S. (1999). Lying: Moral choice in public and private life. New York: Vintage
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Dunn, J. (1987). The beginnings of moral understanding: Development in the second
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Dunn, J. (1988). The beginnings of social understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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Dunn, J., Brown, J.R., & Maguire, M. (1995). The development of children’s moral
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20 TURIEL

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 2
Taking a Stand in a Morally Pluralistic
Society: Constructive Obedience and
Responsible Dissent in Moral/Character
Education
Diana Baumrind
Institute of Human Development
University of California, Berkeley

My standpoint on constructive obedience and responsible dissent in character

education will be presented in three sections. In the first section I present the
philosophic and metaethical perspective from which I consider the substantive
issues discussed in the second and third sections. In the second section I
consider the meaning of morality, character, and virtue in the context of moral
education. In the third section I address the role of socialization and the
disciplinary encounter in guiding the development of character and competence
in children.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND METAETHICAL PERSPECTIVE

Divergent approaches to moral versus character education are based, implicitly

or explicitly, on more encompassing political and philosophical ideologies. Such
was explicitly the case for Kohlberg (1981), and it is for me. Kohlberg’s
perspective on moral education is rooted in Kantian epistemology and Rawls’s
theory of justice; mine in dialectical materialist epistemol-ogy (see Marx
[1858/1971] and Engels [1888/1941]) and rule utilitarianism (Mill, 1861/2002).
(For a fuller treatment than can be presented here of the issues discussed in this
section the reader is referred to Baumrind, 1975, 1978a, 1978b, 1992, 1998).

Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical materialists seek to understand the driving force of personal and

social development, not in the realization of abstract universalizable ideals such
as the Kantian categorical imperative, or Rawls’s original position, but instead

21
22 BAUMRIND

within the conflicting tendencies operative in everyday material processes of

nature and society.
Ontologically Marxist materialism, as opposed to idealism, means that the
observable world is real in its own right, deriving its reality from neither a
supernatural nor a transcendent source, and independent of mind for its
existence. Mind “reflects” the observable world, but in Marxist materialism
reflection does not signify a mirror image passively recorded or a reproduction
or exact correspondence. The form in which material reality is reflected in
consciousness is a product of the active engagement with its surroundings of the
living organism, who does not merely perceive directly the appearance of things,
but conceives of their interconnections and causes as they relate to his or her
purposes. In that sense, although objective truth is absolute, knowledge of truth
is provisional and relative, limited as well as illuminated by each one’s purposes
and standpoint. We know how well the ideas consistent with our perspective
correspond to the true properties of external objects and their relations by how
successfully we can produce and change them. Through the effort of production
and utilization the “thing-in-itself” becomes a “thing-for-us.”
The term dialectical in dialectical materialism expresses the dynamic
interconnections of things and the universality of change owing to the fact that
all things are composed of opposing forces: A as a process is always becoming
not-A. To think dialectically is to emphasize a unity of opposites, and to attempt
to synthesize thesis and antithesis. The opposites of mutually exclusive and
jointly all-encompassing categories interpenetrate, as with attraction and
repulsion, yin and yang, organism and environment, life and death, good and
evil. Although the principle of noncontradiction is a precondition for making a
logical argument, contradiction is inherent in the natural and social systems to
which these arguments pertain. Paradox expresses the unity of opposites in real
life. For example, how is one to preach and practice tolerance toward ideas and
conduct that are intolerant or intolerable?
The Marxist sociopolitical lens through which I view obedience and dissent
in moral education and the disciplinary encounter cannot be characterized as
either liberal or conservative, although Lakoff (1996), in his consideration of the
politics of morality, places my views on these matters firmly in the liberal camp.
I applaud the liberal agenda of Rawls (1971) and his followers in their concern
for social justice and equitable distribution of resources. However, I oppose the
primacy liberals place on personal freedom and rights, exemplified by
Dworkin’s (1977) claim that “if someone has a right to do something, then it is
wrong for the government to deny it to him even though it would be in the
general interest to do so” (p. 269). From where I stand, in that remark Dworkin
takes rights too seriously relative to community welfare. In the interest of
community welfare (Etzioni, 1993, 2000), I advocate such restrictions on rights
in this country as sobriety checks, drug testing for those entrusted with public
safety, and mandated disclosures to health workers of serious communicable
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 23

diseases. However, in support of rights, I oppose the draconian provisions of the

Patriot Act, which would expand the United States government’s power to
punish dissent, search homes and offices, and otherwise undercut the power of
the judiciary to check abuses of these broad new powers,
I argue for a rule utilitarian as opposed to a deontic theory of justification of
such normative judgments as those I propose in later sections 2 and 3 of this
chapter, because it is concerned with social utility and affirms the assailability
inherent in moral praxis. Moral praxis is assailable because the criteria by which
praxis is justified are relative to one’s standpoint, and in that sense are not
incorrigible. A standpoint is a perspective from which particular features of
reality are brought into sharp perspective and other features are obscured. The
emphasis on praxis, that is action informed by judgment, in the Marxist view of
morality is animated by its atheism: Because God does not exist it is the
responsibility of fallible human beings bereft of the certitude conferred by
divine command or secular monistic deontology to generate all the acts of
creation, compassion, and justice assigned by theists to God.

Deontic Theories of Justification of Normative Judgments

Deontic theories of moral justifications are objectivist in that they affirm that
there is an ahistorical permanent framework to which we can ultimately appeal
in determining the nature of goodness and rightness (see Vokey, 2001, for an
excellent treatment of the objectivism-relativism debate). Deontic moral theory
as instantiated by Rawls’s (1971) original position is intended to provide an
unassailable warrant for a progressive principle of justice that would oppose
oppression and favor the least advantaged, on the basis that one runs the risk of
being the least advantaged. The original position in which one chooses an option
ignorant of one’s status and personal attributes is intended to construct an
objective foundation for ethical judgments by means of universally valid criteria
for rational assessment that are manifestly acultural, ahistorical, ahedonic, and
impartial. However, the original position is an unacceptable cognitive device for
validating a substantive claim precisely because it can apply only to
counterfactual hypothetical situations and not to the proper province of ethics,
which is how one should conduct one’s affairs in the real world.
To provide an unassailable warrant for its justice claims deontic theories of
justification treat the formal criteria of universalizability and impartiality as
constitutive. However, the principle of universalizability fails to do justice to
real cultural differences in historically determined values, and the principle of
impartiality to the special obligations fiduciaries owe to their clients, and
individuals owe their intimates. Neither principle is false, but the truth of each is
limited in its application to praxis.
Universalist pronouncements cannot establish a social consensus on basic
moral premises that does not already exist, and there is no consensus in our
24 BAUMRIND

pluralistic society on what constitutes moral premises. For example, Rawls’s

(1971) two basic substantive moral premises—persons are of unconditional
value and persons have the right to equal justice in all situations—may seem
self-evident. However, they are actually controversial, if only because they
make the individual the unit of society, and are not symmetrically balanced by
principles that affirm the rights of the collective when these conflict with
individual rights. A classic such conflict is between the right of couples to have
their desired number of children and the responsibility of the collective to
control population, as with the one-child policy in China. There is no neutral
descriptive language or overarching foundational framework to which we can
appeal to adjudicate such competing moral claims. Contradictory paradigms
exist side by side with each standpoint bringing a particular aspect of reality into
clear focus by obscuring other aspects. Therefore, ethical beliefs are not
objective in the sense that their validity can be universally established by a
defensible theory of justification or by social consensus.
Worldviews of different people and societies diverge in important respects.
How basic these differences in worldview are is both an empirical question and
a definitional one of what one means by basic. Are differences in Eastern and
Western views concerning how individual life should be valued basic? Note, for
example, the Eastern notion of karma as the sum total of the ethical
consequences of a person’s good and bad actions that determine his or her fate
in this and future lives and the fate of his or her descendants. If life is renewable
across generations, or property has symbolic value, as it does in some societies,
then the assumption that individual human life should always take priority over
property rights is disputable. We may all agree that human life is invaluable and
yet differ on such basic issues as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment
that implicitly treat some lives as disposable. I see no ethical impediment to my
acting in accord with my basic values or you with yours, just because we may
adamantly disagree.
The validity of the principle of impartiality is also limited by real-life
considerations. Enlightened partiality to one’s true self-interest and those of
one’s primary groups is unavoidable and within limits, socially useful.
Individuals know their own interests and those of their familiars better than they
do those of strangers. Parents have special obligations to their partners and
especially to their children. Elected public officials have fiduciary
responsibilities to represent the special interests of their community, and their
partisanship to their constituents is a moral failure only when carried to an
extreme provincialism. Decentration as impartiality is an unrealizable ideal,
whereas coordinating and reconciling the claims of alter with ego is a realizable
ideal. To decenter then is not to deny the special claim of self or one’s intimates,
but rather to increase progressively the scope of self. As Marx put it poetically
in the Paris Manuscripts (1844/1964) and later in The Grundisse (1858/1971),
nature—physical and social—is our own body: Physical nature constitutes our
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 25

inorganic flesh, and the social environment our organic flesh. One takes a moral
point of view by being cognizant of where one stands and how one’s standpoint
may obscure one’s vision from the perspective of differently positioned
protagonists, as well as by an enlightened understanding of what truly
constitutes one’s own long-term interests.
A major objective of socialization agents is to sensitize children to issues of
justice and caring, as realized in their daily lives. The ethics of virtue require a
rational understanding of what constitutes true self-interest that transforms
desire into goodness so that the moral agent wants to do the right thing. How
educators construe true self-interest will influence how they resolve conflicts of
interest in the school milieu, and present their rationale to children. I argue on
empirical grounds that moral considerations of justice and compassion do not
exclude self-interest but, on the contrary, are implicit in true self-interest, for at
least the following four reasons: (a) reciprocity is a fact of social life and not
merely an abstract moral principle; injustice and cruelty as well as compassion
and altruism tend to be reciprocated; (b) whether as perpetrator or victim normal
individuals are empathic and therefore discomfited by injury and injustice; (c)
behaving unjustly or without compassion is internally corrosive, harming one’s
long-range development; and (d) the self-other boundary is permeable, so that in
poisoning one’s environment, one poisons oneself. For reasons such as these,
true self-interest transcends the polarization of prudential and moral concerns.

Rule Utilitarian Theories of Justification

In place of deontic justification, substantive ethical judgments may be grounded

in teleological rule utilitarianism. In concerning himself increasingly with
children’s conduct, Kohlberg (1978) found it necessary to presuppose a concern
about moral content for its own sake. After giving up Stage 6 as a realizable end
state of moral development, Kohlberg moved away from a pure deontic theory
of ethics toward a mixed theory with utilitarian components, which arguably is
not dissimilar from the teleological rule-utilitarian perspective I endorse.
Teleological rule utilitarian theory offers coherent justification for
substantive moral claims that pertain to the social conditions and personal
attributes that an educator or parent might endorse. A teleological, in contrast
with a deontological, theory of justification holds that the criterion of what is
morally right and obligatory is the nonmoral value of what is brought into being,
that is the comparative balance of good over bad or evil produced in practice.
Rule utilitarianism justifies an act as right if it would be as beneficial to the
common good (of a particular polity in a specific social context) to have a moral
code permitting that act as to operate under a rule that would prohibit that act
(see Frankena, 1973). Thus, a rule that allows actions that intuitively are
intrinsically harmful and morally repugnant, such as killing an unwanted fetus,
on rational grounds may nonetheless be judged by utilitarians to be morally
26 BAUMRIND

justified when the common good (of the social group to whom one pledges
allegiance) is thought to be harmed less by a rule endorsing such actions than by
a rule endorsing any alternative. By requiring not merely the greatest good, but
the greatest good for the greatest number, the principle of justice is included in a
rule utilitarian theory of normative ethics. Rule utilitarian theory treats what is
right as that which brings about the greatest good (in affording human
fulfillment) for the greatest number in the long run. By that criterion the
reduction of oppression is a superordinate sociomoral good.
By oppression I mean the imposition on some individuals or groups of
exploitive constraints on their freedom to choose the conditions of self-
formation by other individuals or groups whose purpose is to enhance their own
access to resources and their own options to pursue what they regard as a good
life. Individuals and societies that deprive some individuals or groups of
resources sufficient for normal development, or that produce grossly
disproportionate inequities in distribution of resources among individuals or
groups, are oppressive. The human capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 1995; Sen,
1985), claims that the goodness of a society can be judged by the extent to
which it promotes and expands the valued capabilities of the greatest number of
its citizens, depriving none of the basic material and social resources that would
enable them to develop their fundamental human capabilities. The standpoint
that represents the interests of the oppressed serves the greatest good of the
greatest number and is more valid than that of the oppressor by being fairer,
more progressive, and less biased (Baumrind, 1998).
The standpoint that represents the interests (not necessarily the views) of the
oppressed in any culture is fairer and more progressive because the eq-uitable
distribution of resources it demands comes closest to meeting the basic human
needs of all its members, rather than the whims of a privileged minority.
Movement toward more equitable distribution of resources, consistent with the
communist ideal “from each according to ability, to each according to need” is
progressive because it promotes the greatest good of the greatest number. The
standpoint of the oppressed is more comprehensive, and thus less biased in that
it requires an understanding of the position of the oppressor, as well as of the
oppressed. Whereas those in a subordinate position must heed the interests of
their oppressors so that they may adapt to or circumvent those interests,
members of the ruling class, gender, or ethnic group, by virtue of their power,
are not impelled by an equal necessity to take into account the interests of those
whose welfare they control, or to see them as individuated and unique persons.
The undesirable social consequences of practices that create relative poverty by
magnifying the gap between the rich and poor in access to physical and social
resources are to inflict unnecessary suffering and retard the development of the
many to advance the interests of the few.
In treating gross differential distribution of resources as oppressive and
therefore as evil I am making a substantive claim that I have just sought to
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 27

justify rationally by prototypic Enlightenment criteria. However, the criteria that

justify my opposition to oppression are internal to the progressive worldview
that gives rise to how goodness itself is conceived, and therefore cannot aspire to
universality or impartiality. Those whose moral judgments and actions follow
from a diametrically opposed standpoint will apply criteria consistent with their
standpoint. For example, CEOs who earn upwards of 400 times the salary of
their average employee, and therefore who I might invidiously label oppressors,
are likely to embrace an opposing superordinate sociomoral good—the survival
of the fittest—by which they justify their relative position in the social and
economic hierarchy: Their fitness to create wealth by being vastly superior to
that of their employees is commensurate with and thus, in their eyes, justifies
their advantaged position.
Ideological conflicts in the culture wars based on fundamentally divergent
class interests and worldviews are not resolvable by Habermasian ideal
discourse any more than they are by the monologic idealization of Rawls ‘s
original position. Ideal discourse requires a freely chosen communicative level
playing field in which advantages of social status and differences in
communicative competence are suspended. Habermas (1979, 1993) claimed that
when consensual interaction is disrupted by disagreements concerning the truth
of contentious assertions or the rightness of norms, agreement can only be
restored by a process akin to ideal discourse. Although ideal discourse may be
practiced in protected venues such as the Supreme Court and some jury trials,
under most adversarial circumstances participants with conflicting interests will
instead bring political weapons to bear, and compromises will be made based on
relative power. Such compromises, whether in the boardroom or on the
playground, seldom result in genuine restoration of consensus.

Objectivism and Relativism

Scientific method, as understood in a particular historical period, can provide

consensual standards of assessment to which divergent schools of thought (e.g.,
Piagetians, cognitive behaviorists, Vygotskyians) might jointly subscribe.
However, moral truths are prescriptions for human flourishing and as such are
grounded in evaluative more than empirical criteria. There are no consensual
standards about moral truth, no unassailable warrant for ethical principles, no
Archimedean point that corresponds to a gods’ eye view of good and evil, and
no ahistorical, permanent framework to which we can appeal to adjudicate
conflicting claims of goodness or rightness.
The truth of the existence of the external world is independent of the
perceiving subject, but the same cannot be said of ethical premises. Unlike
natural scientific claims, ethical premises cannot be evaluated as true or false,
except that what cannot be, should not be. Ethical premises make claims akin to
axioms in mathematics, but unlike mathematical axioms, are not self-evident or
28 BAUMRIND

universally recognized truths. Those few ethical premises that are universally
recognized truths are grounded in universal socioemotional experiences. Even
ethical premises that in the abstract, because of their affective appeal, may have
the status of universally recognized truths such as “Don’t kill the innocent” are
not consensually validated in practice, as is clearly the case with judgments
concerning abortion.
Fundamental ethical premises, such as those that divide protagonists in the
culture wars, cannot be corroborated or disconfirmed and in that sense they are
not objective. However, they must be subject to coherent rational and public
criteria. Ethical premises that are not universally recognized as true (and I think
there are none) are arbitrary, in the sense of being subject to individual or group
discretion, but not in the sense of being inherently irrational. Although
substantive moral claims are not made incorrigible by formal criteria, the
alternative to deontic objectivity and universalism is not the radical relativism of
postmodern subjectivity. Moral agents are obliged to justify ethical judgments
with principles derived from within their standpoint precisely because in this
pluralistic world their truth is not self-evident. We are each both illuminated and
blinded by our historically—and personally—situated standpoint. Moral
judgments may, indeed must, be supported with reasons, especially in the
absence of consensus. Furthermore, moral agents are obliged to seriously
consider divergent standpoints, normative claims, and theories of justification.

A Pluralist Sensibility: Tolerance and Its Limits

A pluralist sensibility and regard for cultural diversity urges caution in judging
the esthetic preferences or the conventions of another culture or individual as
repugnant or reprehensible, or its epistemology as irrational (Powers &
Richardson, 1996), One may find distasteful a culture’s sleeping arrangements,
or which animals it chooses to sacrifice to its appetites or religious practices, or
whether it uses shaming or spanking to discipline its children, without finding
such practices morally reprehensible. Knowing that the limitations of one’s
standpoint obscure certain features of reality to bring certain other features into
sharp focus mandates tolerance of opposing ideas.
Culture and context can alter the meaning, and therefore within limits
moderate the effects, of certain aversive or painful practices. The moral force
behind multiculturalism is based on its claim to enhance the rights and respect
given to marginalized groups within each society, as well as between cultures,
and not on a claim that all cultural norms and imperatives should be treated as
equally valid. When in the name of tolerance the culture construct sanctions
oppressive and authoritarian power relationships, it diverts attention from the
dynamics of privilege and privation within a culture. Practices that are good for
some members of a given community may not be good for all its members; what
might have advanced the welfare of a culture at one time may not now.
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 29

An acceptance of antinomies (contradiction between two principles that both

seem equally necessary and valid) should engender tolerance of standpoints that
contradict one’s own, a tolerance, however, that must have limits by those who
view oppression as a fundamental moral evil. For example, practices such as
female genital mutilation, bride burning, and dowry deaths, even when rooted in
cultural traditions and buttressed by moral beliefs, exceed boundaries of
tolerance for diversity by anyone who opposes oppression, whether their
opposition is grounded in deontological principles, substantive teleological
reasoning, or neo-Marxist thought.

MORALITY CHARACTER FORMATION, AND

MORAL/CHARACTER EDUCATION

The perspective I bring to bear on morality, character formation, and character

education although rooted in dialectical materialist epistemology in its
acceptance of antinomies and emphasis on praxis, is also indebted to educators
such as Montessori, Dewey, and Durkheim.

Morality and Character Formation

I define morality broadly as the evaluative dimension of human behavior rather

than more narrowly as a domain of social judgment, or reducible to a unifying
principle such as justice, love, or duty. Morality concerns questions of virtue,
character, the good life, and the good society, with an emphasis on obligatory
rules of conduct. The province of morality is how one should live one’s life,
how one should govern one’s behavior. By “one” I mean primarily oneself,
although “should” extends the obligation to others similarly situated, which
implies generalizability and enlightened partiality (but not universalizability and
impartiality). A person is moral to the extent that ethical considerations are
salient and readily activated for processing information and arriving at tacit or
intentional decisions. So that moral “shoulds” will in fact guide and motivate
one’s praxis, such ideals should be realizable and tied to human welfare
concerning what is good for people situated in real time and place. Ethical
concepts are created by human beings about themselves to preserve and promote
their human capabilities, lessen their suffering and anomie, and bring direction,
structure, and meaning to their lives and activities.
From a neo-Marxist standpoint that places a premium on praxis (i.e., action
informed by knowledge) as central to morality, the formal criteria of
prescriptivity and primacy, but not universalizability and impartiality, are
constitutive. Prescriptivity mandates an internal duty, preferably by inclination,
to act in a certain way. Normative judgments are prescriptive, that is about what
should be rather than about what is, but should encompass virtues and values
30 BAUMRIND

that are realizable, and consistent with human nature. Primacy places a premium
on the moral dimension of praxis. A moral person experiences ethical directives
as internally coercive and consistent claims on the self to act virtuously. Moral
agents accept responsibility for the effects their actions have on others and on
their own long-range well-being. The moral relevance of intentions resides
primarily in the good or evil they lead agents to cause. In one of Bill
Watterson’s morally instructive cartoon strips, Calvin asked Hobbes, “Do you
think our morality is defined by our actions, or by what is in our hearts?”
Hobbes replied, “I think our actions show what is in our hearts.” When we
excuse evil actions on the basis of good intentions we condescend to do so on
the basis that the actor is immature and therefore not yet privy to the
responsibilities or rights of a developed moral agent.
Unlike the related constructs of temperament and personality, the construct of
character has moral connotations. When the moral connotation is explicit,
character may be thought of as personality evaluated, as the moral estimate of
an individual. Character is that aspect of personality that engenders
accountability, is responsible for persistence in the face of obstacles, and inhibits
impulses in the service of a more remote or other-oriented goal that the
individual values. Character provides the structure of internal law that governs
inner thoughts and volitions subject to the agent’s control under the jurisdiction
of conscience. A person’s character includes sentiments of righteous
indignation, and conscious pursuit of justice for oneself and oth-ers, as well as
of compassion and love, emotional reactions of remorse and shame,
disinterested loyalty and the conscious pursuit of order, solidarity, fitness, and
well-being. This inclusive perspective on character is consistent with
Durkheim’s (1925/1973) approach to character formation. Character formation
is concerned with development of virtues. A virtue is a habit one develops by
consistently choosing and acting on the good. Virtues are behavioral tendencies
and dispositions to act in certain ways across many, but not necessarily all,
contexts. Character educators seek to foster an environment conducive to the
development of virtuous habits in children. Habits, according to Hume
(1739/1960), are customs of the mind, acquired mental functions supported by
sentiments resulting in patterns of conduct that are reinforced by repetition.

Moral/Character Education

Character education in the classroom is a daunting and controversial endeavor.

How are children to be introduced to the complexities of moral decision
making? When, if ever, is lying, stealing, or killing justified? Is it right to lie to
protect family secrets? What, if anything, justifies placing corporatesponsored
materials and products in the school? Are parents justified in restricting the
freedom of children in ways they cannot restrict each others’ freedom? How is
Virginia Durr to be judged when her work together with her husband in fighting
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 31

discrimination in the South was done at the expense of severely neglecting the
emotional needs of her own children (see Colby & Damon, 1992, chap. 5,
“Virginia Durr: Champion of Justice,” pp. 91–133)?
Moral/character education is concerned with character formation, or the
development of virtuous habits in children. To an outside observer, the moral
education and character education movements appear to ground their
educational strategies and view of virtue in divergent political ideologies that pit
liberals against conservatives in the culture wars. The character education
movement inclines toward a “traditionalist” or conservative view of education as
transmitting received wisdom, emphasizing the critical role adults play in
reinforcing the virtuous habits that from a traditionalist perspective comprise
good character. The moral education movement is “progressive” or liberal in its
rejection of directive pedagogy, believing that the school’s moral atmosphere
and how teachers treat children contribute more to their level of moral
development than directed recitation of the right answers. In the Platonic
Kohlbergian tradition, the liberal moral education movement tends to be
constructivist in its emphasis on cognition and Socratic methods of teaching,
whereas the conservative character education movement, in the Aristotelian
tradition, tends to be behaviorist in its emphasis on behavioral control processes
by which virtuous habits of obedience, loyalty, and diligence are instilled
through extrinsic motivation, exhortation, and strict enforcement of rules of
conduct. The virtues valued most highly by the character education movement
promote order and stability of the status quo, whereas the virtues most prized by
the moral education movement promote critique and transformation.
The earliest character education movement of the first three decades of the
20th century embraced a clearly traditional perspective, favoring a top-down
structure and teaching methods. They used didactic indoctrination of “10 laws of
right living”—self-control, good health, kindness, sportsmanship, self-reliance,
duty, reliability, truth, good workmanship, and teamwork. Their conservative
ideology was evident in the virtues they omitted—critical thought, courage,
independence, and integrity. The results of the Character Education Inquiry
under the direction of Hartshorne and May (1928–1930) concluded, according to
Kohlberg (1970), that these heavily didactic programs that sought to indoctrinate
children against cheating and lying and to encourage helping behavior had no
positive long-range effects on conduct.
The virtues prized most highly by today’s traditional educators such as
Wynne (1997) and Bennet (1993) are similar to those of their progenitors. Self-
control, duty, diligence, cooperativeness, obedience, and loyalty are to be
inculcated by uncritical transmission and drilling of a fixed doctrine. Teachers in
for-character schools today (Wynne & Ryan, 1993) like earlier character
educators, rely heavily on extrinsic rewards and punishment to shape children’s
thoughts as well as their behavior and are highly directive, manipulative, and
psychologically controlling. Their traditionalist perspective appears intended to
32 BAUMRIND

promote a conservative social ideology in support of the status quo, with a focus
on “fixing the kids” rather than on social structural inequities that contribute to
bad behavior. Objective research on the effects of for-character schools has yet
to be done.
Wynne (1997) cited Jamie Escalante as “a striking instance of a successful
for-character teacher” (p. 67). However, I would call Escalante “authoritative” in
his educational approach, rather than a “for-character” teacher (see Matthews,
1988), in that he balanced high demands for achievement and self-control with
respect and responsiveness to the individual needs of each child. Escalante
served as a model of successful achievement without loss of cultural or personal
identity. Still within a traditional framework Lickona’s (1991) comprehensive
approach to character education, in my view, is also more authoritative than it is
authoritarian. Lickona construes character education as intentional proactive
efforts to develop virtuous qualities of character. He set forth a tripartite schema
of values—moral knowledge, moral feeling, and moral behavior—and then
proposed a comprehensive character education model consisting of 12 mutually
supportive strategies intended to encompass the total moral life of the school:
The teacher acts as a caregiver, moral model, and moral mentor; creates a caring
classroom community using discipline as a tool for developing self-regulation,
moral reasoning, and respect; provides many opportunities for student input;
promotes ethical reflection on values as issues arise in the classroom; and
teaches nonhostile conflict resolution. Parents and community leaders are
recruited as partners in extending students’ caring beyond the classroom,
Lickona (1996) offered evidence from within the program that this
comprehensive approach to fostering virtuous character has been successful in
achieving the goals he sets forth. However, evidence by objective critics is not
yet available.
From a liberal or “progressive” perspective, duty, obedience, and loyalty
unmitigated by constructive dissent are problematic attributes. Two early
“progressive” approaches to moral education rejected indoctrination of received
wisdom: values clarification (Raths, Harmin, & Simon, 1966), a values-neutral
approach that enjoyed popular favor in schools; and Kohlberg’s (1970)
cognitive-developmental approach, which won the acclaim of scholars. Both
were studied intensively and, according to Leming (1997), converged on the
following rather pessimistic conclusions: The values clarification approach had
a success rate in the 0 to 20% range on a wide array of dependent child
outcomes; Kohlberg’s moral discussion approach often found the hypothesized
changes in moral reasoning, but did not report significant changes in social or
moral character or conduct.
The Character Education Project (Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997)
exemplifies a modern program embracing a progressive perspective that has
been systematically evaluated by an integrated team of insiders and outsiders
(Benninga et al., 1991). It features the creation of a caring community that
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 33

exposes students to prosocial examples and cooperative learning activities, with

an intentional focus on involving children in helping relationships. In accord
with its liberal philosophy it seeks to promote a democratic consciousness and
respect for the dignity, moral agency, and individuality of each child. School
incidents and literature are used to develop respect and sensitivity. Student-
centered discipline is used to foster students’ moral reasoning and self-
regulation. According to Leming (1993), the results for student behavior were
mixed with no difference in incidence of negative behavior and with a program
effect in the third-grade sample but not the fourth-grade sample on spontaneous
prosocial behavior. Students were found to score higher than control students on
sensitivity and use of conflict resolution strategies. However, positive behaviors
did not generalize outside the program classrooms, suggesting that the effects
were largely situation-specific.

You Can’t Say You Can’t Play

I would like to see further developed and evaluated an intriguing experiment in

character/moral education oblique to the conservative-liberal or traditional-
progressive polarities represented by the programs already discussed. In an
effort to combat the exclusion and bullying that create a morally toxic
atmosphere in most schools, unless adults strongly intervene in the peer culture,
Paley (1992) posted an announcement that read You Cant Say You Cant Play.
Most of her young students reacted with disbelief and protest. What will happen
to friendship if you cannot pick and choose with whom you will play? How can
it be fair for a teacher to interfere with peer play not only in the classroom, but
in the school yard? By attacking the evil of exclusion, Paley inflicted a particular
moral atmosphere on her students, against the will of most, with the exception,
of course, of those who were excluded. There was nothing democratic about the
imposition by an adult authority of a rule the legitimacy of which the children
questioned. However, Paley did more than make and unilaterally enforce a
controversial rule that many of her students regarded as an illegitimate exercise
of teacher authority. She sustained a dialogue throughout the year on the
legitimacy and meaning of the rule. She created a moral problem with deep
meaning and strong affect, provoking children to reflect on the existential
experience of loneliness and rejection, the human consequences of the
unthinking cruelty children inflict on each other, and the responsibilities and
rights of authorities in relation to their youthful charges. Paley’s rule, although
never enforced with punishment, expressed unambiguously the moral sentiment
and belief of a valued adult, providing a useful perspective from which children
could view their actions and examine their social beliefs. By encouraging
discussions about the legitimacy and meaning of her rule Paley not only forced
children to develop nonexclusionary ways to define friendship, but provoked a
need for them to employ moral reasoning to critique an adult-imposed rule.
34 BAUMRIND

The Authoritative Classroom

From both Leming’s (1993, 1997) and Benninga’s (1997) accounts it would
appear that past moral/character education efforts have not been notably
successful, Leming (1993) cautioned against both the traditionalist approach of
Wynne’s for-character schools (Wynne & Ryan, 1993) and the progressive
approach of values clarification on the basis that neither was likely to change
values or character-related behaviors, Benninga’s account suggested that the
more effective programs share some of the characteristics found in optimally
competent parents—they are neither authoritarian nor permissive, but instead are
authoritative in their disciplinary methods and relationships with students.
Wentzel (2002) applied Baumrind’s (1991) parenting dimensions of control,
maturity demands, democratic communication, and nurturance to understanding
teachers’ influence on student adjustment in middle school. She found that these
dimensions—in particular adolescent-perceived high maturity demands and
nurturance—consistently predicted student motivation and prosocial behavior
for boys and girls, and for African Americans and European American children.
In describing the Montessori method, Rambusch (1962) illustrated the way in
which authoritative control can be used to resolve the antithesis between
pleasure and duty, and between freedom and responsibility in the classroom:

The discipline resides in three areas in a Montessori classroom: it

resides in the environment itself which is controlled; in the
teacher herself who is controlled and is ready to assume an
authoritarian role if it is necessary; and from the very beginning
it resides in the children. It is a three-way arrangement, as
opposed to certain types of American education in which all of
the authority is vested in the teacher, or where, in the caricature
of permissive education, all of the authority is vested in the
children, (pp. 49–50)
When a child has finished his work he is free to put it away, he is
free to initiate new work or, in certain instances, he is free to not
work. But he is not free to disturb or destroy what others are
doing… It is largely a question of balance. In a Montessori
classroom the teacher does not delude herself into believing that
her manipulation of the children represents their consensus of
what they would like to do. If she is manipulating them insofar
as she is determining arbitrarily that this must be done at this
time, she is cognizant of what she is doing, which the child may
or may not be. (p. 51)
The importance of the responsibility in selecting matter for the
child to learn is placed in the hands of those adults who are
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 35

aware of what the culture will demand of the child and who are
able to “program” learning in such a way that what is suitable for
the child’s age and stage of development is also learnable and
pleasurable to him. (p. 63)

Intuition and Affect in Moral/Character Education

To understand and encourage moral praxis it is necessary to recruit intuitive and

emotional as well as cognitive processes. A moral intuition is a sudden
appearance in consciousness of a moral judgment that something is good or bad
without any conscious awareness of searching, weighing evidence, and inferring
a conclusion. Intuition occurs effortlessly and automatically by a process not
accessible to consciousness, whereas reasoning occurs more slowly, requires
effort, and involves steps, most of which are accessible to consciousness.
Haidt (2001) presented a reasoned case with some empirical support that for
most people the default process for handling moral judgments is typically
habitual, automatic, and intuitive, occurring outside of consciousness. Haidt
argued with evidence that moral action covaries more with intuitive cognitions
and moral emotions than with moral reasoning, and that people rely on their
moods and flashes of feeling as guides when making decisions in daily life,
reserving fully conscious cognitive judg-ments for circumstances when feelings
are conflicted, or when they are called on to justify their intuitively arrived at
decisions (e.g., Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Haidt & Hersh, 2001; Petty &
Cacioppo, 1986). Thus the informational assumption about when life begins is
arguably an ex post facto justification for an already fully formed and deeply felt
intuition about whether abortion is ever morally acceptable.
Moral emotions such as empathy and moral indignation often impel action
where cognitive reflection alone might not. In the eloquent words of Mario
Savio, “There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part… And you’ve got to put
your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the
apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop” (Goines, 1993, p. 361). Such visceral
intuitions, however, are clearly affected by ideology, that is a coherent examined
system of factual statements and value judgments. This was certainly true for
Savio, whose socialist ideology was formed by a liberal Catholic education and
training in political philosophy. Similarly my critique of deceptive research
practices (Baumrind, 1964), in particular, Milgram’s (1963) research, was fueled
by moral outrage at the indignities Milgram and his confederates inflicted on his
subjects. I argued that Milgram’s research was characterized by the very
dehumanizing processes it was designed to investigate and that his student
confederates exemplified the destructive obedience that Milgram labeled as
“shockingly immoral” in his paid volunteers. My vigorous objection to
deceptive research practices was clearly emotive, but not merely emotive,
36 BAUMRIND

because it was rationally justified by an articulated system of metaethical and

normative considerations (Baumrind, 1975, 1992).
The descriptive claim that moral reasoning is less often the cause of moral
judgment or conduct than intuitive affect-laden automatic processes is not a
prescriptive statement that moral judgments should be made intuitively and
automatically. In fact, a prime objective of moral educators should be to
encourage children to value rationality, justification, and critical evaluation of
conduct—their own, their peers’, their parents’, and their teachers’. Moral
educators want children to be motivated by prosocial moral emotions such as
empathy and moral indignation, and to acquire reliable habits of good moral
character. However, for children to develop as responsible moral agents and to
be able to speak truth to power, they must learn how to reflect on and take
responsibility for regulating their own conduct and the consequences of their
intended actions. Although much of what we think of as moral judgment occurs
outside of conscious awareness and is the result of what Tocqueville (1969)
called “habits of the heart” (p. 287), the development of virtuous habits requires
exercise of rational judgment. The expression of Aristotelian virtues requires the
capacity to judge what is the right thing to do at the right time in the right way in
the right place. Because they state prescriptive preemptive obligations to act in a
certain way, which are intended to bind oneself and may be extended to others,
ethical statements are not merely emotive personal expressions. Without trained
reasoning even those naturally inclined by a benign disposition reinforced by
devoted caregivers cannot be counted on to control hurtful desires and emotions
that might be generated by new circumstances.

Moral Disengagement, Rationalization, and Hypocricy

Perceived self-efficacy in which people believe that they can bring about good
outcomes and impede bad outcomes by their actions is critical to moral agency.
Bandura (1999) and his colleagues (Bandura, Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli,
& Regalia, 2001) have examined the mechanisms people use to disavow a sense
of personal agency, and to disengage moral control by justifying inhumane
conduct, disregarding or minimizing the injurious effects of their actions, and
dehumanizing those who are victimized. Tsang (2002) recently proposed a
model of moral rationalization, the cognitive process by which individuals
convince themselves that their behavior does not violate their moral standards.
Her analysis helps explain why children in the Hartshorne and May (1928–
1930) studies would not necessarily have interpreted their actions as dishonest,
but rather as acceptably disobedient. Batson and colleagues (Batson,
Kobrynowicz, Dinnerstein, Kampf, & Wilson, 1997) examined moral hypocrisy,
which they defined as the pretense of being in accord with one’s own principles
of right and wrong conduct without actually acting accordingly. When faced
with completing a boring task or assigning it to the confederate, very few of the
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 37

80 female undergraduates studied chose an alternative to self-interest. The

participants typically assigned the boring tasks to the confederate rather than to
themselves, even though most judged that either favoring the other or flipping a
coin would be the right thing to do.
The conclusion I draw from these lines of research on moral disengagement,
rationalization, and hypocrisy is not that people are merely self-serving, but
rather that for most people much of the time moral principles lack sufficient
intrinsic motivating power to govern conduct, even when these principles as
abstractions are internalized. At every level of cognitive moral development,
opportunities to preserve the sense of moral self without acting on one’s moral
beliefs and principles present themselves. Kohlberg (1978) himself later
concluded that merely raising the level of moral reasoning does not improve
moral behavior. Extrinsic rewards and punishments, including the disapproval
and approbation of others, and the desire to please powerful authorities or
conform to the wishes of valued peers remain, even for adults, important
motivating factors in attaining moral identity.

SOCIALIZATION AND THE DISCIPLINARY

ENCOUNTER

I now consider the socializing role of adults in the development of children’s

competencies and moral character.

Agency and Communion in Optimal Competence and Character

Character is what it takes to will the good, and competence to do good well,
Competence broadly defined is effective human functioning in attainment of
personally desired and culturally valued goals. Within limits imposed by their
competencies, circumstances, and cultures, moral agents are able to plan their
actions and implement their plans; examine and choose among options; and
structure their lives by adopting congenial habits, attitudes, and rules of conduct.
Optimal competence and moral character require an integrated balance within
the individual of two fundamental interpenetrating modalities of human
existence—communion and agency. Communion refers to the drive to be of
service and connected that manifests itself in caring, cooperative behavior.
Agency is the drive for independence, individuality, and mastery that manifests
itself in assertive, dominant behavior (Bakan, 1966). Unmitigated by the other,
agency or communion is maladaptive: Agency unmitigated by communion
marks the egoistic individualist whose lack of concern for others eventually
elicits reciprocated harm to the self; communion unmitigated by agency is self-
abnegating at best, and at worst characterizes converts who are willing to
destroy or be destroyed to serve their in-group. Both compliance, as an aspect of
38 BAUMRIND

communion, and aggression as an aspect of agency, can be functional or

dysfunctional, depending on how well each modality is integrated with the other
in practice.

Functional and Dysfunctional Compliance and Aggression

In children behavioral compliance and self-assertiveness are socially desirable

behavioral tendencies, whereas dispositional compliance and hostile aggression
are problematic.
Behavioral compliance requires adapting one’s actions to conform with the
direction of another, whereas the attribute of dispositional compliance refers to
the internalization of the norm of compliance to established authority and
committed acceptance of the norms of the preceding generation. Automatic or
total compliance is not the mark of a competent or securely attached child
(Matas, Arend, & Sroufe, 1978), and rigid compliance, often present in young
children of abusive parents (Crittenden & DiLalla, 1988), is associated with
internalizing problem behavior (Kuczynski & Kochanska, 1990). Therefore,
although a moderate to high level of behavioral compli-ance from young
children is desirable and functional from any standpoint, the desirability of
encouraging the development of dispositional compliance in children is more
open to dispute because, when predominant, this attribute may result in
dysfunctional obedience to unjust authority (Baumrind, 1996), as well as be a
sign of insecurity.
Bold children are less dispositionally compliant, which means that they are
more likely across contexts to test the limits of adult authority and to require
forceful parental intervention to secure behavioral compliance, whereas fearful
children are more malleable and easily conditioned to inhibit transgression
(Dienstbier, 1984). Kochanska distinguished between situational compliance
(where children cooperate for instrumental reasons, but without commitment)
and committed compliance (where children eagerly embrace the caregiver’s
agenda). In Kochanska’s study committed compliance, which I view as a likely
index of dispositional compliance, was associated with children’s fearfulness
and shyness when they were required to suppress prohibited behavior
(Kochanska, Coy, & Murray, 2001). A high level of situational or behavioral
compliance is not necessarily an index of dispositional compliance.
The importance of reducing children’s level of noncompliance depends on
the type of noncompliance. Clinical psychologists focus on defiant non-
compliance, whereas developmental psychologists focus on more functional
types and levels of noncompliance (Kuczynski & Hildebrandt, 1997; Kuczynski
& Kochanska, 1990). From both perspectives, a moderate to high level of
behavioral or situational compliance in young children is optimal, although
some types of noncompliance are more functional than others. For example,
refusals by young children that have self-assertion rather than opposition as their
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 39

primary goal are more competent forms of noncompliance (Crockenberg &

Litman, 1990). Less skillful expressions of noncompliance, such as passive-
aggressive noncompliance and direct defiance decrease with age, whereas more
skillful expressions, such as simple refusal without defiance and negotiation,
increase with age (Kuczynski, Kochanska, Radke-Yarrow, & Girnius-Brown,
1987).
The task of bringing behavioral or situational compliance in the home to
normal levels is a crucial initial step for decreasing other forms of oppositional
and antisocial behavior (Barkley, 1981; Loeber & Schmaling, 1985; Lorber &
Patterson, 1981). Behaviorist clinicians such as Patterson (1997) have shown
that before parents can begin to have a positive influence on increasing
children’s prosocial behavior and decreasing their referral problems (e.g.,
aggression, noncompliance with medical regimens), children must reduce their
level of noncompliance with parental directives to normal levels, which from a
young child when the mother is present is less than 30%. A higher level of
noncompliance with adults’ directives, especially defiant noncompliance,
presages later school difficulties, impoverished moral internalization and greater
antisocial behavior (Kochanska & Aksan, 1995; Loeber & chmaling, 1985;
Lytton, Watts, & Dunn, 1986; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992).
Juvenile antisocial conduct disorder—with its features of defiance,
deceitfulness, lack of remorse, impulsivity, and offensive aggression—is a
precursor of adult criminality; by contrast developmentally normative
oppositional behavior in 2-year-olds and adolescents is not (see Hinshaw &
Anderson, 1996). Agentic dispositional tendencies including divergent
intelligence, competitiveness, and willingness to dissent are aspects of
competence and manifestations of self-efficacy, even though such attributes may
conflict with the internalization of some societal norms and perhaps what
Kochanska refers to as committed compliance.
Just as dispositional compliance is not necessarily adaptive or virtuous,
aggression in children is not necessarily dysfunctional or wicked. Berkowitz
(1983) distinguished between instrumental aggression that is strategic and not
fueled by anger, which he found to be adaptive, and hostile aggression that is
emotionally charged, nonstrategic, and generally counterproductive. Pulkkinen
(1987) distinguished between offensive and defensive aggression. She found
that children who at age 14 aggressed offensively (without being attacked first)
at age 20 were characterized by weak self-control and violent criminal behavior.
In contrast, children who at age 14 only aggressed defensively (after being
provoked) were not characterized by an aggressive personality pattern, and in
fact manifested good self-control and school adjustment.
Confrontational conflict need not involve hostile aggression. Conflict is a
state of opposition or resistance between people. Conflict will have constructive
or destructive consequences, depending on how it is manifested and managed.
Mismanaged conflict by parents will often elicit hostile aggression, resentment,
40 BAUMRIND

or disengagement from children. Especially during adolescence, constructive

engagement in reciprocal communication fosters adaptive conflict resolution
(Walker & Taylor, 1991). Unfortunately, too often during adolescence parents
disengage or use developmentally inappropriate unilateral power assertion when
adolescents assert themselves forcefully as autonomous agents (Sternberg &
Dobson, 1987). Resolution of parent-adolescent conflicts may remain
unresolved when issues that parents see as prudential or moral and therefore by
right and responsibility under their jurisdiction are perceived by adolescents to
be in the personal domain and therefore by right under their own jurisdiction
(Smetana, 1995).
When parents respond to adolescents’ demands for a greater measure of
independence and self-reliance with either coercion or disengagement rather
than with negotiation or reasoned authority, adolescents may react by defying
parental authority or by distancing themselves emotionally. Secure attachment to
parents and trustworthy mentors optimizes the developmental goal of
individuation during adolescence, as it does in infancy. When children and
adolescents test limits they often are seeking more intimacy, not more emo-
tional autonomy. Emotional autonomy may be a healthy expression of personal
agency furthering adolescent self-reliance and individuation (Steinberg &
Silverberg, 1986), or it may be an expression of detachment and a result of
parent-adolescent estrangement (Ryan & Lynch, 1989).

Autonomy

How the concept of autonomy is construed is central to moral politics and

educational philosophy and practice. Piagetian autonomy emphasizes self-
governance and internal regulation and is contrasted with heteronomy or being
controlled by external constraints that are perceived as fixed and imperative. In
communitarian thought autonomy is contrasted with social order rather than
with heteronomy. Communitarian autonomy is equated with an overemphasis on
individual rights and an underemphasis on social responsibility, and order with
the social responsibilities and unifying bonds that ensure the common good. The
stated aim of the communitarian agenda (Etzioni, 1993, 2000) is to balance the
claims of individual conscience and rights, which Etzioni believes the current
American milieu overemphasizes, with the collective moral voice of the
community to which the individual owes allegiance.
Durkheim’s element of autonomy in his theory of moral education embraces
a unity of opposites consistent with the Hegelian (Hegel, 1821/1952) and
Marxist (Marx, 1845/1941, 1858/1971) dialectic by synthesizing self-
determination with heteronomy and order. Moral education, according to
Durkheim (1925/1973), requires the development of three basic elements of
moral character that make for dependability: discipline, attachment, and
autonomy. Discipline consists of two character traits, (a) a preference for
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 41

regularity to be developed by structure and regimen in the classroom and home,

and (b) a preference for moderation, or respect for the impersonal rightness of
moral rules over personal disposition, as this rightness is conveyed by a worthy
educator. The second aspect of moral education, according to Durkheim, is
attachment to the social group through the faculty of empathy, which by
identification with the pain and pleasure of others can enable the student to
become altruistic and socially engaged. The third element, autonomy or self-
determination, develops as the rules of society are internalized by the child. For
Durkheim, these moral rules are not initially self-chosen but, instead, are the
rules of the educator who rationally explains to the student the need for obeying
these particular moral rules in this particular society, and when necessary uses
punishment to signal clear disapproval of the violation of these rules. Thus for
Durkheim as for Marx (1858/1971), freedom is the appreciation of necessity.
Discipline, first outer and then inner, by channeling energy into pursuit of
determinate and valued goals consistent with the needs of others, is the
precondition of, not the obstacle to, freedom, happiness, and self-determination.
Durkheim equated autonomy with rational understanding of moral rules,
requiring of teachers that they neither preach nor indoctrinate but instead explain
the reasons for rules to children to obtain their “enlightened assent.” He
emphasized social conditioning as the source of morality and character
formation in children. In his later years, Kohlberg (1978) adopted much of
Durkheim’s theory of moral education, even going beyond Durkheim to state
that moral education can properly be a form of “indoctrination” without
violating children’s rights, provided that children are involved in the rule-
making and value-upholding process. Although Durkheim did not consider the
circumstances when constructive dissent should be encouraged in children, he
did so with adults. Durkheim’s belief in the need for obligatory rules did not
imply uncritical obedience to the status quo, and in fact Durkheim believed
fervently in progressive evolution (see Wallwork, 1972, p. 171, on Durkheim)
and celebrated the civil disobedience of enlightened individuals such as Socrates
and Jesus, He argued that criticism of public opinion or established rules by
adults is required when these undermine social solidarity and peaceful
coexistence or when they retard progress to a better future state of society. For
children, however, Durkheim viewed education as virtually synonymous with
socialization, an influence exerted by the adult generation to develop in children
the intellectual and moral states required by society as a whole and the social
groups of which a child is a member.

Socialization

Socialization is generally thought of as an adult-initiated process by which

young persons through education, training, and imitation, acquire their culture
and the habits and values congruent with adaptation to that culture. Through the
42 BAUMRIND

disciplinary encounter, caregivers attempt to induce children to comply with

adult standards of proper conduct. Properly conceived, the aim of the
disciplinary encounter is to control children’s short-term behavior and to
influence, but not determine, their long-term behavior. Although defiance is
thought to characterize certain periods of development, namely the negativism
of the “terrible twos” and individuation during adolescence, the dialectical
interchange between obedience and resistance to authority remains an ongoing
theme in adult-child interaction.
The short-range objective of the exercise of parental authority is to maintain
order in the family subordinated, however, to parents’ ultimate objective, which
is to further children’s development from a dependent infant into a self-
determining, socially responsible, morally agentic adult. The contemporary
discipline controversy has resurrected a false polarization between a hierarchical
paternalistic authoritarian model that places obedience as the cornerstone in the
foundation of character (Hyles, 1972) and a child-centered rights position that
demands for children the same civil rights as possessed by adults (Cohen, 1980).
The current reincarnation of the false binary opposition between freedom and
constraint in childrearing centers on the proper role of punishment, particularly
spanking, in the socialization of children. Within this polarity, current
antispanking rhetoric (e.g., Hyman, 1990; Straus, 1994) is countered by
Christian fundamentalist defense of strict and sometimes punitive parental
authority (e.g., Dobson, 1992; Hyles, 1972). Neither pole offers parents or
teachers an efficacious model of childrearing today, any more than it did 30
years ago when I developed the authoritative model as a constructive synthesis
of the valid insights contained in the authoritarian and the permissive models.
Both binary opposites contain a germ of truth: The liberal permissive model,
that autonomy and self-will are to be cultivated, not punished; the conservative
authoritarian model, that in the interest of social order, discipline, sometimes
confrontational and strict, is required to socialize the child’s natural egoistic
willfulness. However, each polarized model demonizes the other by failing to
distinguish between mitigated and unmitigated agency or communion. The
authoritarian model tends to equate willfulness and individuality with
unmitigated egoistic aggression, and the permissive model tends to equate
behavioral compliance to legitimate authority with submissiveness and
destructive obedience.
Traditional socialization theories of childrearing and education implicitly
assume that the primary goal of parents and educators is to achieve maximum
levels of compliance and internalization of adult values. However, not all adults
or socialization researchers (e.g., Baumrind, 1983, 1987, 1996; Grusec,
Goodnow, & Kuczynski, 2000), assume that uncritical internalization of
society’s rules is the prime objective of childrearing or even a worthy one:
When adults’ demands are just and their authority is legitimate, a reasonable
level of conformity to adult rules is desirable and necessary, especially when the
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 43

child is young. However, when the child’s developmental needs or objectives

conflict with adults’ demands, or adults’ demands are unjust or exceed their
legitimate authority, children’s competence and moral maturity are appropriately
expressed by resistance. Because socialization represents the accommodative
force in society, the disciplinary encounter, indeed socialization itself, has
limited (although necessary) objectives.
Internalization by one generation of the rules of the preceding generation
represents the conservative force in society, whereas the impetus for progressive
social transformation comes about by the challenges each generation presents to
the accepted values, rules, and habits of the previous generation. For parents
who want their children to be able and willing to take initiative, negotiate
differences, and oppose injustice, behavioral compliance is a necessary but by
no means sufficient long-range childrearing objective. For such parents,
effective childrearing practices will balance a demand for behavioral compliance
(which may require power-assertive confrontation) with oppor-tunities for
negotiation and autonomous choice. Moderate power assertion, including use of
mild physical or other punishment, in contrast to love withdrawal, can achieve
behavioral control without being psychologically intrusive. Psychological
control, which includes love withdrawal, unlike powerassertive confrontation,
uses subtle manipulation to induce dispositional compliance by covertly
managing children’s affect and attitudes.
Authoritative disciplinary strategies combine reasoning and responsiveness
with overt moderate power assertion to encourage both constructive obedience
and responsible dissent. Authoritative parents and educators clearly express their
values, enforce directives, and make appropriate demands for mature behavior.
By joint use of extrinsic reinforcers and rational justification of negotiable
demands, authoritative caregivers attempt to both promote children’s legitimate
striving for autonomy and direct their behavior. The authoritative model has
much in common with the advice given to parents by the Soviet Marxist
educator Makarenko (1954), who was as widely read and acclaimed in the
Soviet bloc as Spock was in the United States. Bronfenbrenner, a fluent Russian
speaker, became familiar with Makarenko’s work about the same time as I did,
bringing his ideas to the attention of American families in an influential book in
which he contrasted the individualistic ideology of the world of childhood in the
United States with the collectivist ideology of the Soviet Union
(Bronfenbrenner, 1970).
Makarenko’s (1954) basic thesis was that optimal personality and moral
development occur through productive activity with a structured regimen
enforced by reasoned and just sanctions in an atmosphere of unconditional
commitment infused with affection. Makarenko emphasized the moral
responsibilities of parents and educators in nourishing children as they would
fruit, not flowers:
44 BAUMRIND

In our day it has been said that children are “flowers of life.”
That is good. But rashminded, sentimental people have not taken
the trouble to think over the meaning of these beautiful words.
Once children are described as “flowers,” it means to such
people that we should do nothing but go into raptures over them,
make a fuss of them, smell them, sigh over them. Perhaps they
even think we should teach the flowers themselves that they are a
fragile and “luxury” bouquet… The “flowers of life” should not
be imagined as a “luxury” bouquet in a Chinese vase on your
tables… No, our children are not flowers of that kind at all. Our
children blossom on the living trunk of our life; they are not a
bouquet, they are a wonderful apple orchard…. Do not be afraid
of it, shake it around a bit, let even the flowers feel a little
uncomfortable, (pp. 19–20)

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

To evaluate rationally the outcomes resulting from character education programs

their desired outcomes in furthering children’s morality and character
development must first be made explicit. What is meant by moral education in a
classroom context? Do any efforts to promote desirable behavior and reduce
undesirable behavior qualify? Should the goals of character education be
pursued deliberately or left as part of an implicit hidden agenda? Should moral
educators attempt to shape students’ behavior by explicitly inculcating the
values that generate that behavior? If so how does one establish a community
consensus on which values should be inculcated? These are questions I leave to
moral educators to answer, as they must, to proceed with and evaluate their
efforts.
The classroom is meant to provide a bridge between the personal affective
morality of the family and the impersonal morality of political society. The
material conditions of a classroom compared to a family milieu require a much
higher level of behavioral compliance and conformity from children. These
functional virtues are cultivated in the classroom both to maintain an orderly
environment conducive to learning and to prepare the child for the impersonal
demands of the outside world. Because of pupil heterogeneity, high child-to-
teacher ratio, and the educational objective of imparting received wisdom,
teachers are required to maintain order through a structured regimen and when
necessary unilateral power assertion. Because children are required to comply
and obey so much of the time it is important for teachers to provide
opportunities for creative expression and constructive dissent, as Paley did when
she unilaterally proposed and enforced a rule to which her students objected.
School structure necessarily provides children with abundant opportunity to
 2. CONSTRUCTIVE OBEDIENCE AND RESPONSIBLE DISSENT 45

practice habits of duty, diligence, self-regulation, and self-control. It takes active

efforts on the part of teachers to offer children equal opportunities to exercise
moral agency, nonhostile self-assertion, and critical thought. In particular,
teachers must be sensitive and responsive to expressions of moral indignation in
children when directed at what they experience as unjust power assertion by
adults or more powerful peers. Although the depth of love and individual
attention appropriate in the home setting is not appropriate or sustainable in the
typical classroom, it is important for teachers to keep in mind that children
flourish best in a caring teaching community.
The moral atmosphere of an authoritative classroom is respectful of the
student and provides abundant opportunities for the development of democratic
skills through interactive discussions and participation in elaborating the norms
that govern their conduct, but its governance is hierarchical, not equalitarian.
Authoritative teachers will have mastered their subject matter, be responsive to
reasoned criticism, and have intimate knowledge of the developmental and
individual needs of their students. They, not the students, will remain in charge
of the curriculum and rules governing children’s conduct. They will cultivate
such habits of the mind and heart as critical thought, the courage to protest
perceived injustice, and self-assertive ere-ative expression that will enable
students to responsibly dissent as well as obey legitimate authority.
Moral educators are best prepared for their task if they can articulate and act
in accord with a coherent system of factual statements and value judgments that
constitute an ideology. I have argued, however, that the certitude conferred on
an ideology by a foundationalist theory of justification, whether grounded in
religious beliefs or secular deontic theory, is illusory. Although the
Enlightenment conception of rational justifications as context-free is intended to
establish an absolute fixed framework for determining goodness, it cannot
resolve personal, social, and political disputes with those who reject its
foundationalist theory of justification. Fallible human beings who choose an
activist life will inevitably be guilty of sins of commission from the standpoint
of equally fallible adversaries. Unlike scientific claims, the validity of moral
judgments cannot be established objectively, although such judgments can and
should be defended rationally. In denying the incorrigible status of any theory of
justification of ethical precepts, I am not asserting the opposite, that anything
goes, that faith-in-faith is the same as faith-in-reason, that because all personal
and cultural narratives are historically situated and many are incommensurable
that all are equally right and good.
A disputed moral position need not be regarded by its adherents as
unassailable to impose on them preemptive obligations to take action consistent
with their position. The absence of monologic certitude or dialogic consensus
does not justify inertia, accidia, and indifference. Incomplete and fallible as our
moral judgments are, their proper function is to guide and direct our practice.
Moral authority is conferred not by social consensus or deontic moral certitude,
46 BAUMRIND

but by willingness to fully and publicly commit oneself to act on one’s reasoned
and deeply felt moral judgments. It is through purposive activity that we gain
profound knowledge of the material and social world, and reveal our own
nature. “The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point
however is to change it” (Marx, 1845/1941, p. 84).

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 Part II
Resistance, Conflict, and
Contrarianism in Youth:
Implications for Education
and Parenting
 3
Who in the World Am I? Reflecting on
the Heart of Teaching
William Ayers
University of Illinois at Chicago

In the opening scene of the Cohen brothers film Miller’s Crossing (Cohen &
Cohen, 1990), Johnny Caspar says, “I’m talkin’ about friendship.” Johnny, a
two-bit thug, is struggling to explain to the big crime boss, Leo, how he’s been
wronged by an associate mobster, Bernie Bernbaum. The camera lingers on the
repulsive and horrifying Johnny—we see the frothy saliva forming in the creases
of his thin, menacing smile; we watch him sweat. We are fascinated and
disgusted by his insistent physicality and the bizarre case he presents.
“I’m talkin’ about character,” he pleads. “I’m talkin’ about—hell, Leo, I ain’t
embarrassed to use the word—I’m talkin’ about ethics” (or, as pronounced by
Johnny, “e-tics”).
Johnny is indeed talking about ethics. Apparently, Bernie Bernbaum is a
cheat and a liar. “When I fix a fight,” Johnny proceeds indignantly, “Say I play a
three-to-one favorite to throw a goddam fight. I got a right to expect the fight to
go off at three-to-one.” Then Bernie Bernbaum hears of the deal, manipulates
the situation, brings in out-of-town money, and “the odds go straight to hell.”
“It’s gettin’ so a businessman can’t expect no return from a fixed fight,”
complains Johnny. “Now, if you can’t trust a fix, what can you trust?” Without
ethics, “we’re back into anarchy, right back in the jungle…at’s why ethics are
important. It’s what separates us from the animals, from beasts of burden, beasts
of prey. Ethics!”
Leo is not so sure. How does Johnny know Bernie is the problem, when lots
of other people share the same information? Couldn’t someone else be selling
him out? No, Johnny assures him, it has to be Bernie: Everyone else in the loop
is under his direct control, and, most tellingly, “Bernie’s kinda shaky, ethics-
wise.”
“Do you want to kill him?” asks Leo.
“For starters,” Johnny replies.
William Bennett, Secretary of Education under President Ronald Reagan,
former “drug czar,” and editor of The Book of Virtues (Bennett, 1993), has
recently written a book for our times with the forbidding title Why We Fight:
Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Bennett, 2002). Reading Bennett on

53
54 AYERS

right thinking is a bit like hearing Johnny Caspar discuss ethics—unreal but
nonetheless disturbing.
In The Book of Virtues Bennett (1993) gathers together an enormous amount
of material Rush Limbaugh hails in a jacket blurb as “a superb collection,
certain to fortify you and yours for a lifetime of morality, goodness, and right
thinking.”
In any collection there is the problem of who and what to include. However,
an editor has to choose, leaving readers variously irritated and delighted.
Bennett undoubtedly felt himself stretching for inclusion—Rosa Parks is here,
for example, and so is a Hanukkah Hymn, and an excerpt from the
Dhammapada. On the other hand, he chose to exclude, for example, Toni
Morrison and W.E.B.DuBois; the excerpt he includes from Mary Woll-
stonecraft’s pioneering “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” focuses on a
peripheral argument, her faith that we improve ourselves in concert with God’s
plans; and the letter he chooses from F.Scott Fitzgerald—a really appalling
model of fatherhood—to his daughter advises her, among much else, to make
her “body a useful instrument” (Bennett, 1993, p. 226).
The proclaimed virtues under consideration here—self-discipline,
compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty,
loyalty, faith—take on a distinctly ideological cast in Bennett’s embrace.
Leaving aside what he chooses not to reflect on—say, humility (never!),
solidarity, thoughtfulness, integrity, passion, generosity, curiosity, humor, and
commitment (forget it!)—look at Bennett’s perspective on work, for example.
In 94 packed pages we endure several poems about bees and ants, Bible
verses, “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” “The Little Red Hen,” “The Three Little
Pigs,” “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” “How the Camel Got His Hump”—on
and on. They all add up to a scolding on the importance of doing as you’re told,
the rewards of acquiescence and compliance, and the necessity of hierarchy and
staying at your post no matter what. Theodore Roosevelt writes “In Praise of the
Strenuous Life,” and Ralph Waldo Emer-son praises “Great Men.” Booker
T.Washington describes his climb “Up From Slavery” and Bennett, without a
hint of irony or conflict, introduces him as a “soul who is willing to work—and
work, and work—to earn an education” (Bennett, 1993, p. 404). From
Shakespeare, Bennett selects this bit of Henry V: “So work the
honeybees;/Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach/The act of order to a
peopled kingdom” (Bennett, 1993, p. 388).
Of course there is no Marx here, but neither do we find Herman Melville, B.
Traven, nor Charles Dickens. There’s no Studs Terkel, either, someone who
might have relieved the righteous sermonizing and probed the complexities and
contradictions of work, the violence it can contain; who might have explored the
ways in which human effort can lead to the transformation of people and their
world, the ways in which labor can be sometimes liberating, sometimes
enslaving. Instead, we are instructed on the natural state of things: Kings rule,
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 55

soldiers fight and pillage, masons build, and porters carry heavy loads. End of
story.
What Bennett has accomplished is a McGuffey’s Reader for the ideal family
of his imagination, a list of dos and don’ts served up in simple stories for simple
living—little virtues celebrated at the expense of great ones. There are “Table
Rules for Little Folks” and instruction on how to “retire for evening” and “how
to conduct our conversations.” Boys and girls, naturally, receive separate
instruction: One is informed that “Modest as a violet,/As a rosebud is sweet-
/That’s the kind of little girl/People like to meet” (Bennett, 1993, p. 28); the
other is entreated to “Take your meals my little man,/Always like a gentleman”
(p. 43). There are, too, the requisite evil stepmothers and wicked women.
Bennett (1993) called this collection a “‘how-to’ book for moral literacy,”
and separated the “complexities and controversies” of a moral life from the
“basics” (p, 11). Presumably that is why none of the stories he offered attempt to
investigate and interrogate the inadequacy of self-knowledge, the conflict and
contest between the facts and the aspirations of our identities.
He also distinguished lessons in ethics, which he favored, from moral
activity, which he advised suspending until maturity. For Bennett it is important
that youngsters remain in effect passive recipients rather than active cocon-
structors of values. This view leads to the claim that “these stories help an-chor
our children in their culture, its history and traditions” (Bennett, 1993, p. 12).
For Bennett, “our culture” is permanently settled and smug, lacking any sense of
unease or obligation to think or question. A big believer in uniculture, Bennett
has blinded himself to the vivid, dynamic, colliding, conflicting, and propulsive
power of culture as it is experienced and lived by human beings. The ethical
world he sees is inert, and largely disembodied.
Bennett (1993) noted the “quarry of wonderful literature from our culture and
others is deep,” and explained that his collection “is drawn from the corpus of
Western Civilization,” material “that American school children, once upon a
time, knew by heart” (p. 15). If there is any doubt who “American school
children” are in Bennett’s dreams, check out the illustrations: tiny woodcuts and
little sketches of farms and fields and frolicking children, all White, The text
echoes the vision, giving us children “with golden hair” and the “blue-eyed
banditti.” Bennett’s hackneyed nostalgia for a Golden Age in American
schools—that rosy period preceding the turbulent 1960s, when schools were
strictly segregated and education mainly the prerogative of the privileged—
permeates these pages.
In Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism (Bennett, 2002),
his newest effort, we feel the full force of Bennett unleashed. The events of
September 11 have unhinged him—the gate is swinging wildly—and his
standard sanctimonious sermonizing is delivered here at full volume and with a
take-no-prisoners intensity. He wrote the book, he shared, because “I sensed in
my bones that if we could not find a way to justify our patriotic instincts, and to
56 AYERS

answer the arguments of those who did not share them, we would be undone”
(Bennett, 2002, p. 12).
In case we wonder who exactly might “not share” his brand of patriotic
values, Bennett named names: the historian Eric Foner, the English professor
Stanley Fish, the editors of The New York Times, scholars with whom he
disagrees, feminists, and all “members of the peace party”—whoever and
wherever they might be. These infidels, he claimed, “have caused damage, and
they need to be held to account” (Bennett, 2002, p. 14). The form of his
proposed inquisition is left to the imagination, but its scale and direction are
clear: “A vast relearning has to take place,” he instructed, one undertaken by
everyone everywhere, but the burden of the effort “falls [especially] on
educators, and at every level” (p. 149).
Bennett’s (2002) greatest fear is “the erosion of moral clarity…as a thousand
voices discourse with energy and zeal on the questionable nature, if not the
outright illegitimacy, of our methods or our cause” (p. 169). He claimed that
“rooting out” the sloppiness and the danger of relativism, postmodernism,
multiculturalism, feminism, and left-wing thinking, and “replacing it with
healthier growths, will be the work of generations” (p. 70). Clearly, it is the soul
and spirit of democracy—those thousand energetic voices—that Bennett, finally,
cannot abide. Moral clarity, certainty, dogma: These are best delivered from
above.
What is fundamentally missing in Bennett is a sense of morality or moral
literacy or virtue embedded in a stance, a set of relationships and commitments.
We are instructed in rationalist ethics at the expense of relational morality,
deprived an angle of regard that enlarges our view. Bennett is the stern father
with austere regulations: He rebukes, he scolds, he shows us an iron hand. His
moral authority relies for its power on structure, a structure secured by fear and
the absence of dissent. Bennett nowhere linked moral stance to moral conduct—
especially his own.
Which brings us back to Johnny Caspar, talking about ethics. The bully is
whining, wheedling, hectoring, and threatening as required. He is comical and
menacing in the same gesture.
Bennett squarely places responsibility for the “vast relearning” of morality on
educators. Is “moral education” gaining or losing in our schools, or in our
consciousness? How shaky are we, ethicswise?
It seems to me the world of values and moral thinking and behavior is as
natural to children as any other, and that moral thought and virtuous action in
schools begins with caring and acceptance—a fundamental belief in both the
unique value of each human being and the recognition of our shared
predicament. Moral action is about more than individual behavior, it is also
about questioning and engaging the world we live in. Unlike Bennett, for whom
morality is about making sure the establishment does not come “undone,” I
believe the fundamental message of the good teacher, inherently a moral one,
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 57

rests on transformation: a changed view of the world and of the student’s self.
Who am I? What is my place in this world?
The moral effort of teachers is based on seeing each child in this dynamic,
growing way—thrusting for life, for learning, for valuing—and finding ways to
support the child in that quest. Lillian Weber, founder of the Workshop Center
of City College in New York, characterized this as “unreasonable caring,
unconditional acceptance.” She also pointed out that “the moral statement is not
a statement guaranteeing perfection. The moral statement that releases courage
is ‘I’ll try! I’ll try!’” (L.Weber, personal communication, Feb. 12, 1992).
When the moral or the ethical is invoked—whether in education, or a meeting
of mobsters—it is wise to proceed with caution. To that end, I would offer three
simple caveats. First, morality is not a word like other words, a noun like other
nouns: It describes an entire realm, one without stable borders. The kingdom of
the moral and the ethical is peopled with good guys and bad guys, with heroes,
conquerors, exploiters, madmen, and con men, all of whom have evoked
elaborate descriptions of morality and a moral universe to justify their efforts.
Many have found morality a convenient hammer to beat their opponents into
submission. It is simply untrustworthy and unreliable as a word referring to any
one, immutable thing, and operates best in context.
This brings us to the second caution: It helps to distinguish between morality
in general and morality in particular. Didion’s (1961) “On Morality” begins with
her struggle to write about the subject at all, until her “mind veers inflexibly
toward the particular” (p. 142). She described several events close at hand where
people reach out to help each other for no other reason except that is what they
were taught, and therefore, knew they should do. Didion called this a “primitive
morality,” focused on survival and not on an ideal of goodness. The ideal, for
Didion, turns out to be treacherous in two directions, outward and inward.
Unlike doing the right thing in specific instances, invoking the ideal good
typically involves turning a beneficent gaze outward toward others.
Unfortunately, history teaches us that objects of concern are quickly enough
reconstructed into objects of coercion; the gleam in the eye of the righteous is a
powerful tractor beam foretelling fire and brimstone, death and destruction.
Turning inward, on the other hand, brings its own hazards—it can be a move
toward self-deception:

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking we want

something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic
necessity…but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then
is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the
whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in
bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. (Didion, 1961, p.
147)
58 AYERS

The third and last caution involves a distinction between humanistic and
religious morality. Humanistic approaches begin with the idea that human
beings are the measure of all things. As de Zengotita (2003), who teaches at the
Dalton School, put it, “all else being equal, every human life is, by nature—that
is, simply by virtue of being human—equal in value to every other” (p. 39). Our
human task is to make life more robust, more full, and more livable for each
human being. Certain religious beliefs, ones that promise a better world, a place
without the pain and suffering and hard work of this one, or that value God
above humans, can work against the goals of secular humanism. In “Reflections
on Gandhi,” Orwell (1949) pointed out the difference between loving God, or
humanity as a whole, and loving particular individual persons. “The essence of
being human,” he wrote, “is that one does not seek perfection, that one is
sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push
asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that
one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the
inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals” (Orwell,
1984, p. 332). Orwell argued that most people are not, in fact, failed saints, but
rather find both fun and sorrow in life and have no interest in sainthood at all,
and noted that some who “aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation
to be human beings” (p. 332). When the choice is God or man, Orwell chose the
latter, and in actual practice most of us agree. As educators our goal is not
sainthood; our task is to fasten our gaze on particular children, our students.
In all of this—staying in context, focusing on the specific, valuing each
human life as equal to all others—my aim is to think of morality, in education as
in any facet of existence, as something worked out on the ground, in the
dailyness of lived life. It serves us well to remember the systems of moral
thought that preceded us alongside their gaps, failures, and inadequacies. We
want to make choices on principle, avoiding the deadening effects of orthodoxy,
to embrace moral commitments and at the same time maintain a critical mind.
We want to act, yet we need to doubt. This stance asks us to proceed with
caution, with humility, and with our eyes wide open to face a chaotic, dynamic,
and perspectival world, with hope but without guarantees.
Gwendolyn Brooks was Poet Laureate of Illinois for many years, a public
intellectual and citizen, a teacher with a huge following of students and other
admirers. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in the early 1950s, but never left
the neighborhood or the themes that animated her entire life—the people, the
families, and especially the youngsters of Chicago’s south side. Her most widely
anthologized poem is “The Pool Players Seven at the Golden Shovel,” more
commonly known as “We Real Cool” (Brooks, 1960).
When Brooks passed away there was a moving, daylong memorial
celebrating her life and her work at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller
Chapel, where family and friends honored her huge contribution to literature and
to humanity. On that day Anthony Walton, one of her students, read a poem he
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 59

had written for the occasion called simply “Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000)”1
(Walton, 2000):

Sometimes I see in my mind’s eye a four-or five-

year-old boy, coatless and wandering
a windblown and vacant lot or street in Chicago
on the windblown South Side. He disappears
but stays with me, staring and pronouncing
me guilty of an indifference more callous
than neglect, condescension as self-pity.

Then I see him again, at ten or fifteen, on the corner,

Say, 47th and Martin Luther King or in a group
of men surrounding a burning barrel off Lawndale,
everything surrounding vacant or for sale.
Sometimes I trace him on the train to Joliet
or Menard, such towns quickly becoming native
ground to these boys who are so hard to love, so hard
to see, except as case studies.

Poverty, pain, shame, one and a half million

dreams deemed fit only for the most internal
of exiles. That four-year-old wandering
the wind tunnels of Robert Taylor, of Cabrini
Green, wind chill of an as yet unplumbed degree—
a young boy she did not have to know to love.

Walton and Brooks set me to wondering about the less visible and yet
somehow central dimensions of our work—ethical dimensions embedded in the
enterprise of education—from several different angles of regard: from that of the
4-or 5-year-old boy, coatless and wandering; from the perspective of that 10-or
15-year-old on the corner; from the standpoint of the human cargo on a train
destined for the cage; and from the point of view of an adult world too often
caught up in other matters, indifferent in part, and in other places guided by its
theories and its standards, pursuing its well-intentioned but sometimes blinding
case studies—“condescension as self-pity.”
And suddenly that surprising and oh-so-hopeful denouement, “a young boy
she did not have to know to love.” With Miss Brooks on my mind, I turn to the
problem of moral education, and see it as a problem that operates and challenges

1
Copyright © 2001. Anthony Walton. Reprinted with permission. Anthony Walton is
the author of Mississippi; An American journey. He teaches at Bowdoin College
60 AYERS

us on four levels at once. Formulated as questions, these problems or challenges

or contradictions are the following: Where do we locate the moral in education?
What is the moral heart of teaching? What can we do to create a positive
environment for moral development in our schools, and also in families and
communities? What conflicts, difficulties, or dilemmas do youngsters
themselves raise in the process of their own moral development?

WHERE DO WE LOCATE THE MORAL IN

EDUCATION?

The short answer is at the center, and in every fiber, branch, and limb. To
attempt to disentangle the moral—matters of right and wrong, normative
questions and concerns, aspirations—from education is to do violence to each.
Education, of course, is always a realm of hope and struggle. Its hope hovers
around notions of a future, and struggles over everything: what that future
should look like, who should participate and on what terms, what knowledge
and experiences are of most value, who should have access to that valuable
stuff, and how.
Hope and struggle are manifested and animated each day in every classroom
by two powerful, propulsive, and expansive questions that all students, from
kindergarten through graduate school, bring with them to school. Although
largely unstated and implicit, and often unconscious, these questions are nothing
less than essential. Who in the world am I? What in the world are my choices
and my chances?
These are, in part, questions of identity formation and in part, questions of
geography: of boundaries and limits, but also of aspirations and possibilities.
When my oldest son was in his first months at college and we were checking in
by phone, he told me he was particularly moved by a philosophy course he was
taking, “You never told me about Kierkegaard,” he said almost accusingly, and I
thought, “That’s not the half of it.” His location in an expanding universe was
altered, as it was meant to be. Recognition and growth, the moral possibility,
were in play; on the other side lay the degrada-tion of meaning, the narrowing of
options—something he had thankfully missed, at least in this instance.

WHAT IS THE MORAL HEART OF TEACHING?

The fundamental message of the teacher—the graduate school lecturer, the high
school biology teacher, the preschool teacher, and everyone in between—is this:
You are a growing, changing being. As you learn, your way of regarding the
world will metamorphose, and things will never look quite the same. The good
teacher provides recognition and growth, and holds out the possibility of a
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 61

change in direction, the possibility of a new and different outcome: Take this
sonnet, this formula or equation, this way of seeing or figuring or imagining, and
you must change.
There is a moral contract, then, between teacher and students, again largely
unstated and improvisational, often implied. Brought to light, made conscious
and articulated, it sounds something like this: I will do my best on your behalf; I
will work hard and take you seriously on every appropriate level. In turn, you
must, by your own lights and in your own way, capture your education for
yourself: Seize it, take hold of it, and grasp it in your own hands and in your
own time.
Committed and aware teachers, engaged in the struggle to understand this
contract, must endeavor to accomplish two crucial tasks. One is to convince
students there is no such thing as receiving an education as a passive receptor or
vessel; to argue that in that direction lies nothing but subservience, obedience,
indoctrination, and worse, and that all real education is self-education. The other
is to demonstrate to students, through daily effort and interaction, that they are
valued, that their humanity is honored, and that their growth, enlightenment, and
liberation are education’s core concerns.
Teachers, especially good ones, know how difficult such work is. Too many
schools are structured in ways that undermine this essential moral contract. Too
often our schools, certainly the ones I work in and know best, are organized
around the casual disregard of the humanity of their students, places where
formal authority supplants moral authority, and rule following is substituted for
ethical reflection—reminiscent, in fact, of Bennett’s moral universe. In such
places, the toxic habit of labeling students by their deficits and misbehaviors
bullies the intellectual and ethical heart of teaching off the stage.
The language of such places is revealing: Zero tolerance as an educational
policy replaces the teachable moments that present themselves wherever people
try to live purposefully together. Likewise, the whole alphabet soup of
labeling—EMH, LD, TAG—substitutes for a sense of students as three-
dimensional creatures. Like ourselves, children are made of dreams, aspirations,
interests, and capabilities. Focusing on these qualities expands our
understanding; labeling shrinks our view and with it, our awareness and
compassion as teachers.
That this labeling business has run amok is rarely acknowledged, but it has,
and it was perfectly exposed in The Onion, a satirical newspaper. The headline
proclaimed, “New Study Reveals Millions of American Children Suffering from
YTD—Youthful Tendency Disorder,” A sidebar contained the Ten Early
Warning Signs of YTD, behaviors like “Talks to imaginary friend,” or “Subject
to spontaneous outbursts of laughter.” A mother is quoted saying she was
concerned to learn her daughter was diagnosed with YTD, but relieved to know
that she wasn’t a “bad mother” (“New Study Reveals,” 2000).
62 AYERS

Like all cultural satire, this story works because it reveals a deeper truth
about the predicament we have created for ourselves. We would do well to
remember that all children are unruly sparks of meaning-making energy, always
dynamic, in motion, and on a journey. The best teachers know this, and try to be
aware of their own quests and their own journeys.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO CREATE A POSITIVE

ENVIRONMENT FOR MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN
SCHOOLS, AND ALSO IN FAMILIES AND
COMMUNITIES?

The environment is itself a powerful teacher, the critical variable that classroom
teachers can discern, critique, build, and rebuild to everyone’s advantage.
A basic, if formidable, task for teachers is to create an environment that will
challenge and nurture the wide range of students who actually enter our
classrooms, with multiple entry points toward learning and a range of routes to
moral action and success. The teacher builds the context; the teacher’s values,
instincts, and experiences are worked up in the learning environment. It is
essential to reflect on our values, our expectations, and our standards, bearing in
mind that the dimensions we work with are measured not just in feet and inches,
but also by hopes and dreams, moral reflection, and ethical possibilities. Think
about what one senses walking through the door: What is the atmosphere? What
quality of experience is anticipated? What technique is dominant? What voice
will be expressed?
When I was first teaching, I took my 5-year-olds to the Detroit Metropolitan
Airport to watch the planes take off and land. I did not have much in mind
beyond an enjoyable field trip, but soon discovered that the concourse in any
airport has a powerful message for all of us: Move this way, keep moving, move
rapidly.
To a 5-year-old, the message of the concourse is more specific, and simply
says, “Run!” It took me three field trips to realize that my instructions—stick
together, hold hands, don’t run—were consistently overruled by the dominant
voice of the environment: Run!
What does the environment say? How could it be improved?
A fifth-grade teacher I know begins each year explaining to his students that
he has only three important rules in his classroom: One, you can chew gum—the
students are amazed; two, you can wear your hats—the boys in particular look a
little ecstatic at this contravening of the official in their tiny, unique, apparently
outlaw space; and three, that “This is a community of learners, and you must
treat everyone here with respect and compassion—especially when it’s hard to
do.”
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 63

What this teacher has done in his corner of this school is to create an
environment for moral reflection and ethical action. Mistakes will be made, bad
behavior and thoughtless actions will occur, but undergirding all of it is a
framework for learning, for embracing the teachable moment. This classroom
environment is a place, in the words of the great Joe Cocker tune, of “learning to
live together” (Cocker, 1970). Such a process goes on for a lifetime. It is a
process begun in the family and potentially continued and expanded in school,
and ignored at our collective peril.
Contrast this attitude to a sign I saw in a Chicago high school cafeteria:

RULES
No running.
No shouting.
No throwing food.
No fork fights.

No fork fights? One’s mind boggles, imagining the incident that led to the
inclusion of that rule. Beyond that, one wonders, why no fist fights or knife
fights? Here we find echoes of Bennett, the small moral matters emphasized
rather than the great ones. Where in this environment is there a place for ethical
reflection or creation?

WHAT CONFLICTS, CHALLENGES, AND

CONTRADICTIONS DO YOUNGSTERS THEMSELVES
RAISE IN THE PROCESS OF THEIR OWN MORAL
DEVELOPMENT?

Too many to enumerate. Just as a 2-year-old must turn his back on his mother
and the security of family to find himself—the endless no, no, no; the so-called
terrible twos—so a 12-year-old must find herself, in part, by pushing away,
broadening her base of affiliation, and finding values, meaning, and a cause to
commit to beyond the safety, but also the constraint, of home. Just as adults can
be deceived by the 2-year-old’s use of language into thinking we share an
entirely common meaning, so, too, can adults be confused by the grown-up
bodies and sophisticated intelligence of adolescents, and assume that we share
an identical moral space.
In reality, the coming of age of the young is always a little scary. The kids are
overwhelmed with the changes going on inside themselves and painfully aware
of their limitations as they stride into adulthood. Emblematic adolescents in
literature and popular culture are often deeply good, acting with the best of
intentions and sometimes even heroically; yet at the same time, they are
typically uncomfortable with their transformations and surprised by their sudden
super powers, and society inevitably misunderstands them: Spiderman and
64 AYERS

Edward Scissorhands immediately come to mind. We adults feel the implied or

explicit criticism of our failures, the gaps and deficiencies in the world we have
left to them. “You’re hypocrites and liars!” they shout at us, and we cannot stand
the sound of it. “We can do it better,” they insist, and we assume a defensive
crouch. In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare lamented, “I would that there were
no age between ten and three and twenty, or that boys would simply sleep out of
rest, for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child, wronging
the ancestry, stealing and fighting” (Shakespeare, 1611).
Knowing what the game is, parents, educators, and the society we create can
surely do better. The game can be summed up in two lines from another poem
by Brooks called “Boy Breaking Glass” (in Allison et al., 1983): “I shall create!
If not a note then a hole. If not an overture then a desecration.” Moral education
is, in part, a matter of opening: the creative vent, the inventive mind, the
productive option. Openings allow for alternatives to be seen and chosen, and
for destructive routes to be challenged and even closed.
Education lives an excruciating paradox precisely because of its association
with and location in schools. That is because education is about opening doors,
opening minds, and opening possibilities. School is about sorting and punishing,
grading and ranking, and certifying. Education is unconditional—it asks nothing
in return, except that the student seize it and make it his or hers. Education is
surprising and unruly and disorderly, whereas the first and fundamental law of
school is to follow orders. An educator unleashes the unpredictable, whereas a
schoolteacher starts with an unhealthy obsession with classroom management.
Ethics is different from conventions, different from simple rule following, in
that it involves reflection and thought and judgment. As Bennett proves, one
person’s moral principle is another’s dogma, one’s guidelines for the good life
nothing more, for another, than genuflection to the status quo. Most of us, most
of the time, follow the conventions of our culture. Most Spartans act like
Spartans, most Athenians like Athenians. For better or worse, most Americans
act like Americans, and we live in a culture that has traditionally valued
individuality over interrelatedness.
It takes a conscious act, or at least an act of will, to resist. Individual ethics
exhort us to be good, and individual virtue is probably a good thing. However,
community ethics ask us to wonder how we behave collectively; how our
society behaves; and how the contexts of politics, economics, law, culture, and
history interact with what we hold to be ethical. Here things become denser and
more difficult. Johnny Caspar is trying to be ethical in a corrupt and inhumane
enterprise. Is he moral? In what way? During the time of slavery there were
surely honest overseers and law-abiding slave owners, but in what sense were
they ethical? Everyone knows that all advertising lies some of the time, and
most ads lie all of the time, and yet we ignore it. Is this moral?
A basic challenge to teachers is to stay wide awake to the world, to the
concentric circles of context in which we live and work. Teachers must know
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 65

and care about some aspect of our shared life—our calling after all, is to
shepherd and enable the callings of others. Teachers, then, invite students to
become somehow more capable, more thoughtful and powerful in their choices,
more engaged in a culture and civilization. More free. More ethical. How do we
warrant this invitation? How do we understand this culture and civilization?
Our principles and ponderings may be philosophical, but moral education is
grounded in particulars, which are most exquisitely illuminated by poets and
writers. Brooks reminds us again and again that it matters who and what we
choose to see. Teachers choose: They choose how to see the world, what to
embrace and what to reject, and whether to support or resist this or that
directive. As teachers choose, the ethical emerges.
James Baldwin (1963) wrote:

The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to

become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he
is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create
in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make
his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white,
to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To
ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those
questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society
is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What
societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply
obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that
society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of
himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it
and to fight it—at no matter what risk. This is the only hope
society has. This is the only way societies change, (p. 47)

Teachers can be the midwives of hope, or the purveyors of determinism and

despair. In Beloved, Toni Morrison’s novel of slavery, freedom, and the
complexities of a mother’s love, Schoolteacher, a frightening character with no
other name, comes to Sweet Home with his efficient, scientific interest in slaves,
and makes life unbearable (Morrison, 1987). Schoolteacher is a disturbing,
jarring character for those of us who think of teachers as universally caring and
compassionate people. Schoolteacher is cold, sadistic, and brutal. He is all about
control and management and maintaining the status quo. He and others like him
are significant props in an entire system of dehumanization, oppression, and
exploitation. They show us teaching as unfreedom, teaching as linked to slavery.
Amir Maalouf ‘s (2003) Samarkand is a remarkable historical novel about the
life of Omar Khayam and the journey of the Rubiayat. Toward the end, Howard
Baskerville, a British schoolteacher in the city of Tabriz in old Persia at the time
66 AYERS

of the first democratic revolution, explains an incident in which he was observed

weeping in the marketplace:
“Crying is not a recipe for anything,” he begins, “Nor is it a skill. It is simply
a naked, naive and pathetic gesture.” However, he goes on, crying is nonetheless
important. When the people saw him crying they figured he “had thrown off the
sovereign indifference of a foreigner,” and that they could come to Baskerville
“to tell me confidentially that crying serves no purpose and that Persia does not
need any extra mourners and that the best I could do would be to provide the
children of Tabriz with an adequate education.” “If they had not seen me
crying,” Baskerville concludes, “they would never have let me tell pupils that
this Shah was rotten and that the religious chiefs of Tabriz were hardly any
better” (Maalouf, 1994, p. 234).
Both these teachers show us that teaching occurs in context and that
pedagogy and technique are not the wellsprings of moral choice. Teaching
becomes ethical action as the practice of freedom, guided by an unshakable
commitment to working with particular human beings to reach the full measure
of their humanity, and a willingness to reach toward a future fit for all.
Earlier, I argued that for both teacher and student, education initiates seeing
the world in a new way, and so the fundamental message of the teacher begins
with the belief that you can change your life and transform your place in this
world. As this moral process evolves, a necessary corollary emerges:
Transformed, you must change the world.
In “The Poet’s Obligation,”2 Pablo Neruda (1975) advised his fellow poets:

To whoever is not listening to the sea

This Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up
In house or office, factory
Or street or mine or dry prison cell,
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door or his prison,
And a vibration starts up, vague and insistent,
A long rumble of thunder adds itself
To the weight of the planet and the foam,
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise,
The star vibrates quickly in its corona

And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating.

So, drawn on by my destiny,
I ceaselessly must listen to and keep
The sea’s lamenting in my consciousness,

2
From “Fully Empowered,” by P.Neruda, 1975, appearing in Journal of Moral
Education. Copyright © 2004 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Reprinted with ermission.
 3. WHO IN THE WORLD AM I? 67

I must feel the crash of the hard water

And gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that, wherever those in prison may be,
Wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn,
I may be present with an errant wave,
I move in and out of windows,
And hearing me, eyes may lift themselves,
Asking “How can I reach the sea?”
And I will pass to them, saying nothing,
The starry echoes of the wave,
A breaking up of foam and quicksand,
A resulting of salt withdrawing itself,
The gray cry of sea birds on the coast.

So, through me, freedom and the sea

Will call in answer to the shrouded heart.

If we understand the dry prison cell to be ignorance, cynicism, hopelessness,

and all the entanglements of mystification and easy belief, and if we consider the
sea’s lamenting and the errant wave to represent a wider world and the hope for
human liberation, then we recognize this as the teacher’s obligation as well, and
further, the activist’s obligation, the obligation of every purposeful life. We must
act, for we cannot pretend to be neutral on a moving train. However, our actions
should be tempered with doubt, with the possibility that we have not got it right.
We struggle to be wide awake to a dynamic, complex, and perspectival world.
We work to improve life on the ground: right here, right now, in the particulars
of daily life.
Martin Luther King, Jr. argued that the arc of the moral universe is long, but
that it bends toward justice. This is not a scientific conclusion nor an established
fact, but rather an inspired expression of hope for a world that could be, but is
not yet, a world that requires all of us to act on behalf of freedom and
enlightenment. It is a hope for humanity itself.

REFERENCES

Allison, A.W. et al. (Eds.). (1983). The Norton anthology of poetry (3rd ed.). New York:
Norton.
Baldwin, J. (1963, December 21). A talk with teachers. Saturday Review.
Bennett, W.J. (1993). The book of virtues: A treasury of great moral stories. New York:
Simon & Schuster.
Bennett, W.J. (2002). Why we fight: Moral clarity and the war on terrorism. New York:
Doubleday.
Brooks, G. (1960). The bean players. New York: Harpers Press.
68 AYERS

Cocker, J. (1970). Space captain [Recorded by Mushroom]. On Mad dogs and San
Franciscans [CD]. Oakland, CA: Black Beauty. (2003).
Cohen, E., & Cohen, J. (1990). Millers crossing [Motion picture]. United States: 20th
Century Fox.
de Zengotita, T. (2003, January). Common ground: Finding our way back to the
enlightenment. Harpers Magazine, 306(1832), 35–44.
Didion, J. (1961). Slouching towards Bethlehem. New York: Random House.
Dolan, F.E. (1971). The Pelican Shakespeare: The winter’s tale. New York: Penguin.
Maalouf, A. (1994). Samarkand (R.Harris, Trans.). London: Abacus.
Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. London: Vintage/Random House.
Neruda, P. (1975). “The poet’s obligation.” Fully empowered (A.Reid, Trans.). New
York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.
Orwell, G. (1949, Winter). Reflections on Ghandi. Partisan Review, 6, 85–92.
Orwell, G. (1984). The Orwell reader: Fiction, essays, and reports. New York: Harcourt.
Walton, A. (2000, December 18). “Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000).” The New Yorker,
76(39), 48.
 4
Adolescent-Parent Conflict: Resistance
and Subversion as Developmental
Process
Judith G.Smetana
University of Rochester

Adolescence is problematic in contemporary American society. The prevailing

view is that adolescence is a normative period of storm and stress entailing a
generation gap and rebellion against adult standards; adolescents are also said to
be experiencing a drastic decline in moral values. These views are evident in a
variety of different places. For instance, childrearing advice books provide an
intriguing window on popular culture perceptions of teenagers. A quick perusal
of parenting advice books suggests that adolescence is a battleground. Titles
such as Surviving Your Adolescents: How to Manage and Let Go of Your 13–18
Year Olds (Phelan, 1998), Teenagers: A Bewildered Parents’ Guide (Caldwell,
1996), and “I’m Not Mad! I Just Hate You!”: A New Understanding of Mother-
Daughter Conflict (Cohen-Sandier & Silver, 1999) portray parenting an
adolescent as a challenging task and being an adolescent as equally difficult.
These negative perceptions of adolescents are echoed in the opinions of the
general public. A recent nationally representative telephone survey of more than
2,000 adults, conducted by the Public Agenda (Duffet, Johnson, & Farkas,
1999), examined adults’ views of teenagers today. The majority of adults
surveyed (53%) had negative views of children, but they had substantially more
negative beliefs about adolescents. Fully 71% of the adults and 74% of parents
surveyed described teenagers in negative terms, such as lazy, disrespectful, or
wild. A further question revealed that “not learning values” tops the public’s list
of problems facing youth today. Nearly half (45%) of their sample believed that
the major problem facing the current generation of children is that they have not
learned respect and rules.
Some prominent commentators and moral educators also have promoted this
negative perception of adolescents. For instance, Bennett (1992, 1997) argued
that there is a rising tide of juvenile delinquency, adolescent drug and alcohol

This chapter is based on an invited talk given at the Annual Meetings of the
Association for Moral Education, Chicago, October 2002.
69
70 SMETANA

use, and teenage pregnancy and childbearing and that this reflects a breakdown
in the moral fabric of society. In Bennett’s view, as well as that of other
prominent moral educators (Lickona, 1991, 1997), adolescents are rejecting
parents’ moral values and resisting adult authority, and this has led to
widespread moral decay.
In this chapter, it is asserted that these concerns may be misplaced. At the
outset of the chapter, evidence is presented to suggest that for the most part,
youth today are not rejecting adults’ moral authority and that evidence for
rebellion and rejection of adult standards is widely overstated. Instead, it is
proposed that moderate amounts of resistance to parental authority may be
normative, both historically and developmentally, that resistance and subversion
may be developmentally appropriate, and that, under certain conditions, they
may be functional for adolescent development.

ARE ADOLESCENT-PARENT CONELICT AND

REJECTION OF ADULT AUTHORITY ON THE RISE?

Historical analyses suggest that themes of adolescent rejection of adult authority

are nothing new. Demos and Demos (1969) analyzed American childrearing
advice books to determine how cultural views of children and adolescents have
changed over time and the themes that emerge during different historical
periods. According to their analyses, anxiety over parental authority has been a
dominant theme of American childrearing advice books since these books first
became popular nearly two centuries ago. For example, Demos and Demos
(1969) provided the following example from the early 1800s:

It must be confessed that an irreverent, unruly spirit has come to

be a prevalent, an outrageous evil among the young people of our
land… Some of the good old people make facetious complaint on
this…“There is as much family government now as there used to
be in our young days,” they say, “only it has changed hands.” (p.
633)

Thus, it appears that the view of American teenagers as normatively rebellious

has dominated the American imagination for at least two centuries.
The assertion that juvenile delinquency is on the rise also has come under
attack (Fuentes, 1998). Citing data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice,
Fuentes asserted that changes in youth crime are not nearly as dramatic as the
public’s perception of it and that although there have been fluetuations in
juvenile crime rates over the past 30 years, there has been little overall change.
Adolescents’ access to guns has increased, and with it has come a drastic
increase in youth violence involving guns. However, in contrast to the
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 71

arguments raised by some character educators, it appears that rates of juvenile

delinquency and adolescent pregnancy actually are on the decline.
Finally, the evidence from psychological research on adolescent-parent
relationships likewise suggests that resistance to parental authority has been a
relatively constant feature of adolescent-parent relationships and that for most
families, its scope and intensity are limited. The results of several large-scale
survey studies, conducted almost 50 years ago, have indicated that extreme
alienation from parents, active rejection of adult values and authority, and
youthful rebellion are the exception, and that close, warm, and supportive family
relations during adolescence are the norm. For instance, based on a
questionnaire study of approximately 3,500 American teenagers, Douvan and
Adelson (1966) concluded that middle adolescents and their parents agree on
basic values and that adolescents generally admire and trust their parents and
believe that their parents’ rules are generally fair and just. Likewise, Kandel and
Lesser (1972) compared nearly 2,000 mother-adolescent dyads in the United
States and Denmark and found that most American and Danish adolescents
reported close or very close relationships with both mothers and fathers and that
most adolescents reported relying on their parents (particularly their mothers)
for advice on morality and values. Finally, in a landmark epidemiological study
of parents and teachers of the entire population of 2,303 adolescents on the Isle
of Wight in Great Britain, Rutter, Graham, Chadwick, and Yule (1976)
concluded that most adolescents shared their parents’ values and that they
respected their parents’ rules, although they wished their parents were less strict.
At the same time, each of these studies did find increases with age in
adolescents’ disagreements with parents over issues like choice of clothing, hair,
dating, and being allowed to go out (Douvan & Adelson, 1966; Kandel &
Lesser, 1972; Rutter et al., 1976). Indeed, disputes over these issues were found
to be fairly common and sometimes quite heated.
More recently, these studies have been criticized because of their use of
global assessments of family closeness, intergenerational tension, and
independence. None of these early studies utilized observations of actual family
interactions, nor did they provide detailed accounts of conflicts in daily life
(Silverberg, Tennenbaum, & Jacob, 1992). Nevertheless, the findings from more
recent studies employing more sophisticated methods, including in-depth
interviews, more detailed and standardized questionnaires, and observations of
family interactions (Laursen & Collins, 1994; Silverberg et al., 1992) are very
similar to these early, large-scale studies. Conflicts between adolescents and
parents have been found to occur over the everyday details of family life, like
doing homework or chores, adolescents’ choice of TV or music, use of the
phone, dating and seeing friends, how late to stay out, and dress and hairstyles
(Montemayor, 1983, 1986; Smetana, 1989; Smetana, Daddis, & Chuang, 2003).
Thus, although the research has become more methodologically sophisticated
and more theoretically grounded, the results suggest that American adolescents’
72 SMETANA

relationships with their parents today are not very different from their parents’
relationships with their grandparents, when they were young. Moreover,
confirming earlier findings, current findings suggest that parent-adolescent
conflict is relatively frequent, but moderate in intensity. A recent meta-analysis
(Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998) indicated that the rate of adolescent-parent
conflict (both the number and frequency of conflicts) appears to peak in early
adolescence and then to decline, although conflict tends to increase in intensity
from early to middle adolescence. Moderate levels of conflict between
adolescents and parents appear to be a normative aspect of relationships between
American adolescents and their parents.

ADOLESCENTS' AND PARENTS' INTERPRETATIONS

OF EVERYDAY DISAGREEMENTS

Although disagreements may pertain to relatively mundane, everyday issues,

there is more at stake in these disputes than whether adolescents keep their room
neat and tidy. Emery (1992) distinguished between the surface meaning, which
refers to the literal content of family conflicts (e.g., whether adolescents clean
their room or take out the garbage), and the deep meaning, which refers to what
conflict conveys about the broader structure of relationships. In a series of
studies, we have examined the deep meaning of conflicts by obtaining
adolescents’ and parents’ interpretations, or their justifications for their positions
on everyday disputes. In most of these studies, adolescents, mothers, and fathers
have been individually interviewed about important conflicts (either as
generated by the participant or identified as one of their “hottest” conflicts from
the Issues Checklist; Robin & Foster, 1989). These studies have included cross-
sectional investigations of middle-class married and divorced European
American families with adolescents ranging in age from 10 to 18 years
(Smetana, 1989; Smetana & Asquith, 1994; Smetana & Berent, 1993; Smetana,
Yau, Restrepo, & Braeges, 1991), middle-class African American families with
early adolescents, who were followed longitudinally for 5 years (Smetana et al.,
2003; Smetana & Gaines, 1999), and Chinese adolescents (also 10–18 years of
age) in Hong Kong (Yau & Smetana, 1996), and the People’s Republic of China
(Yau & Smetana, 2003a).
The findings from these studies indicate that parental authority and social
order are much on the minds of parents, much as Demos and Demos (1969)
observed from their historical analyses of childrearing advice books. Across the
different studies, the majority of parents’ justifications for their perspectives on
disputes referred to parental authority and social regulation. However, parents’
justifications did not focus on disobedience or disrespect, but rather reflected
parental concern with maintaining family and cultural social conventions,
instilling a sense of responsibility in their teenagers, establishing modes of
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 73

organization that facilitate the effective functioning of the family (e.g.,

coordinating chores so that everyone helps out and does their part), and concerns
about avoiding social condemnation (e.g., disapproval or embarrassment for not
fulfilling expectations).
Two aspects of the findings are notable. First, our findings indicate that
although parents were concerned with the effective functioning of the family
social system and maintaining and enforcing familial and broader cultural
norms, everyday conflicts rarely entailed disagreements over basic values or
moral issues. Drawing on social domain theory (see Killen, McGlothlin, & Lee-
Kim, 2002; Nucci, 2001; Smetana, 1995b, 2002; Tisak, 1995; Turiel, 1983,
1998, 2002, for overviews), morality in these studies was defined as prescriptive
judgments of right and wrong pertaining to others’ welfare (harm), fairness, or
rights. A great deal of research has shown that moral concepts are separable,
both developmentally and conceptually, from the types of concerns with social
conventions and social organization that parents in our studies articulated in the
context of everyday disagreements. Morality regulates interpersonal
relationships, whereas social conventions pertain to individuals’ descriptive
understandings of social systems. Moral issues were infrequent sources of
conflict in adolescent-parent relationships and accounted for only a small
proportion of disputes (primarily over how adolescents got along with siblings
or others). However, in these different studies, social-conventional reasons
predominated in parents’ responses and accounted for the majority of their
justifications. In lesser frequencies, parents also articulated practical (pragmatic)
concerns, prudential concerns (which focused on adolescents’ comfort, health,
and safety), and psychological concerns (entailing judgments about their
personalities or traits), with parents’ responses distributed among these different
categories. Thus, our findings are consistent with findings from earlier studies
(Douvan & Adelson, 1966; Kandel & Lesser, 1972; Rutter, 1980; Rutter et al.,
1976) indicating that parent-adolescent disagreements do not entail adolescents’
rejection of parental moral values.
The second aspect of the findings that deserves note is that whereas parents
were concerned with social conventions, social regulation, and paren-tal
authority, these concerns were rarely voiced by adolescents, and when they
were, adolescents appealed primarily to peer group conventions, not parental or
cultural conventions. In contrast, attaining greater personal freedoms and
maximizing personal choices were much on the minds of adolescents.
Adolescents’ perspectives on conflicts largely entailed claims to personal
choices and personal jurisdiction. Thus, adolescents’ reasoning about conflicts
focused on statements that the issues were inconsequential or unimportant,
because they did not affect others, assertions of personal preferences and
choices, and claims to individuality and autonomy. “It’s my room,” “It’s part of
who I am,” “I should be able to decide,” and “It’s my choice” were frequent
adolescent refrains.
74 SMETANA

These findings are very robust. They emerged when adolescents’

justifications were obtained in individual, semistructured interviews (Smetana,
1989; Smetana & Gaines, 1999; Smetana et al., 2003), when justifications were
coded from a structured, videotaped family interaction task (Smetana, Braeges,
& Yau, 1991), and when adolescents rated or endorsed different reasons through
questionnaires (Smetana & Asquith, 1994; Smetana & Berent, 1993). Regardless
of method, appeals to personal jurisdiction predominated in adolescents’
responses, with the remaining responses distributed among other types of
justifications (pragmatic, prudential, moral, psychological, and conventional).
Moreover, when asked to reason from their parents’ perspectives (referred to
as counterarguments), adolescents clearly understood their parents’ conventional
perspectives on disputes, but reformulated the issues instead in terms of
asserting personal choices and personal discretion. Their counterarguments
demonstrated that these redefinitions of parents’ conventional arguments as
issues of personal choice did not entail wholesale rejection of parents’
conventional authority or values. Rather, adolescents questioned whether
parents’ authority extended to the particular issue or instance or to the way the
expectation was performed. For instance, parents treated conflicts over chores as
conventional expectations that serve to maintain the family social system.
Adolescents’ personal justifications often pertained to whether chores needed to
be done according to parents’ expectations (e.g., at the times that parents
specified), rather than whether chores needed to be done at all or whether
parents had the legitimate authority to set those expectations.
Adolescents’ appeals to personal jurisdiction were found, in very similar
frequencies, in different samples of European American, African American, and
Chinese adolescents. The findings for European American youth may not be
surprising, given that concerns with personal goals and individualism are said to
characterize individuals in North American societies. However, reflecting their
West African cultural heritage, African American families are said to be
oriented toward communalism and harmony (but see Oyserman, Coon, &
Kemmelmeier, 2002, who found African Americans to be more individualistic
than European Americans). Likewise, Chinese culture has been described as
valuing filial piety, obedience to authority, and harmony in interpersonal
relationships (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus, Mullally, & Kitayama,
1997). Yet appeals to personal jurisdiction were very much in evidence in both
African American and Chinese adolescents’ justifications for their perspectives
on disputes.
Rather than seeing these responses as reflecting individualism, selfishness,
egoism, or rejection of adult authority, we have interpreted adolescents’
responses in light of recent psychological research, which has viewed claims to
personal choices and appeals to personal jurisdiction as an aspect of an
organized system of children’s developing social knowledge. More specifically,
Nucci (1981, 1996, 2001) identified reasoning about personal issues as an aspect
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 75

of children’s developing psychological knowledge, which is a developmental

and conceptual system that is distinct from morality and social convention.
Personal issues are issues of preferences and choices and as such, they are not
subject to societal regulation and moral concern. They typically pertain to issues
like privacy, control over one’s body, and choices regarding friends and leisure
activities. Although the boundaries and content of the personal domain may vary
across cultures (or ethnic groups), Nucci (1996, 2001) proposed that individuals
in all cultures claim control over personal issues and that defining a personal
domain satisfies basic human needs for personal agency, autonomy, and
effectance.
Thus, these findings indicate that adolescent-parent conflicts are, at their
heart, debates over where to draw the line between parental control and
authority and adolescents’ autonomy over the self. The findings suggest further
that the culturally and historically pervasive picture of adolescents as
normatively rebellious and as resisting or subverting parental authority is both
overdrawn and incomplete. It is overdrawn in that adolescents are not rejecting
all forms of parental authority. It is incomplete in that it reflects an
overemphasis on parents’ perspectives and a failure to consider adolescents’
perspectives. This is not surprising. Commenting on the perspectives of cultural
anthropologists, Abu-Lughod (1993) noted that social science research usually
focuses on the perspectives of those in dominant positions and ignores the views
of those in subordinate positions. Turiel (1998, 2002) likewise asserted that
developmental psychologists have not fully considered the social judgments and
social behaviors of those in subordinate positions in different social hierarchies.
Although Turiel elaborated his argument primarily in terms of the inequalities
that women (relative to men) in different societies face, the argument also has
relevance in thinking about adolescents. Parents have an intergenerational stake
in maintaining continuity between generations (Bengston & Kuypers, 1971) and
in socializing adolescents into the norms and values of their culture. Indeed,
successful socialization is typically described as willingly adopting and
complying with the rules and directives of adults (Kochanska, Aksan, & Koenig,
1995). Conflict, by definition, entails noncompliance or resistance to parental
directives.
Our research suggests that adolescents’ resistance to parental authority is
selective and in the service of attaining greater autonomy. In general, parents do
view autonomy as an important developmental goal. In-depth interviews with
mothers have indicated that parents believe it is important for their young
children (Nucci & Smetana, 1996) and adolescents (Smetana & Chuang, 2001)
to become more independent and that they view granting children decision-
making control over personal issues as facilitating their competence. Moreover,
these views are not restricted to European American middle-class mothers. As
reviewed elsewhere (Smetana, 2002), mothers from a variety of cultures,
including Japan, Taiwan, China, and Brazil, as well as ethnic minority (African
76 SMETANA

American) mothers, have endorsed the importance of granting children

developmentally appropriate control over personal issues. However, parents also
view their role as keeping their children safe and protecting them from harm,
and thus, their willingness to grant children and adolescents’ greater personal
jurisdiction is tempered by their judgments of whether children and adolescents
have the competence or maturity to make those decisions (Smetana, 2002).

SELECTIVE RESISTANCE AND CONCEPTIONS OF

PARENT AND TEACHER AUTHORITY

The notion that children’s resistance to adult authority is selective and occurs
over the boundaries of adolescents’ personal jurisdiction has been tested directly
in a series of studies examining adolescents’ and adults’ conceptions of the
legitimacy of adult authority. In the research on adolescentparent conflict,
participants generated or rated the disagreements or conflicts that arose in their
families, and thus families rated different (but highly salient) issues. In the
research on adult authority, participants rated a standard set of issues. They
made judgments about hypothetical acts that were seen as exemplifying different
domains, including morality, social convention, and personal issues. This
research also included a category of more complex issues, which we have
termed multifaceted, that typically involved overlapping concerns in different
conceptual domains (usually conventional and personal). For instance, in the
aforementioned studies, how adolescents keep their bedrooms was a frequent
source of conflict in American adolescent-parent relationships; adolescents
typically viewed their bedroom as private space, and thus its condition was
viewed as an issue of personal choice and personal expression. Parents
disagreed. They typically viewed the adolescent’s bedroom as part of the house
and its condition as a violation of parental norms. Thus, in the studies of
authority concepts, multifaceted issues were issues that adolescents treated as
personal but parents viewed as conventional (and potentially, prudential). In
some of the studies we included a separate category of multifaceted issues
pertaining to friendships, because many friendship issues (like when to start
dating or whether to hang out with friends who parents do not like) entail
overlapping personal, prudential, psychological, and conventional concerns.
In general, the results of cross-sectional studies, including a wide age range
of children (from 10–18 years of age; Smetana, 1988; Smetana & Asquith,
1994) and research with African American families with early adolescents,
followed longitudinally (Smetana, 2000; Smetana, Crean, & Campione-Barr,
2003), have shown that adolescents and their parents overwhelmingly affirm
parents’ legitimate authority to regulate moral and conventional issues and that
these judgments do not change significantly with age. Moreover, adolescents
and parents also judged that adolescents have an obligation to obey parents’
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 77

moral and conventional rules, even if they disagree with them. These findings
indicate clearly that adolescents are oriented toward acceptance of parents’
moral and conventional authority. Similar findings have been obtained among
adolescents from other ethnic groups, including American adolescents of
Chinese, Filipino, and Latino backgrounds (Fuligni, 1998).
However, as expected, the findings from these studies indicated that
acceptance of parental authority is not absolute; rather, it is domain-specific. In
these studies, the same adolescents who endorsed parents as having legitimate
authority to regulate moral and conventional issues overwhelmingly rejected
parents’ legitimate authority to regulate prototypical personal issues (like how
late to sleep on weekends, how to spend allowance money, and how to wear
one’s hair). Furthermore, they also judged that adolescents are not obligated to
follow rules limiting adolescents’ freedom over personal issues. Thus, resistance
to rules regulating personal issues was seen as legitimate, whereas resistance to
moral and conventional rules was not. Moreover, the pattern of judgments was
toward greater resistance to parents’ legitimate authority over personal issues
with increasing age. Whereas parents were less likely to view parents as
legitimate authorities over personal than moral or conventional issues, at each
age, parents lagged behind adolescents in their willingness to grant adolescents
autonomy over personal issues. Thus, although parent-adolescent discrepancies
in judgments of multifaceted issues were found consistently from early to late
adolescence, the overall trend was toward granting adolescents more autonomy
over these issues—which did not occur for moral or conventional issues.
A consistent finding in these studies is that although adolescents and parents
generally agree in their judgments regarding parents’ legitimate authority to
regulate moral and conventional issues, there are substantial dis-crepancies
between parents’ and adolescents’ judgments of legitimate parental authority
over multifaceted friendship issues. At each age, adolescents consistently
asserted more desires for personal jurisdiction over these issues than parents
were willing to grant. However, the studies revealed significant decreases with
age in parents’ and adolescents’ beliefs that parents have the legitimate authority
to regulate these issues, which are at the boundary of conventional regulation
and personal jurisdiction. Thus, as adolescents got older, they were accorded
more personal jurisdiction over these issues.
These findings are generalizable beyond the immediate context of the family.
Using similar methods, we have also examined adolescents’ conceptions of the
legitimacy of school and teacher authority (Smetana & Bitz, 1996). A sample of
lower middle-class, primarily (80%) European American 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th
graders in elementary, junior, and high schools were asked to make judgments
about the legitimacy of teachers’ and principals’ authority to regulate different
types of issues in school. As in the studies of parental authority, students made
judgments about hypothetical items that were seen as exemplars of different
social knowledge domains. In this study, the stimulus items were generated from
78 SMETANA

discussions with teachers about frequently occurring rule transgressions in their

schools. Thus, the moral items pertained to stealing money from other students,
fighting or threatening other students, making fun of other students, and not
returning textbooks at the end of the year. The conventional issues included
swearing in the halls, talking back to teachers, coming to class late, and
misbehaving (acting up) in class. The personal items included sitting next to
friends in class, choice of hairstyle, choosing who to have lunch with, and how
to spend lunch money.
We also added a category we called contextually conventional issues. For
reasons of social order, schools may regulate many issues (e.g., going to the
lavatory) that might be personal in other contexts but that are socially regulated
in school (e.g., setting restrictions on when it is permissible to leave the
classroom to go to the lavatory) and potentially may be seen as having both
conventional and personal components. Thus, contextually conventional issues
can be seen as conceptually similar to the multifaceted issues included in the
studies of beliefs about parental authority in the family. In this study,
contextually conventional items included kissing boyfriends or girlfriends in the
hall, leaving the classroom to go to the lavatory, hanging centerfolds in the
student’s locker, and passing notes to friends in class.
The pattern of findings was very similar to the results of research on
adolescents’ judgments of parental authority in the family. Across ages,
adolescents overwhelmingly affirmed the legitimacy of schools and teachers to
regulate moral and conventional issues, but they overwhelming rejected school
and teachers’ authority to regulate personal issues. Only 5% of re-spouses
entailed an endorsement of schools as having the legitimate authority to regulate
personal issues. Students were equivocal about whether schools have the
legitimate authority to regulate contextually conventional issues; across grades,
nearly half of the sample (46%) viewed these issues as legitimately subject to
teachers’ and school principals’ authority, but as this suggests, the majority did
not view schools as having the legitimate authority to regulate these issues. The
findings were nearly the inverse when students were asked whether they should
have personal jurisdiction over these issues. Students claimed personal
jurisdiction over personal issues, and to a lesser extent, over contextually
conventional issues, but they did not view themselves as having the authority to
make rules about other types of issues.
In unpublished data from this study, we also interviewed 7th, 9th, and 11th
grade students to obtain a more elaborated understanding of their reasoning
about school and teacher authority. Students were interviewed to obtain their
judgments about the acceptability of different types of transgressions and
behaviors in school and their justifications for those judgments. Students
overwhelming judged that it was permissible (M=2.67, SD=.54 on a 3-point
scale where 3=permissible) for schools to make rules about how students behave
in class (like coming late, talking back to the teacher, or not listening), based on
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 79

conventional (46%), prudential (30%), and pragmatic or efficiency (10%)

justifications. Students also overwhelming judged that it was permissible
(M=2.75, SD=.49) for schools to make rules about issues like hitting, fighting
with, or teasing other students, based primarily on concerns with others’ welfare
or fairness (62%) and less frequently, with authority, punishment, and social
order (16%). However, students also judged that it was not acceptable for
schools to make rules about choice of friends and when to see friends, control
over their bodies (e.g., what they eat), choice of clothes and hairstyles, and what
they write in their journals or tell as secrets to other students (Ms ranged from
1.20 to 1.55 on the same 3-point scale, where 1=not permissible to make rules).
For each of these issues, personal justifications predominated, ranging from 67%
to 86% of justifications offered, and there were no grade or gender differences in
any of these judgments or justifications.
Responses to other questions indicated that adolescents were attempting to
delineate the boundaries between their personal jurisdiction and school and
teachers’ legitimate authority. For instance, most students judged that it is not
permissible (M=1.43, SD=.64) for schools to make rules about students’ choice
of activities (e.g., whether they participate in sports or afterschool activities),
based primarily (74%) on personal justifications. However, students were more
equivocal about whether schools have the legitimate authority to make rules
about students’ choice of activities within school, like the classes they take or
what they do in gym class (M=2.08, SD=.76), and their justifications reflected a
mixture of personal (35%), prudential (35%), and conventional (22%) concerns.
The findings from these studies of parental and institutional (school and
teacher) authority indicate that adolescents of varying ethnicities are not
rejecting parents’ or other adults’ moral or conventional authority or standards.
Rather, they are attempting to enlarge their arena of personal jurisdiction.
Adolescents’ claims to greater personal freedom are selective and occur at the
boundaries of parents’ authority and adolescents’ authority over the self. Of
course, adolescents’ resistance to adult authority may take subversive forms. For
instance, adolescents may tell their parents they did their homework when they
did not, or they may dress in conventionally appropriate clothing at home and
then change into more revealing clothes on their way to school. Adolescents also
can choose not to disclose salient information; for instance, they can “forget” to
mention that they failed an exam or that no parents will be present at the party at
their friend’s house. However, our findings indicate that asserting claims to
personal jurisdiction, especially when they differ from parents’ conventional
perspectives, potentially can lead to conflict. Different issues may wax and wane
as sources of conflict, but the process entails an ongoing negotiation over what
adolescents claim to be personal and what adults view them as competent to
control. Through these dialectical processes, the boundaries of parental authority
are transformed, leading to an outward reach of autonomy during adolescence.
80 SMETANA

AUTONOMY IN A BROADER DEVELOPMENTAL

CONTEXT

It is important to note that claims to personal jurisdiction and personal choice do

not arise de novo during adolescence. Nucci (1981, 1996) described the
development of children’s concepts of personal issues from early childhood to
adolescence. Furthermore, several studies, utilizing observations of adult-child
interactions and interviews with both parents and young children, have indicated
that claims to personal jurisdiction are evident during the preschool years, in the
United States (Killen & Smetana, 1999; Nucci & Weber, 1995), as well as in
other cultures, such as Colombia (Ardila-Rey & Killen, 2001), Japan (Killen &
Sueyoshi, 1995), and Hong Kong (Yau & Smetana, 2003b). This research
suggests that the personal domain is socially constructed through reciprocal
parent-child interactions, including the child’s active negotiation with caregivers
(parents and teachers) and adults’ provision of choices to the child.
Bios (1962, 1979), a neopsychoanalytic theorist, called adolescence a
“second individuation period,” In his view, adolescent-parent conflict is seen to
facilitate adolescent individuation and lead to a mature sense of identity.
Moreover, the research on conflict has documented adolescents’ sometimes
sophisticated ability to articulate their personal perspectives on disputes (and
through counterarguments, to understand, articulate, and perhaps reject their
parents’ perspectives). According to Blos, however, adolescent-parent
relationships recapitulate in a more complex form issues that arise during early
childhood. Scholars from different theoretical traditions (Damon & Hart, 1988;
Erikson, 1958; Mahler, 1979; Spitz, 1957) have recognized that autonomy first
becomes a central issue during early childhood, when important distinctions
between self and others are made. During the second half of the second year of
life, those abilities are evidenced by children’s growing capability for self-
assertion, defined most frequently in terms of children’s ability to say “no.”
Indeed, saying “no” has become the hallmark of what has been referred to as the
“terrible twos,” when children first demonstrate active noncompliance with
parental authority and attempts to establish control over the self.
Crockenberg and Litman (1990) distinguished empirically between different
forms of early childhood self-assertion. They demonstrated that selfassertion and
defiance are distinct forms of behavior that differentiate the child’s ability to
function competently and autonomously. In their study of 2-year-olds,
Crockenberg and Litman defined defiance as entailing strong resistance to the
mother’s requests, including responses that included anger and aggression, that
were directly contrary to what the mother wanted, or that intensified the original
misbehavior. In contrast, self-assertion entailed negative responses (e.g., saying
“no”) to mothers’ directions or requests. Moreover, Crockenberg and Litman
demonstrated that self-assertion was associated with children’s more competent
social behaviors, including use of negotiation and positive communication,
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 81

whereas defiance was not. Furthermore, self-assertion was more likely when
mothers used low-power assertion, guidance, and directives, whereas defiance
was more likely when mothers used high-power assertive control strategies,
such as threats, criticism, physical intervention, and anger. These latter findings
accord well with the observational studies of young children’s social interactions
in the context of personal issues, which have found that personal concepts
emerge from parents’ and adults’ provision of choices and negotiations over
personal issues.
Crockenberg and Litman’s (1990) findings are also useful in understanding
adolescent-parent relationships. As with toddlers, it important to distinguish
between healthy forms of adolescent self-assertion that lead to greater
adolescent competence and autonomy, and destructive or dysfunctional forms of
adolescent self-assertion that entail defiance and rebellion. In their
epidemiological study of adolescents on the Isle of Wight, Rutter et al. (1976)
found that the adolescents who experienced intense conflicts with parents during
adolescence tended to have psychological problems prior to adolescence. More
recent studies have confirmed that although high levels of adolescent-parent
conflict are associated with a range of behavioral problems, including
externalizing problems such as drug and alcohol use, delinquency, truancy, and
running away, as well as internalizing problems, such as depression and
attempted suicide (see Laursen & Collins, 1994; Silverberg et al., 1992;
Smetana, 1996, for reviews), most adolescents who experience problem
behavior during adolescence were found to have psychological problems and
poor relationships with parents prior to adolescence. Indeed, studies are very
consistent in demonstrating that in community (e.g., non-clinic-referred)
samples of families, only a small proportion of adolescents (ranging from about
5%–20% in different studies) experience emotional turmoil and highly
conflictive relations with parents (see Laursen & Collins, 1994; Smetana, 1996,
for reviews).
Thus, this research indicates that there is significant continuity in parent-child
relationships from childhood to adolescence. Children who have warm and
supportive relationships with parents prior to adolescence generally have
emotionally close relationships with parents during adolescence, although, as
Laursen et al.'s (1998) meta-analysis indicates, there are normative increases in
the rate and intensity of disagreements. Research has also demonstrated
normative declines from middle to late adolescence or young adulthood in
closeness and cohesion with parents (Fuligni, 1998; Furman & Buhrmester,
1992; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). Moreover, moderate conflict in the context of
warm, supportive relationships has been shown to be functional for adolescent
autonomy development (Hill, 1987; Holmbeck, 1996; Smetana, 1988, 1995a;
Steinberg, 1990, 2001). Thus, paralleling Crockenberg and Litmaris (1990)
findings from early childhood, the research on adolescence suggests that
defiance can be distinguished conceptually and empirically from more
82 SMETANA

normative and developmentally appropriate forms of resistance and self-

assertion in adolescence. Furthermore, the research described in previous
sections indicates that developmentally appropriate resistance during
adolescence occurs over the boundaries of legitimate parental control versus
adolescents’ personal jurisdiction. As the clinical definitions of conduct
disorders and oppositional behavior disorders suggest, defiance may entail
adolescent rejection of parental moral and conventional rules, norms, and
values, but healthy development does not.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PARENTS AND SCHOOLS

The findings from our research on adolescent-parent conflict and authority

relationships in different social knowledge domains suggest the importance of
providing adolescents some developmentally appropriate decision-making
autonomy, both in the home and in other settings, such as schools. Eccles and
her colleagues (Eccles et al., 1993; Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998) have
examined what they called stage-environment fit, or the fit between the
environment and children’s developing needs. They have claimed that schools,
particularly junior high schools, restrict adolescents’ autonomy precisely when
they need it most, in early adolescence. Eccles and her colleagues provided
evidence from several studies indicating that, despite students’ increasing
maturity, junior high school classrooms emphasize greater teacher control and
discipline and offer fewer opportunities for student involvement in decision
making, choice, and self-management than do elementary school classrooms.
Increases in teacher control have been found when the same students and their
teachers were followed through the transition from sixth to seventh grade
(Midgley & Feldlaufer, 1987). This resulted in increased discrepancies, or
mismatches, between early adolescents’ desires for autonomy over decision
making and their perceptions of their opportunities to engage in decision making
in their classrooms. Eccles et al. (1998) reported that this mismatch resulted in
declines in intrinsic motivation and interest in school.
In their discussions of this research, Eccles and her colleagues (Eccles et al.,
1993; Eccles et al., 1998) called for more developmentally appropriate
environments for early adolescents, including more opportunities for student
input into decisions regarding their learning, as well as classroom decision
making. The research on adolescents’ conceptions of school and teacher
authority discussed previously (Smetana & Bitz, 1996) adds specificity to these
recommendations by providing some indications of the types of issues over
which students seek greater involvement and decision-making autonomy. The
findings indicate that students desire greater autonomy over contextually
conventional and personal issues in school.
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 83

In a similar vein, research has shown that adolescents who view parents as
intruding too deeply into their personal domains view their parents as
psychologically controlling (Smetana & Daddis, 2002), and in turn, greater
perceived psychological control has been related to a variety of psychological
problems, including both internalizing problems like depression and anxiety,
and externalizing problems, like conduct disorders (Barber, Olsen, & Shagle,
1994). Research also has found that parents who are authoritative in their
parenting style are able to draw clear boundaries among moral, conventional,
multifaceted, and personal issues (Smetana, 1995c). That is, authoritative
parents make clear distinctions between moral and conventional issues, while
being responsive in granting adolescents authority over personal issues. They
are also relatively restrictive and do not view adolescents as having personal
jurisdiction over issues that entail overlaps between conventional and personal
issues (multifaceted issues). Thus, it appears that authoritative parents are
relatively demanding in constructing the boundaries of legitimate parental
authority, while still granting adoles-cents a limited sphere of personal freedom.
In contrast, authoritarian parents overextend the boundaries of the domains in
several ways. They moralize conventions in their judgments and also grant
adolescents very little personal jurisdiction over personal issues. Conversely,
permissive parents are too permissive in defining the boundaries of the personal
domain and give adolescents developmentally inappropriate freedoms.
These findings have implications for best practices for parenting and schools.
First, although conflicts may be hotly contested and deeply felt by both
adolescents and parents, it is important to keep in mind that in most cases,
adolescents are not rejecting basic social and moral values. Thus, parents and
teachers must stay attuned to the developmental nature of these conflicts. Many
parenting advice books advise parents to “pick their battles” and “don’t sweat
the small stuff.” This is wise counsel; our research indicates that it is vital for
parents to allow adolescents some discretion over personal issues and to be
responsive to adolescents’ desires for autonomy and independent decision
making over personal issues, while having firm and clear expectations for
adolescents’ moral, conventional, and prudential behavior. The more difficult
issue is to decide how much autonomy is appropriate, particularly as research
has shown that too much freedom to make decisions alone, without any input
from parents, has negative implications for adolescents’ adjustment and well-
being (Dornbusch, Ritter, Mont-Reynaud, & Chen, 1990; Lamborn, Dornbusch,
& Steinberg, 1996). In allowing adolescents greater independence, parents need
to carefully weigh the relative risks to adolescents’ safety and well-being, along
with their understanding of adolescents’ maturity and competence. Furthermore,
allowing adolescents increasing autonomy over personal issues does not mean
that parents should not monitor choices and scaffold healthy decisions.
It is also crucial to recognize that from adolescents’ perspectives, these issues
are not small at all. Rather, conflicts serve a developmentally vital function in
84 SMETANA

that they represent adolescents’ attempts to construct their identities, enlarge

their spheres of personal freedom, and construct coherent selves. Disagreements
and squabbling may make adolescent-parent relationships difficult. Indeed,
Offer (1969) found the majority of parents in his studies reported that the early
adolescent years were the most difficult time they had in raising their children.
However, research has demonstrated that the opportunity for adolescents to
express and discuss divergent perspectives in the context of warm, supportive
relationships has been found to be positively associated with adolescent
development (Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Connor, 1994 ;Grotevan t& Cooper,
1985, 1986; Hauser et al., 1984).
Although there are strong parallels to families, the issues in schools may be
somewhat different, because schools have more clearly defined organizational
needs and structures than do families. Schools must be more structured to
accomplish their educational aims. Thus, maintaining social order often takes
priority over allowing personal freedoms in school. As reflected in the previous
discussion of contextually conventional issues (Smetana & Bitz, 1996), our
research suggests that adolescents are able to coordinate their understanding of
the social-organizational needs and requirements of schools with their desires
for greater personal jurisdiction, but at the same time, teachers and
administrators should understand adolescents’ developmental needs for areas of
personal freedom and control. Although social-organizational needs may take
priority, there still is room for teachers to be flexible in their enforcement of
rules and to allow some developmentally appropriate autonomous decision
making, while remaining firm in their expectation of adherence to moral and
conventional standards. It is possible that explicit recognition and granting of
these needs for autonomy will forestall some of the resistance and subversion
that happens in school. This view is consistent with recent writing about the
need for developmental discipline in effective classroom management (DeVries
& Zan, 1994; Dreikurs, Grunwald, & Pepper, 1982).
Nevertheless, not all resistance and subversion in school would seem to
involve adolescents’ attempts to increase their personal freedoms. Much has
been written about increases in moral and conventional misbehavior and norm
deviations during adolescence, including increased truancy, status offenses such
as underage drinking, cigarette use, substance use, and minor crimes like petty
theft and vandalism. Indeed, some researchers (Moffitt, 1993) have viewed these
behaviors to be normative during adolescence, due to the large gap that exists in
modern society between adolescents’ biological and social maturity. Moffitt
(1993) provided evidence from crime statistics and arrest records that for the
most part, these are “adolescence-limited” behaviors that do not persist into
adulthood and that only a very small proportion of youth, clearly distinguishable
by the early onset of their troubled behavior and the more serious nature of
offenses during adolescence, graduate to criminal careers in adulthood.
 4. RESISTANCE AND SUBVERSION AS DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 85

Schools are not immune to these issues. Schools routinely deal with
violations like vandalism, minor theft, harassment, using illegal substances on
school property, and status offenses, such as cigarette smoking and underage
drinking. Schools also frequently confront violations of contextually
conventional rules, such as violations of dress codes, which may be more
stringent than in other contexts. The perspective presented here on the
multifaceted nature of adolescents’ social knowledge development, along with
Moffitt’s (1993) evidence that these youthful transgressions may constitute a
developmental phase on the route to a generally rule-abiding adulthood, suggest
that one does not need to invoke a homogeneous notion of character to
understand these (mis)behaviors (Nucci, 2001).
Adolescents’ attempts to construct a unique identity may involve
experimentation with rule-breaking behavior. For instance, Brown (1990)
mapped the social world of adolescent crowds by placing them along two
dimensions: the extent to which youth are involved in the social institutions
controlled by adults, and the extent to which they are involved in the more
informal peer culture. “Jocks” and “populars” are examples of crowds that are
heavily invested in both adult institutions and peer culture. “Brains” and “nerds”
may be heavily involved in adult-controlled institutions but not in peer culture,
and “partyers “occupy the opposite end of the social map. They are heavily
invested in peer culture but not in adult institutions. An especially ironic aspect
of adolescent identity development is that adolescents typically use their crowd
membership as a reference group in their attempts to establish a unique identity.
Personal identities typically are woven out of crowd values, and the less that
crowds are invested in adult social institutions, the more their behaviors may
entail resistance to or subversion of adult standards. Some character educators
have seen this as evidence of moral decay and a decline in moral values
(Bennett, 1992, 1997; Wynne, 1986). Noting that peer cultures can create norms
that are antithetical to good character, Lickona (1997) argued for the need for a
more positive peer culture. Although the names have changed, their social
mapping has not—the major adolescent crowds have remained relatively
constant over the past 50 years. Thus, much of adolescents’ resistance and rule
breaking may be seen as attempts at socially constructing and elaborating
different social identities whose uniqueness stems from their differentiation
from adult conventions. Perhaps it is this contrarian feature—the apparent
rejection of adult tastes and conventions—that provokes the persistent concern
of the adult generation.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings presented here suggest that adolescents’ negotiations, resistances,

and challenges to parental authority are selective and potentially functional in
86 SMETANA

transforming adolescent-parent relationships and facilitating adolescent

development. In this chapter, it was asserted that moderate resistance and
challenges to authority are normative and adaptive as attempts to construct a
broader sphere of personal identity and autonomy. Evidence from studies of
adolescent-parent conflict and adolescents’ conceptions of adult authority was
brought to bear on the claim that adolescents typically do not defy adult
authority in the moral realm.
However, there are some important qualifications to this conclusion. The
research discussed in this chapter focused on situations where parental authority
was contextually appropriate, where parents had the competence and status to
make demands of their adolescents, and where the requests were reasonable in
that they were not “immoral.” As reviewed elsewhere (Smetana, 1995a, 1995c;
Turiel, 1998, 2002), studies of children’s and ado-lescents’ conceptions of adult
authority have demonstrated that adult authority does not legitimately extend to
causing harm, prescribing immoral acts, or being unjust or unfair. Furthermore,
children and adolescents evaluate the contextual appropriateness of the acts, as
well as different attributes of the authority (e.g., their social position,
knowledge, and status) in whether authority is legitimate or not. Thus,
adolescents’ acceptance of adult authority in the moral domain is not
unquestioning or absolute, nor should it be. Fully autonomous moral judgments
entail applications of principles of justice, welfare, and rights that are separable
from and that may transcend the expectations of particular authorities (parental,
institutional, or societal). Thus, the findings presented here challenge parents
and educators to think carefully about balancing demands for moral and
conventional accountability with developmentally appropriate opportunities for
autonomy, both moral and personal.

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 5
Risk-Taking, Carnival, and the
Novelistic Self: Adolescents’ Avenues
to Moral Being and Integrity
Cynthia Lightfoot
Pennsylvania State University

There is no alibi for being.

—Mikhail Bakhtin (1993, p. 64)

According to the buzz and chatter in the popular press, and aided and abetted by
the scientific community, adolescents either are running with scissors or on the
high road to a quality of life that their progenitors could only imagine. By the
first account, they have never been more poorly educated, prematurely pregnant,
reckless, drugged, depressed, apathetic, suicidal, and violent. Responding to this
apparent moral crisis is a legion of studies marshaled to rout out the
blameworthy, pointing fingers in turn at broken families, chaotic neighborhoods,
declining religiosity, eroding social controls, peer group exclusion, violent
media, inattentive parents, and just plain boredom (e.g., Polakow, 2000). It was
written of boys in particular:

Americans are worried about their boys. Large numbers of boys

roam the streets without much adult supervision or even
surveillance. They gather in peer groups and seem to flaunt adult
values in their dress and speech. Large numbers of them are
foreign-born. These male peer groups—gangs, really—engage
too often in aggressive and violent behavior… One sociologist’s
book, The Boy Problem, has labeled this the most challenging
social problem for the generation, (p. xv)

This passage marks the departure point of Mechling’s (2001) ethnographic

study of Boy Scouts and the “making of American youth.” Although it colors a
certain well-penned image of contemporary adolescents, Mechling tells us that
the passage describes American sentiment toward youth in the year 1900.
Discounting the possibility that adolescents simply come undone at the turn of
each new century, there is something telling in the historical continuity of belief
that adolescence is a time of moral collapse, and that we would all be better off
93
94 LIGHTFOOT

if youth could simply sleep out the years between “ten and three-and-
twenty…for there is nothing in between but getting wenches with child,
wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting” (Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale,
1996, p. 15).
On the other side of the mountain of opinion regarding adolescence are those
who have challenged as extremist, if not baseless illusion, the prior view that
teenagers, for one reason or another, are essentially depraved and subversive
(Acland, 1995; Dohrn, 2000; Fornas & Bolin, 1995; Hancock, 2000; Males,
1999). Both the popular media and the scholarly community, they argue, have
unfairly maligned and criminalized youth. The crisis of youth is not a real crisis,
but a felt crisis. This second more humanistic view smoothes the rough edge of
whatever else may characterize adolescent social life and behavior and suggests
that youth, by and large, are doing just fine. As consummate consumers of
culture and media, and active deliberators of their personal identities, lifestyles
and futures, they are guilty only of falling victim to insidious social stereotype.
Youth have been framed.
There is much to recommend both points of view. Our interviews with
adolescents about their own and others’ risk-taking show ample evidence that
their behavior is often undertaken in a spirit of defiance, with an attitude that is
explicitly clannish, irreverently clownish, and aims for a loss of self in the
moment and in the other in ways that efface personal responsibility (Lightfoot,
1997):
• (The thrill of risk-taking) is almost, but not quite getting caught.
• (Getting drunk) is a good excuse to fall all over that cute guy you really
like.
• (Skipping school) makes you feel closer because you’ve beat the
establishment together.
• (Stealing a case of beer from a delivery truck) shows what lengths you’ll go
to be in the group.
• (Taking LSD) is a way to relate—a different way of being close.

Notwithstanding their apparent attraction to a mob mentality that inverts the

general order endorsed and imposed by the broader culture, these very same
teenagers appeared to cast a sideward glance at moral and ethical boundary
conditions. There was much talk about the importance of never losing total
control—of either the situation or one’s self The teens spoke explicitly about
codes of conduct and issues of harm and trust that remained clear and operative
through the purple haze and the thrill of the moment.
• What is the difference between a risk that you would take and one that you
wouldn’t take?
• I wouldn’t do anything that’s immoral.
• I wouldn’t do anything that would make my parents totally lose trust in me.
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 95

• It wouldn’t hurt anyone e.lse. It might hurt me, but I probably wouldn’t take
a risk that is going to affect someone else—my friends, or someone I don’t
know. Like drinking and driving. I would never do that, no matter what the
situation, no matter how much trouble I could get in with my parents (i.e.,
by calling parents to get a ride home, or “crashing” at the party and not
going home at all).
• When people hurt each other—that’s the worst. You have no right to do
that. (Like what?) Like drunk driving.
• I have friends who steal and shoplift. To most people it’s not that big a deal,
but to me it is because you’re hurting someone else.
• What about someone who tries to get his or her good friend to try pot, even
though he or she doesnt really want to?
• That would make me really mad because since you don’t do it (smoke pot),
it’s breaking the code. (What code is that?) The code is that you don’t put
someone in that position.
I present these out-takes from semistructured interviews with 15 to 17year-
olds as a way of introducing the argument that the shape of adolescent risk-
taking reveals the contours and complexities of an emerging moral landscape.
My plan for this chapter is to draw principally from Bakhtinian theory to
consider adolescent risk-taking as but an example of a broader realm of activity
inherent to the project of becoming a person. According to the argument I mean
to unfold, Bakhtin’s (1981) theory of aesthetics, to which he pinned a
developmental conception of self as an ethically grounded agent, presents an
integrative prospect for illuminating the functional significance of adolescent
social life and experience. Viewed through the lens of Bakhtin’s theory,
particularly his conceptions of carnival and the novelistic self, risk-taking
becomes an aesthetic form that objectifies and comments on who adolescents
are and wish to become within a specific so-cial-ideological world. To further
the broader aim of my argument—that in addition to providing insight into
adolescent risk-taking, Bakhtin provided a potentially powerful theory for
understanding the development of self in general—I apply his analytic method
to a second aesthetic form both produced by and having special significance for
adolescents of Latin American descent: lowrider art.

TWO MORALITIES, TWO DISCOURSES

In an inspired moment, Yeats wrote:
If we cannot imagine ourselves as different from what we
are…we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves though we
may accept one from others. Active virtue, as distinguished from
96 LIGHTFOOT

the passive acceptance of a code, is therefore theatrical,

consciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask. (1959, p. 334)

There is a lot of Bakhtin in Yeats’s insight. It is a close summary of

Bakhtin’s theory of the relationship between art and ethics, a relationship that I
return to shortly. It also brings to mind a perennial distinction in the human
sciences between two forms of morality—one imposed, the other consciously
chosen and embraced (Lightfoot, 2000). In the works of Piaget (1995), for
example, we learn of a morality of obligation and a morality of goodness. The
first is a power politic based on a combination of love and fear that follows from
a unilateral respect of a lesser toward a greater authority, as that of a child
toward a parent. Moral life and action are oriented without qualm or question
toward prefabricated norms of authority. The morality of obligation is a strict
and coercive morality that expresses its authority not only in the unexamined
duty of young children, but in the cultural life of traditional, gerontocratic
society that “retards the intellectual development of those who are subject to it”
(Piaget, 1995, p. 231), and socializes the individual only “on the surface”
leaving intact the “deep habits” of egocentrism (p. 219).
Set against what is considered the more developmentally and culturally
immature morality of obligation is a morality of goodness instantiated by the
mutual respect and affection existing between individuals who recognize each
other as equals. According to Piaget, the morality of goodness emerges in the
context of cooperative social exchange in which the child slips the bonds of
obligation to engage in active norm construction with his or her peers, as in the
case of children negotiating rules in a marble game. Crossing the threshold of
belief that rules are eminent and inviolable, children come to understand that
they can be modified by consensus; the blinkered moral life imposed by external
authority is replaced by a more freely roving moral gaze enabled by a new
commitment to democratic process and the common will
When the dictates of the other fade in the rising light of a moral code
personally elaborated through cooperative social exchange (see also Nucci,
1996), unquestioned devotion and fear yield to a “disinterested behavior which
characterizes moral norms” (Piaget, 1995, p. 118), Its rightful heirs are
reflection and self-consciousness, the dissociation of subjective and objective,
and the construction of an abstract scale of values that extends beyond the
immediately contingent interests of the moment, permitting one to hold in
abeyance his or her own moral point of view to appreciate and respect (although
not necessarily adopt) that of another. According to Piaget (1995), “the initial
‘self’ [i.e., the egocentric self] blossoms as personality thanks to cooperation,
and…the social thus joins, rather than opposes, what is innermost in an
individual” (p. 240). Linked to the onset of formal operational thought, all of
these developmental milestones are “of a nature to permit individuals to have a
greater consciousness of reason immanent in all intellectual activity” (Piaget,
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 97

1995, p. 239). Such consciousness is, for Piaget, the mainstay of individual and
cultural liberation:
Thanks to these two instruments, i.e. the formal operations and a
“personal” hierarchy of values, the adolescent plays a
fundamental role in our societies of liberating coming
generations from older ones. This leads the individual to
elaborate further the new things that he acquired during his
development as a child at the same time that it frees him, at least
in part, from the obstacles issuing from adult constraints. (Piaget,
1995, p. 299)

Consistent with his overall theory, Piaget linked these momentous shifts in
moral life to the grand sweep of cognitive development. Bakhtin (1895–1975), a
Russian literary scholar and a contemporary of Piaget, would have objected to
Piaget’s endorsement of abstract structuralism and its accoutrements of
“disinterested” moral norms and value hierarchies. There are, however, points of
conceptual contact between the two theorists, including their desire to
characterize the emergence of a consciously aware ethical life that is personally
meaningful and relatively free of the shackles of imposed authority.
Where Piaget spoke of obligation and goodness as two fundamental forms of
moral life, Bakhtin spoke of discourse—one that is primarily authoritative, the
other internally persuasive. He illustrated the distinction between them by
drawing parallels to two familiar pedagogical modes: reciting by heart and
retelling in one’s own words. In the psyche, reciting by heart is analogous to
authoritative discourse. It is imposed; demands allegiance; does not permit one
to argue with it, play with it, or integrate it; or merge it with other beliefs,
values, or knowledge. It cannot be represented—it is only transmitted:

It is, so to speak, the word of the fathers. Its authority was

already acknowledged in the past. It is a prior discourse. It is
therefore not a question of choosing it from among other possible
discourses that are its equal. It is given (it sounds) in lofty
spheres, not those of familiar contact. (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342)

Authoritative discourse is thus a distant and alien discourse. In contrast, and

akin to retelling in one’s own words, internally persuasive discourse is half-ours
and half-someone else’s; it is in this sense “double voiced” or dialogic and
therefore more finely interwoven with the texture of everyday consciousness.
Where authoritative discourse is inert, prefigured, and calcified, internally
persuasive discourse is dynamic, creative, and open to new applications; that is,
open to dialogic engagement with other internally persuasive discourses. It is the
sharp gap between the two categories of discourse—the imposed versus the
persuasive, the official versus the socially unacknowledged, the alien versus the
98 LIGHTFOOT

familiar, the monologic versus the dialogic—that sets a stage for the
development of individual consciousness.
Bakhtin’s special interest was the emergence of consciousness, an ideological
consciousness in particular, which he understood to follow directly from the
struggle between authoritative and internally persuasive discourses: “The
struggle and dialogic interrelationship of these categories of ideological
discourse are what usually determine the history of an individual ideological
consciousness” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). The struggle—and it is an ongoing,
lifelong struggle—is waged against the line of authority and the alienated
distance that defines it. However, the struggle itself has the effect of drawing the
authoritative into a zone of contact; there is a weakening of its hold, a
degradation of its authority. It is not the case, therefore, that the maturity of
consciousness hangs on hostility to authority. Mere hostility is not enough, nor
is it even necessary. It is dialogue that matters. It follows that a shucking of
authority is not an inevitable outcome of the developmental process. Authority,
tradition, the “done thing,” can be agreed to and embraced as one’s own once it
has been challenged, tested, and deprived of its unconditional allegiance. It can,
in other words, become internally persuasive, and vulnerable to new struggles
with other internally persuasive discourses.
The development of an ideological consciousness is premised in an iron clad
way on the ongoing struggle for hegemony among discourses—those various
ideological points of view—that move and persuade us. So long as discourse
remains authoritative, however, it precludes dialogic relations. If the psyche
were composed of it entirely, then people would fully “coincide with
themselves.” It is the noncoincidence of internally persuasive discourses and the
intentional hybridization of distinct, individualized, concrete discourses that
carry the weight and significance of the project of becoming.
Bakhtin suggested that the ideological consciousness evolves rather late in
development. I suspect he had adolescence in mind—that time of preoccupation
with authenticity: the true and false self, duplicity, mask and masquerade
(Lightfoot, 2003). When thought begins to work in what Bakhtin (1981)
described as “an independent, experimenting and discriminating way,” (p. 345)
ideological points of view of self and other are objectified through a process of
aesthetic construction. For Bakhtin, an aesthetically constructed event or object
is known as such by the form-bestowing presence of an outside consciousness—
the interpretive eye of a spectator or reader, the creative hand of an author—
striving to achieve a sense of the “whole” (Emerson, 1997, p. 136), Thus, as he
envisioned it, the aesthetic process need not construct an object of beauty (this
being the focal concern of much aesthetic theorizing, past and present). Its
constitutive feature is rather to construct an object of purpose and understanding.
In other words, the “aesthetic” in Bakhtin’s world does not aspire to
perfection—that sacred whole of statues and virgins offered in compliant
supplication to pre-Homeric gods who sat in cold and distant judgment of
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 99

human moral affairs. Instead, it is inspired by the call of the Muse—of Clio and
Calliope. As Calasso (1993) described, the Homeric god, intemperate to the core
on earth as in Olympus, imposed no commandments and required of the human
world neither good behavior nor devotion. Rather, the Homeric god wanted
above all

(t)o be recognized. Every recognition is an awareness of form.

Hence in our enfeebled modern vocabulary we might say that the
way they (the gods) imposed themselves was first and foremost
aesthetic. But in a sense of the word which, with time, has been
lost: the aesthetic of a mesh of powers, (p. 242)

It is this lost sense of the word that characterizes Bakhtin s theory of

aesthetics. His aesthetic object is not one of sacred and self-sufficient beauty
born of unexamined compliance, but one of purpose, power, and understanding
born of inspiration. The person listens; Calliope whispers; the person creates.
The aesthetic work is not an offering, but an answer.

THE NOVELISTIC SELE

Of particular moment in Bakhtin’s theory were his efforts to relate the ethical
and aesthetic aspects of human action. He drew extensive parallels between the
self and the novel, arguing that both involve a highly complex combination and
dialogue of noncoincident discourses and ways of speaking, each expressing a
particular worldview or stance, Bakhtin considered dialogue to be essential to
self-development; he described selfhood as “essentially novelistic, that is, in
terms of inner dialogues and the processes that shape them over time into a
personality” (Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 216). Both self and novel constitute
artistically organized systems for bringing different languages in contact with
one another; both have the goal of illuminating one language by means of
another—of carving out an image of one language in the light of another.
Artistically organized systems vary in the way that languages are represented
or interilluminated, or the degree to which they are directly mixed. At one
extreme is direct stylization, an artistic image of another’s language that
preserves its integrity while intending to establish resonance with the language
of the stylizer and his or her contemporaneous audience. Although only one
image is constructed, it nevertheless requires the presence of two individualized
consciousnesses: the one that represents, and the one that is represented. At the
other extreme is parodic stylization, in which the artistic intentions of the
representing discourse are explicitly and directly destructive to that which is
represented. To be authentic and productive, which is to say successful, the
parodied language must be represented as fully formed and possessing its own
100 LIGHTFOOT

internal logic, however profaned and despised it becomes through the discourse
of parody.
For Bakhtin, the mutual illumination of multiple discourses takes place
between these two extremes. What is crucial for the evolution of the ideological
consciousness is the artistic rendering, the intentional giving of form, and the
dramatization and objectification of coherent languages or socioideological
points of view:

Every language in the novel is a point of view, a socio-

ideological conceptual system of real social groups and their
embodied representatives. Insofar as a language is not perceived
as a unique socio-ideological system it cannot be material for
orchestration, it cannot become the image of a language.
(Bakhtin, 1981, pp. 411–412)

Bakhtin argued that the product of such engaged language play is profoundly
ethical. Through it, we are not only liberated from the hegemony of a unitary,
authoritative discourse, but sensitized to the internal form of the other and,
indeed, the internal form of our own inner discourses that themselves become
reified and alien, objects of consciousness illuminated as such by the other.
When consciousness emerges of one’s own inner discourse as only one among
others, the fusion of discourse and ideology is disrupted and, “only then will
language reveal its essentially human character; from behind its words, forms,
styles…faces begin to emerge, the images of speaking human beings” (Bakhtin,
1981, p. 370). Thus, a deeply involved participation with alien languages and
cultures gives rise to a verbal-ideological decentering—a dissociation of
language from the intentions, meanings, and truths that it embodies and,
therefore, an undoing of mythological and magical thought. According to
Bakhtin, a healthy self strives for exposure to multiple perspectives, strives
toward a novelized state, to increase its own choices and responsibility and
reduce its impotence in the world. Individuals, as well as cultures, that open only
to others like themselves, or do not open at all, become rigid, inert, and
impoverished.
Bakhtin’s theory of the novel and the novelized self contains a transparent
humanism that biographers and critics see as responsive to the Russian political
and intellectual movements of his time. Within this broader context, the concept
that we consider next—that of carnival—assumes a particularly ambiguous
posture due at least in part to Bakhtin’s own reformulation of both carnival and
the novel as he struggled to make both cohere with his overall theory. However,
in all its ambiguity, and perhaps because of its ambiguity, carnival has special
relevance for understanding adolescents’ risk-taking as a medium for self-
development.
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 101

THE CARNIVAL SELF AND LAUGHING

OUTSIDEDNESS

Bakhtin’s early work on carnival ran in directions very much opposed to

concepts considered central to his theory of the novel. His early account was in
many ways similar to what probably passes as our folk understanding of the
holiday. According to our folk conceptions, carnival is set apart from the
mundane activities of our everyday lives. We see it as an interruption and a
refuge, a distinct and separate sphere of reality that we enter occasionally,
leaving at its threshold all that carries the weight of the world too much upon it.
On this logic, carnival enables and even demands a bucking of authority, an
inversion of the moral order; it evokes a space of self-renunciation in which the
otherwise rational, individuated, buttoned-up self is given over to, or is
overtaken by an unrestrained mob mentality that celebrates the grotesque—the
lowest, common human denominator of unrestrained sex, consumption, and
violence. Behind the mask and masquerade of the collective, carnival dissolves
the boundaries that ordinarily separate selves, and therefore also dissolves the
responsibilities and obligations that ordinarily accrue to entities otherwise
identified as intentional agents. Begrimed by a pall of smut and decadence, and
undefended save for the laughing alibi of the crowd, the carnival self is no self at
all.
Bakhtin made much of the openness and unfinalizability of the carnival self.
The body grotesque is all orifice and protuberance, prepared to fuse with all
around it. Substances pass into and out of it as if through a colander. Lacking
form and wholeness it has neither private space nor memory. It exists, rather,
outside of space and time. It is a participant, but never a spectator or an actor.
Indeed, as Bakhtin (1968) described, “Footlights would destroy a carnival, as the
absence of footlights would destroy a theatrical performance. Carnival is not a
spectacle seen by the people; they live in it …. While carnival lasts, there is no
other life outside it” (p. 7). While carni-val lasts, while the carnival self is
eating, drinking, fornicating, or puking, it is cultivating its alibi for being—
laughter.
The collective orientation of carnival—its laughing alibi, absence of history,
and absolute openness to the carnival surround—operate against the dialogic
goals of the novelized self. Where carnival presupposes fusion, dialogue insists
on distinctiveness; that is, it requires at least two noncoincident consciousnesses,
each outside the other. However, the two Utopian visions of self—one effaced in
carnival, and one striving romantically for definition and individuation by giving
form to the other—were to find a more conciliatory relationship in Bakhtin’s
later writings. This is seen most clearly in his argument regarding the form-
generating function of “outsidedness” in carnival laughter.
Bakhtin (1970/1986) considered outsideness to be “the most powerful lever
of understanding” (p. 7). It is a concept that runs throughout his work, and one
102 LIGHTFOOT

seen by Russian scholars and critics as the common ground of his ethics and
aesthetics. At every turn, Bakhtin insisted on the necessary singularity and
separateness of each individual in relation to another as an enabling condition
for constructing the forms of things, be they aesthetic works or persuasive
ideological discourses. This holds as much for the forming and representation of
self as it does for forming and representing the other. Speaking of the author-
creator, Bakhtin (1981) wrote:

(He) can represent the temporal-spatial world and its events only
as if he had seen and observed them himself, only as if he were
an omnipresent witness to them. Even had he created an
autobiography or a confession of the most astonishing truth-
fulness, all the same he, as its creator, remains outside the world
he has represented in his work. If I relate (or write about) an
event that has just happened to me, then I as the teller (or writer)
of this event am already outside the time and space in which the
event occurred. It is just as impossible to forge an identity
between myself, my own “I,” and that “I” “that is the subject of
my stories as it is to lift myself up by my own hair. (p. 256)

If one part of what it means to strive toward a novelized state is to engage

and struggle with the discourses of others, the other part is all about the
finalization of a whole. According to Emerson (1997), one of Bakhtin’s most
sympathetic critics and students:

It is precisely because unfinalizability and malleability are

inherent in living personalities, in everyday events, and in the
time-space parameters that the achievement (not the
acknowledgment, not the discovery, but precisely the
achievement) of a whole is so indispensable—and so laden with
obligation. The whole of something can only be seen from a
position that is outside of it in space and after it in time. But
since a whole can be variously realized from an infinite number
of angles (and each of these realizations will be fully recognized
as such only by its own “finalizer”), a sense of wholeness is
always “bestowed,” not merely decreed or revealed. It looks
different, and differently perfected, to each person who beholds
it. Human beings are form-bestowing creatures. It is part of our
nature to crave to finalize. This craving, according to Bakhtin, is
the aesthetic instinct, (pp. 220–221)

Indeed, for Bakhtin, laughter stood in a specific aesthetic relationship to

reality. It is a weapon “like fists and sticks,” but a weapon of distinction because
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 103

it is entirely fearless and, for this reason, progressive: “Laughter liberates us

from fear, and this work of laughter…is an indispensable prerequisite
for…consciousness. In order to look at the world soberly, I must cease to be
afraid. In this, laughter played a most serious role” (translated in Emerson, 1997,
p. 96). Similarly, laughter is “a specific means for artistically visualizing and
comprehending reality and, consequently, a specific means for structuring an
artistic image, plot, or genre” (Bakhtin, 1963/1984, p. 164). Carnival laughter
thus possesses enormous creative, form-shaping power.
In linking carnival laughter to outsidedness, Bakhtin traced an argument in
which laughter is connected to how we see. It is a detaching, individuating force
that helps us to define our place in the world of other subjects. We cultivate
laughter (of which the primary and most serious function is participatory) as a
route to knowledge of the self through communicative exchange. What follows
from all of this is that carnival is not a destructive defiance of the social order,
but an intentional, creative, artistic rendering of self “for another, and through
the other, for oneself” (Bakhtin, 1963/1984, p. 287). Its polar opposite is not
seriousness, but stasis.

ADOLESCENT RISK-TAKING AS CARNIVAL

• Why do you take risks? What do they mean to you?
• (Drinking and partying is) something we’re all doing together, and then
everyone’s really funny. It’s to be together and not worry too much about
what you’re doing in front of these people. You can do outrageous things
because you’re drunk.
• Some risks are meaningless and stupid, and some are meaningful. A
meaningful risk would be like…it could be stupid, like pissing on a cop’s
car, but meaningful because probably everybody was drunk and it seemed
really funny.
• What’s appealing about taking risks?
• That’s how you grow up—experiences.
• I want to be a participant.
• I don’t want to die a boring old fart.

As suggested in the remarks of these teenagers, there is much to recommend

Bakhtin’s analysis of carnival for understanding the functions and meanings of
adolescent risk-taking. Like carnival, risk-taking entails a laughing outsidedness
that is intentional, participatory, and individuating, shared between individuals
who know and act toward one another on the basis of particular points of view
To take a risk is to participate in a dialogic process that objectifies, or bestows
form on various points of view—those of the individual, his or her peers, and the
authority they often mean to parody. Teenagers who together organize their
104 LIGHTFOOT

activities around taking drugs, shoplifting, defacing public property, or throwing

rocks through storefront windows are giving form and expression to who they
understand themselves to be. To be among them, in a sociocultural sense, is
precisely to participate in those acts of self-definition. Risk-taking can thus been
seen as an aesthetic device that organizes action and experience and contributes
to self-definition.
Bakhtin’s concepts of carnival and the novelistic self implicate two processes
relevant to understanding the functions of risk-taking in adolescents’ social
lives. One process is clearly sociocultural. In its broadest sense contemporary
peer culture is itself remarkably differentiated and spectral—punks, rednecks,
preppies, jocks, and so on embody a variety of identity forms and potentials;
how much more so the fluid network of individual peer groups. Participating in
the diversity of contemporary peer culture and actively engaging its multiple
discourses in true novelistic fashion provides fertile ground for developing one’s
self. Indeed, our analyses indicate that inertia sets in when individuals
participate in peer groups whose risk-taking is particularly extreme and isolates
them from contact with other teenagers and thus other ideological points of
view. One member of such a group commented on its isolation from the local
adolescent social scene as follows:

We try not to get into that (social scene) anymore, because

they’re all typical high school students. They’ll go to college and
they fit in with school. A lot of the people I hang out with are
dropouts and we are extremely prejudiced against the great
percentage of the school and we try not to get into that kind of
grouping.

In describing the context of hallucinogenic drug use in particular, another

member said, “We used to go to parties where parents weren’t there and hang
out and stuff, but now we know older people. Now we go to people who live by
themselves.” As Bakhtin would no doubt suggest, the refusal of these teenagers
to seek out other points of view, to strive toward a novelized state, reduces
opportunities for growth, power, choices and responsibility.
Beyond the sociocultural implications for self-development, participating in
peer culture also contributes to the awareness that one has a self of moral
consequence. It is in this sense that ethical-aesthetic process is most strongly
implicated. The shaping of multiple discourses, especially those that conflict,
engages a verbal-ideological decentering through the “interillumination” of self
in relation to others. It introduces an outsidedness inherent to other aesthetic
experiences, and essential to the formation of what Bakhtin described as the
ideological consciousness. It is noteworthy in this regard that risk-taking can be
even more explicitly novelized. It is, after all, the stuff of which stories are
made. Teenagers tell and retell their risks and adventures—stylize and parody
themselves—and this, too, is significant for the project of self-development.
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 105

Seen as an aesthetic process of novelization, adolescent risk-taking occupies

a privileged role in self-development. It is, however, but one of any number of
examples of aesthetic activity. To properly place it in a larger context, it is
useful to consider another aesthetic domain that appeals to adolescents,
particularly those of Latin American descent.

LOWRIDER ART

Lowrider art appeals in a special way to Hispanic adolescents living in the

United States—males and females, but mostly males. It usually consists of elab-
orate pencil or ink renderings of classic lowrider cars, such as the Impala, that
are often draped with bikini-clad women. In its early years, the work was pub-
lished in Lowrider Magazine, and looked something like the image in Fig. 5.1.

FIG. 5.1. Early-style lowrider art. From Lowrider Magazine, 2002.

Reprinted with permission of Primedia Magazine, Inc. Copy right
© 2002. All rights reserved.
106 LIGHTFOOT

Over time, the magazine editors began to receive artwork in such quantity
that they decided in 1992 to start a new magazine devoted to it entirely. Of
particular note is the transformation of the form over the course of the past
decade. As illustrated in Fig. 5.2, the artwork began to introduce distinctly
Mexican cultural motifs. There are now repeated themes in lowrider art that
include Aztec and other pre-Columbian images, including the Virgin of
Guadalupe, and the Mexican Revolution. In fact, as illustrated in Fig, 5.3, the art
has become increasingly symbolic, often leaving out of the picture its own
namesake (the lowrider car) in the process of constructing works of cultural and
political, as welll as aesthetic significance.

FIG. 5.2. Lowrider art reflecting Mexican cultural

motifs, by Danny Villescas. Courtesy of Fred Castro
(http://www.thecastrocollection.com/).
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 107

FIG. 5.3. Example of lowrider art integrating U.S. and

Mexican symbols, by Edition Davis. Courtesy of Fred Castro
(http://www.thecastrocollection.com/).

Lowrider art is seen in the Hispanic community as a means of celebrating

Mexican heritage. In an interview conducted by Grady (2002) as a part of a
larger ethnographic study, one of the magazine editors quoted the editorial
policy printed in the submission guidelines that “artwork must be free of gang
slogans, violence, weapons, drugs and/or alcohol” (p. 175). The editor sees the
magazine as a tool of cultural expression; others have described it as a way to
demonstrate that Mexicans “could do other things besides work in the fields”
(Grady, 2002, p. 175). Indeed, the genre has been an inspiration to Hispanic
108 LIGHTFOOT

adolescents of both genders: It is traced onto school notebooks, posters are

purchased and displayed on bedroom walls, T-shirts bearing lowrider art are
highly prized, and the art is copied and shared.
Ethnographers such as Grady, as well as Goldman (1997) who studied
signification in barrio art T-shirts, have argued that the montage created, the
juxtaposition of vernacular iconography, constructs a bridge between
adolescents’ Mexican heritage and their current U.S. residence. Asked to
comment on different categories of lowrider art images, adolescents identify as
meaningful those that portray Mexico’s indigenous heritage: pre-Columbian
stone carvings, Aztec warriors in positions of victory and strength, and other
historical images that contest the conquest and colonization of Mexico. In this
crowd the bikini-clad women lack a certain appeal. Interestingly, the genre
appears to be gaining currency among adolescents of a variety of ethnic and
economic backgrounds, and in this respect creating a bridge across ethnic
groups.
Scrutinizing lowrider art through a Bakhtinian lens shows it to be a
particularly illustrative case of aesthetic novelization. The transformation of the
art form itself toward an increasingly direct and dialogic encounter of two
cultural traditions is especially remarkable. Lowrider art may be inter-preted as a
creative response to the cultural mainstream’s impossibly wedded assimilationist
demands on the one hand, and its marginalizing stereotypes and practices on the
other. At the other extreme, it may be interpreted as a multicultural hybridization
of historically and culturally significant meanings. Either way, it serves the
serious function of constructing an ideological consciousness, as Bakhtin
elaborated the process.

A PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORDINARY

According to his biographers and translators, Bakhtin was the first to formulate
a comprehensive philosophy of the ordinary—of the disorganized, unsystematic,
moment-to-moment prosaics of experience, as distinct from the ordered,
abstract, and idealized poetics. The distinction plays out in one of Batesoris
“metalogues” with his daughter, who is interested to know why things get in a
muddle: “People spend a lot of time tidying things, but they never seem to spend
time muddling them. Things just seem to get in a muddle by themselves. And
then people have to tidy them again” (in Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 29).
Deflecting his daughter’s call for a poetics of muddling, Bateson replied simply
that the world includes a lot more messiness than tidiness. Messiness just is.
So, too, for Bakhtin, who argued, in contrast to the leading intellectuals of his
time (including Freud), that it is not disorder and fragmentation that requires
explanation, but integrity, unity, and wholeness. Set against the messiness of
everyday life, unity is always a matter of work. In the case of developing a self,
 5. RISK TAKING, CARNIVAL, AND THE NOVELISTIC SELF 109

it is a lifelong and incomplete project. According to Bakhtin, the self is neither

discovered or given, or even fully constructed; it can only be posited. In this
regard, he struck a chord sympathetic to that of Baldwin, who argued that an
essential ingredient to self-development is “the intent to be a subject,” that is, a
forward-pressing striving to be what one is not but may yet become. For
Baldwin and Bakhtin, the self leaning into the future as hypothesis and
potentiality, the positing (i.e., of a self forever poised to become something
else), is aesthetically formed and provisionally achieved by virtue of the ethical
obligations of each moment and each situation. In his first published essay, “Art
and Responsibility,” Bakhtin wrote that, “personality must become responsible
through and through. All its aspects must not only arrange themselves along the
temporal flow of its life, but must also intersect one another in the unity of
blame and responsibility” (translated in Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 31). Only
a “pretender” would do otherwise. Such a person, according to Bakhtin, does not
feign the identity of another, but rather avoids the project of selfhood altogether,
either by living according to the lofty abstract norms and demands of another, or
by failing to do so; that is, by failing to engage the other dialogically. An
example of this is provided by our teen-age subjects who “are extremely
prejudiced against the great percentage of the school,” and refuse to “get into
that kind of grouping.” Whether the individual succumbs to a moral order not of
his or her own making, or rails against the other in the absence of engaging a
process of objectification, the person is “washed on all sides by the waves of an
endless, empty potentiality” (translated in Morson & Emerson, 1990, p. 31);
personal responsibility is null and void.
By Bakhtin’s logic, the unity of self, its integrity, does not answer to the
question, “Who am I?” This is rather the question of self-continuity as
formulated by Erikson and pursued in modern approaches to identity
development (Chandler, Chandler, Laionde, Sokol, & Hallett, 2003; Moshman,
2004). However, the lasting and perdurable “I” persisting across time, space,
and accrued experience is not what Bakhtin is after. Only part of the project of
becoming involves arranging oneself diachronically along the “temporal flow of
life” and embracing the twinned epistemological and moral imperatives of
knowing oneself and being true to oneself. Left in the dust of contemporary
scholarship as it stampedes toward the integral self continuous in time is what
Bakhtin considered the most difficult task of self-development: the creation of a
self unified within the synchronous, ethically weighted moment, whose integrity
I can stand behind—which I can respect. Only then will I seek no “alibis”
(Emerson, 1997, p. 238).
For Piaget, respect constituted the very source of moral law and led
ultimately to the “morality of goodness.” His particular version of respect,
however, is of the type given by one to another, bestowed on another by virtue
of his or her location on our personal metric of value. Missing from his
argument, missing from the entire contemporary enterprise devoted to the study
110 LIGHTFOOT

of moral life and identity, is the self-respect envisioned by Bakhtin as essential

to engaging in any communicative act that I can stand behind. This leaves out a
lot. What I have attempted to accomplish here, in admittedly fledgling form, is
to map out an argument that implicates his theory of aesthetics, including his
conceptions of carnival, the novelistic self, and the development of an
ideological consciousness, as relevant to contemporary discourse on self-
development. In light of the currently divided and divisive approaches to
adolescent risk-taking, in light of the ambiguity inherent to adolescents’ very
own reflections on their risk-taking (“Stealing beer from a truck shows what
lengths you’ll go to to be with the group”; “I’d never do anything that’s
immoral”), Bakhtin’s reading of “becoming a person” is a particularly promising
antidote. The binocular view that it brings into focus suggests that much of
adolescents’ social action, however carnivalesque—because it is
carnivalesque—may be profitably explored as an aesthetic ground for testing
and developing the self-respect and constructing the Muse necessary to navigate
the ordinary and messy moral landscape of their lives.

REFERENCES

Acland, C. (1995). Youth, murder, spectacle: The cultural politics of “youth in crisis.”
Boulder, CO: Westview.
Bakhtin, M. (1968). Rabelais and his world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s poetics. (Emerson, Ed. & Trans.).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1963)
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Response to a question from Novy Mir. In C.Emerson & M. Holquist
(Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays: M.M. Bakhtin (pp. 1–7). Austin:
University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1970)
Bakhtin, M. (1993). Toward a philosophy of the act. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Calasso, R. (1993). The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. New York: Knopf.
Chandler, M., Chandler, M., Lalonde, C., Sokol, B., & Hailett, D. (2003). Personal
persistence, identity development, and suicide: A study of native and non-native
North American adolescents. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development, 68 (Whole No. 273).
Dohrn, B. (2000). “Look out, kid, it’s something you did”: The criminalization of
children. In V. Polakow (Ed.), The public assault on Americas children: Poverty,
violence and juvenile injustice (pp. 157–187). New York: Teachers College Press.
Emerson, C. (1997). The first hundred years of Mikhail Bakhtin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Fornas, J., & Bolin, G. (Eds.). (1995). Youth culture in late modernity. London: Sage.
Goldman, D. (1997). Down for La Raza: Barrio art t-shirts, Chicano pride, and cultural
resistance. Journal of Folklore Research, 34, 123–138.
Grady, K. (2002). Lowrider art and Latino students in the rural Midwest. In S.Wortham,
E.Murillo, & E.Hamann (Eds.), Education in the new Latino diaspora: Policy and the
politics of identity. Westport, CT: Ablex.
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Hancock, L. (2000). Framing children in the news: The face and color of youth crime in
America. In V.Polakow (Ed.), The public assault on Americas children: Poverty,
violence and juvenile injustice (pp. 78–98). New York: Teachers College Press.
Lightfoot, C. (1997). The culture of adolescent risk-taking. New York: Guilford.
Lightfoot, C. (2000). On respect. New Ideas in Psychology, 18, 177–185.
Lightfoot, C. (2003). Breathing lessons: Self as genre and aesthetic. In T.Brown & L.
Smith (Eds.), Reductionism and the development of knowledge (pp. 177–198).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Males, M. (1999). Framing youth: 10 myths about the next generation. Monroe, ME:
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Mechling, J. (2001). On my honor: Boy Scouts and the making of American youth.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Morson, G., & Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation ofaprosaics. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Moshman, D. (2004). Theories of self and selves as theories: Identity in Rwanda. In C.
Lightfoot, C.Lalonde, & M.Chandler (Eds.), Developing conceptions of psychological
life (pp. 183–206). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Brown (Eds.), Values and knowledge (pp. 41–60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological studies. London: Routledge.
Polakow, V. (Ed.). (2000). The public assault on Americas children: Poverty, violence
and juvenile injustice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Shakespeare, W. (1996). A winter’s tale. Champaign, IL: Project Gutenberg; Boulder,
CO: NetLibrary.
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Yeats, W.B. (1959). Mythologies. New York: Macmillan Press.
 6
Adolescents’ Peer Interactions: Conflict
and Coordination Among Personal
Expression, Social Norms, and Moral
Reasoning
Stacey S.Horn
University of Illinois at Chicago

Peer group exclusion, teasing, and harassment are a part of most adolescents’
lives. As adults we are often left asking why it is that adolescents frequently
treat each other with such cruelty and meanness. Some argue that it is because of
a moral decline in our society and that adolescents are out of control. Is this the
case, however? Are adolescents today simply lacking morality? Or, rather, is it
that adolescents’ social worlds are complex and as such they are faced with
coordinating conflicting needs or values in negotiating their peer relationships?
For example, do adolescents sometimes view exclusion as a legitimate form of
social regulation? In this chapter I discuss the unique complexity of adolescents’
peer groups and some of the ways in which this complexity may be related to
the types of decisions adolescents make about how to treat one another.

COMPLEXITY IN ADOLESCENTS' PEER GROUPS

Peers and peer relationships (or lack of them) are a critical part of adolescents’
social worlds. During the transition into adolescence, the peer social world
moves from being comprised of small groups of predominantly samesex friends
or playmates to a much larger and more complex system that has multiple levels
(Brown, Mory, & Kinney, 1994). Adolescents, like younger children, continue
to have best friendships and friendship groups (cliques) that are organized
around common interests and reciprocal affections. In addition, however, they
also become part of a larger peer group structure in which individuals are
categorized into groups based on their interests, activities, values, and modes of
personal expression (e.g., dress; Brown, 1989; Brown et al., 1994). These groups
emerge in adolescence due to both sociostructural and developmental factors.
In most U.S. school systems, as children get older the structure of the school
becomes larger and more complex. This increase in size and complexity makes
it difficult for adolescents to know each of their classmates on an individual
113
114 HORN

level. Thus, the larger peer group structure that emerges in adolescence provides
adolescents with a way to make sense of this expanding social world by giving
them categories or prototypes on which to base their evaluations of their peers.
Additionally, as adolescents move into high school they are confronted with a
much larger and more diverse array of classes, activities, and interests that they
can pursue. Coupled with the increased autonomy granted to adolescents by
parents and other adults, adolescents’ social worlds become much more diverse,
more peer driven, and allow for more time spent with peers in the absence of
adults.
On the developmental side, adolescents gain cognitive skills that allow them
to see beyond interpersonal relationships (e.g., best friendships) and to construct
broader representations of the peer group and the peer group system that involve
multiple levels, networks, and groups (Brown, 1990; Selman, 1980).
Additionally, during adolescence the development of one’s personal identity
becomes much more salient to individuals (Erikson, 1959, 1968). As a part of
this process, adolescents use their peer groups as venues through which to try on
and test out their various identities (Newman & Newman, 1976; Pugh & Hart,
1999). Further, with the onset of puberty, adolescents’ peer groups become a
way for them to learn about and experiment with their emerging sexuality and
sexual identity (Dunphy, 1963). This also leads to an expansion in the peer
group. Prior to puberty, children’s peer groups are comprised predominantly of
members of the same gender. With the onset of puberty, however, most
adolescents begin to develop an interest in opposite-gender peers and start to
form mixed-gender groups. These groups serve as a way for adolescents to
engage in heterosocial behavior and to learn about social practices and norms
regarding dating and intimacy (Dunphy, 1963).
These three developmental factors (cognition, identity, and sexuality)
combined with the sociostructural factors of increased size and complexity of
school, as well as the diversity of opportunities available to adolescents, support
the emergence of a peer system that is based not on “who hangs around with
who” but rather on prototypic group representations that are based on the types
of activities, attitudes, behaviors, and values different groups of individuals have
in common (McLellan & Youniss, 1999). As such, this larger peer group system
is a more abstract representation of the peer world than adolescents’ actual
social networks (McLellan & Youniss, 2000). In turn, these peer group or
identity prototypes have associated with them particular social norms and
conventions for behaviors, activities, and other modes of personal expression
that adolescents use in developing their own personal identities and in stratifying
the broader social milieu. Newman and Newman (1976) argued that peer groups
not only provide the prototypes available to and venues through which
adolescents test out their identities, they also provide them with critical
information, feedback, and support (or nonsupport) regarding these varying
identities. Through this feedback system then, peer groups and peer group norms
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 115

set the boundaries for what is considered appropriate or “cool” individual

expression and who is granted status within that peer system.
It appears then, that one of the complexities of adolescence is trying to
balance the needs to create a personal identity and to “fit in” to the peer group or
peer groups to which you want to belong. In doing this, adolescents are also
taking notice of their peers, their peers’ emergent identity constructions, and the
larger groups’ reactions to these identities. Thus, in evaluating and interacting
with one’s peers, adolescents are then confronted with having to negotiate and
coordinate not only moral considerations, but also salient personal and social
ones. Sometimes, an adolescent’s identity expression may coalesce with the
norms and conventions valued by the peer group. In this case there will likely be
little conflict between the peer group and this individual. Conversely, an
adolescent’s identity expression may be outside the norms or conventions valued
by the group, thereby creating conflict for both the individual and the others
within that peer system. In this circumstance, how do adolescents negotiate and
coordinate these conflicting dimensions? More specifically, what is the
relationship among personal expression, social group norms, and adolescents’
evaluations of the treatment of others? Using social cognitive domain theory as a
framework, I have been investigating these issues for the past few years.
Specifically, I have been investigating the ways in which adolescents reason
about issues of exclusion, harassment, and unfairness based on peer group
membership, gender identity, and sexual orientation. I chose these three social
categories because they are highly salient to adolescents’ lives. Additionally,
these categories seem to be dimensions along which adolescents get excluded,
ostracized, teased, or harassed in schools. Further, unlike race and biological
sex, which are perceived by most individuals to be innate, peer group
membership, gender expression, and sexual orientation are more often seen as
chosen expressions of one’s identity, and therefore as categories that can be
changed. As such, there seem to be more social norms that serve to regulate
adolescents’ identity expressions within these three categories. This research has
begun to illuminate the ways in which adolescents coordinate the different
dimensions of their social interactions and the factors that impact their reasoning
regarding these interactions. In the next section of this chapter, I briefly describe
social cognitive domain theory and its usefulness in studying how adolescents
reason about peer group relationships. Then I discuss relevant findings from two
empirical studies investigating these issues. In the last section of the chapter I
discuss implications of these results for moral education.
116 HORN

SOCIAL COGNITIVE DOMAIN THEORY AND

ADOLESCENT PEER RELATIONSHIPS

In social cognitive domain theory (Turiel, 1983, 1998; Turiel, Killen, & Helwig,
1987) it is proposed that social judgments are influenced by the reasoning
processes that individuals bring to bear on those judgments. Specifically, it is
posited that there are three conceptually distinct domains of social reasoning—
moral, societal, and psychological—that individuals use when understanding
and making decisions about their social worlds (Turiel, 1983, 1998). The moral
domain pertains to issues of others’ welfare (harm), justice (comparative
treatment and distribution), and rights. The societal domain pertains to issues
involving the rules, norms, and conventions that coordinate the social
interactions of individuals within social systems. In the psychological domain,
knowledge pertains to interpersonal relationships, the understanding of
individuals as psychological systems, and those issues over which individuals
have personal jurisdiction (Smetana, 1995; Turiel, 1983).
Recent research on peer relationships utilizing this theoretical framework has
investigated issues of gender and racial exclusion in diverse peer group contexts
(Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002; Killen & Stangor, 2001), the
impact of stereotypes of adolescent peer groups on adolescents’ reasoning about
retribution (Horn, Killen, & Stangor, 1999); the impact of ambiguity on
adolescents’ reasoning about exclusion based on adolescent peer groups (Horn,
2003), as well as how adolescents’ beliefs about gender norms and sexuality
impact their reasoning about the treatment of others based on gender expression
or sexual orientation (Horn, 2002; Horn & Nucci, 2002, 2003). Overall this
research suggests that adolescents predominantly view exclusion, teasing, and
peer harassment as wrong and that they think it is wrong because it is unfair or
hurtful. Thus, it would seem then, based on this research, that adolescents do
have a moral sense when it comes to relating with their peers. This research,
however, has also delin-eated a number of factors that are related to adolescents’
reasoning regarding these issues.
For example, Killen and her colleagues (Killen, Lee-Kim, et aL, 2002) found
that context is related to the type of reasoning individuals will bring to bear on
their decisions about peer relationships. In more intimate or close relationships,
such as who you are going to be friends with, children and adolescents used
more personal reasoning in justifying why exclusion is acceptable. For example,
it is okay to not play with John because he is Black because you should be able
to choose who your friends are. Conversely, in contexts in which the peer group
was more institutionally sanctioned (e.g., a school-based group) children and
adolescents were more likely to evaluate exclusion as wrong and used moral
reasoning in justifying why. For example, it is not okay for the other students to
exclude John from the math club (because he is Black) because all students
should have the right to participate in school activities and that would be unfair.
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 117

Thus, this research suggests that children and adolescents prioritize different
domains of reasoning in justifying or not justifying peer group exclusion in
intimate versus nonintimate contexts. That is to say, in friendship contexts the
fact that excluding a particular person may be hurtful to that person is
subordinated to the individuals’ prerogative to be friends with whom they
choose. In other contexts, however, individuals’ prerogative to hang out with
whom they choose is subordinated to the larger issue of equal access and
fairness. Social cognitive domain theory provides a meaningful framework to
investigate the ways in which adolescents coordinate personal, social, and moral
dimensions of their relationships with one another.
Further, although research suggests that individuals at all ages draw on these
three domains of social knowledge in reasoning about exclusion, how these
domains of knowledge get coordinated and applied to issues of peer group
inclusion or exclusion changes as children move into adolescence (Horn, 2003;
Killen, Lee-Kim, et al, 2002; Killen, McGlothlin, & Lee-Kim, 2002). This
research suggests that like younger children, many adolescents view exclusion
that is based solely on one’s social group membership (in a particular race,
gender, or peer group) as wrong from a moral viewpoint (it is unfair or hurtful;
Horn, 2003; Killen, Lee-Kim, et al., 2002), but also provides evidence that
adolescents are more likely than children to evaluate excluding someone from a
peer group or friendship group as acceptable (Killen, Lee-Kim, et al., 2002;
Killen, McGlothlin, & Lee-Kim, 2002). Additionally, adolescents are also more
likely to justify peer group exclusion as acceptable by making appeals to such
things as the identity of the group, group functioning, group norms, or personal
choice (Horn, 2003; Killen, Lee-Kim, et al., 2002). These results suggest that as
children get older they have an increased knowledge of the conventional
features of groups (group norms, group identity, group functioning) that are
legitimately necessary to the organization and maintenance of groups (Bukowski
& Sippolla, 2001; Turiel, 1983), as well as an expanded understanding of issues
that are inherently personal and legitimately up to the individual to decide
(Nucci, 1996, 2001). In my research I have found that adolescents’ developing
understanding of social systems as well as their expanded sense of the personal
domain are related to how they understand and make decisions about their peer
relationships. Specifically, three primary issues emerge when investigating how
adolescents negotiate and reason about issues of personal expression, social
norms, and the treatment of others: adolescents’ beliefs and assumptions about
normativity or acceptability of others, adolescents’ own social identity (the peer
group they belong to), and age. To discuss the ways in which these factors
impact adolescents’ reasoning, I draw on data from two different studies that
investigated how adolescents reason about peer group exclusion based on peer
group membership (Horn, 2003) and gender expression and sexual orientation
(Horn & Nucci, 2002, 2003).
118 HORN

ADOLESCENTS’ BELIEFS AND ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT

NORMATIVITY OR ACCEPTABILITY OF OTHERS
BASED ON THEIR PEER GROUP MEMBERSHIP
GENDER EXPRESSION, OR SEXUAL ORIENTATION

During adolescence, social norms regarding dress, appearance, behaviors, and

activities are quite strong. An individual’s adherence to these norms often
impacts the way in which that individual is perceived by his or her peers and
also influences the status one is afforded within the peer system as well as the
groups or social relationships to which one has access. Thus, the degree to
which an individual’s identity expressions (in terms of dress, appearance,
behaviors, and activities) conform to the social norms within the peer system
impacts how others within that system will view that individual. In both studies
we asked adolescents to evaluate the acceptability of the individuals who were
being excluded by others from a group. In the study investigating exclusion
based on peer group membership, adolescents (N=379) ranked individuals from
certain peer groups as more acceptable than those from other groups. In fact, the
results suggested that a hierarchy of peer groups existed at this school with
“jocks” and “preppies” at the top and “dirties” and “gothics” at the bottom (for a
description of the groups, see Table 6.1). Similarly, in the study investigating
adolescents’ judgments and reasoning regarding exclusion based on gender
expression and sexual orientation, adolescents (N=264) rated straight and
gender-conforming targets as more acceptable than gay, lesbian, or gender
nonconforming targets (see Table 6.2 for a description of the targets). Further,
the targets who were gender nonconforming (both gay and straight) in terms of
their appearance were rated as the least acceptable.

TABLE 6.1 Descriptions of Adolescent Reference Groups Used

in Study

Group Description
Cheerleaders Involved in cheerleading and danceline, part of the peer culture, accepted
by teachers, participate in a moderate amount of delinquent activity
(drinking). Female
Dirties Wear old, dirty, or grunge-style clothing, disengaged from school and
teachers, smart, participate in moderate to heavy amounts of delinquent
activity (drinking, smoking pot, trouble at school). Male and female.
Druggies Engage in heavy amounts of delinquent activity (drinking, heavy drug use,
trouble at school), disengaged from school and teachers, as well as peers,
tough. Mixed gender but more male.
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 119

Gothics Wear black clothes and makeup, engage in deviant behavior such as
witchcraft, like music and concerts, indifferent or defiant attitudes toward
school and teachers, loners and outcasts. Mixed gender but more female.
Jocks Participate in sports and other school activities, part of the popular peer
culture, favored by teachers, not smart, participate in a moderate amount of
delinquent activity (drinking, smoking pot). Male.
Preppies Extremely involved in school activities such as sports and student council,
part of the popular peer culture, liked by teachers, do well in school,
wealthy, participate in moderate amounts of delinquent behavior
(drinking). Male and female.

These results suggest that adolescents’ normative beliefs about their peers are
influenced by individuals’ personal expressions or identities regarding social
reference group, gender expression, and sexual orientation. Further, adolescents
who were the most visibly nonconforming in their identity expressions (those
labeled as dirties or gothics or those with nonconforming gender appearance)
were seen as least acceptable overall, suggesting that personal expression in
terms of appearance is a salient normative dimension along which adolescents
evaluate each other. Although this evidence suggests that adolescents do judge
their peers based on their identity expressions, is it the case that these judgments
impact adolescents’ evaluations and reasoning regarding the treatment of others?

TABLE 6.2 Descriptions of Targets Used in the Scenarios

Gender, Sexual Description

Orientation, Gender
Expression
Male, gay, gender- George is a gay male high school student. He plays on the
conforming school baseball team. He is a B student. He dresses and acts like
most of the other guys at school. To all outward appearances, he
seems just like any other boy at the school.
Male, straight, Steve is a straight male high school student. He plays on the
appearance school baseball team. He is a B student. He dresses and acts
nonconforming differently from most of the other guys at school. For example
he acts feminine, and sometimes wears fingernail polish and
eyeliner.
Male, gay, appearance Mark is a gay male high school student. He plays on the school
nonconforming baseball team. He is a B student. He dresses and acts differently
from most of the other guys at school. For example he acts
feminine, and sometimes wears fingernail polish and eyeliner.
120 HORN

Male, straight, activity Todd is a straight male high school student. He is a member of
nonconforming the local ballet company. He is a B student. He dresses and acts
like most of the other guys at school.
Male, gay, activity Matt is a gay male high school student. He is a member of the
nonconforming local ballet company. He is a B student. He dresses and acts like
most of the other guys at school.
Female, lesbian, Jenny is a lesbian high school student. She plays on the school
gender-conforming volleyball team. She is a B student. She dresses and acts like
most of the other girls at school. To all outward appearances,
she seems just like any other girl at the school.
Female, straight, Ashley is a straight female high school student. She plays on the
appearance school volleyball team. She is a B student. She dresses and acts
nonconforming differently from most of the other girls at school. For example,
she acts masculine, has a crew cut, and never wears makeup or
dresses.
Female, lesbian, Mary is a lesbian high school student. She plays on the school
appearance volleyball team. She is a B student. She dresses and acts
nonconforming differently from most of the other girls at school. For example,
she acts masculine, has a crew cut, and never wears makeup or
dresses.
Female, straight, Talia is a straight female high school student. She is a running
activity back on the high school football team. She is a B student. She
nonconforming dresses and acts like most of the other girls at school.
Female, lesbian, Amy is a lesbian high school student. She is a running back on
activity the school football team. She is a B student. She dresses and acts
nonconforming like most of the other girls at school.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACCEPTABILITY

JUDGMENTS AND ADOLESCENTS' EVALUATIONS
AND REASONING REGARDING THE TREATMENT OE
OTHERS

In the study on adolescents’ evaluations and reasoning regarding the treatment

of others based on gender expression and sexual orientation, we asked
adolescents to evaluate whether they thought it was right or wrong to exclude,
tease, harass, or assault individuals because they were gay, lesbian, or gender
nonconforming and to provide reasoning for why they thought it was right or
wrong. Overall, most adolescents evaluated it as wrong to exclude, tease, harass,
or assault someone based on his or her gender expression or sexual orientation.
In fact, virtually no adolescents evaluated it as acceptable to harass or assault
someone based on his or her gender expression or sexual orientation and
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 121

virtually all of them provided moral reasons (fairness to others, human welfare,
human equality) for why this was wrong.
For scenarios in which physical harm to the other was not an issue
(exclusion) , however, adolescents were more likely to endorse the exclusion of
those that were nonnormative (rated as less acceptable) as acceptable. That is,
adolescents evaluated exclusion as less wrong if the target was gay or lesbian or
gender nonconforming in appearance. Additionally, for the exclusion scenarios,
adolescents utilized personal choice reasoning (they can do whatever they want)
in justifying their judgments much more than in the stories regarding teasing,
harassing, or assault. Further, for the exclusion stories, adolescents were more
likely to utilize social norms reasoning (adhering to or negating norms) in
relation to gender expression related to appearance. That is to say, adolescents
were sensitive to social norms regarding gender appearance in justifying their
judgments regarding issues of exclusion. For those adolescents who were
nonconforming in their gender expression, participants were more likely to
endorse exclusion as acceptable because the individual did not adhere to social
norms regarding gender. Interestingly, this was not the case for activity,
suggesting that gender norms regarding appearance may be more rigid in
adolescence than social norms regarding the types of activities in which one can
participate. Thus, based on these results, it seems that adolescents do use moral
reasoning when evaluating issues of how others are treated. It also seems to be
the case, however, that when it comes to peer interaction (who one hangs around
with), adolescents’ reasoning about what is right or wrong is related to how they
coordinate their understanding of social norms regarding gender with their
understanding of identity issues related to gender expression.

SOCIAL IDENTITY

From our study on adolescents’ reasoning about exclusion based on peer group
membership, we also have evidence that those adolescents who identify with
groups that hold a privileged or accepted position within the peer group structure
are more likely to view their own identity expressions as normative and less
likely to view the identity expressions of adolescents in less accepted groups as
normative. These beliefs about normativity, then, seem to impact their
evaluations and reasoning about peer interactions within school. When one’s
identity expression conflicts with the social norms of the group, exclusion is
more likely to be seen as legitimate (based on conventional reasons) than when
one’s identity expression conforms to the social norms of the group. Further,
adolescents who adopt “normative” identity expressions are more likely to view
peer group exclusion as a legitimate form of social regulation rather than as a
moral issue. That is, as adolescents negotiate their identities within the peer
social milieu, exclusion serves a regulatory function in which those with power
122 HORN

and status based on their own identity expressions maintain their privileged
position by denying those with alternative identity expressions access to their
group.

AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES

Research on the development of conventional reasoning suggests that at this age

(14–16-year-olds), adolescents begin to understand social structures as systemic
and view conventions and social norms as necessary to the regulation and
functioning of the system (Turiel, 1983). Further, adolescents at this age view
the social system as uniform, having fixed roles and a static hierarchical
organization (Turiel, 1983). Conversely, older adolescents (17- and 18-year-
olds) view conventions and norms as “’nothing but’ societal standards that exist
through habitual use” (Turiel, 1983, p. 103) and thus are less likely to see them
as necessary in maintaining the social system. It may be the case then, that as
adolescents’ understanding of social systems is developing, the peer group
system becomes one arena in which this emerging knowledge is applied. That is,
if middle adolescents understand conventions as necessary to the maintenance of
the social system, then others’ identity expressions that are nonconventional
may be seen as a threat to the peer system, and as such, they may be more likely
to view exclusion as a legitimate form of social regulation rather than as an issue
of moral harm.
In both studies we found significant differences in adolescents’ judgments
and reasoning based on age. Middle adolescents (9th- and 10th-graders) were
more likely to evaluate exclusion as acceptable, used more conventional
reasoning and stereotypes and less moral reasoning in justifying their judgments,
and were less likely to evaluate those adolescents who were non-normative in
their personal expression as acceptable than older adolescents (11th- and 12th-
graders). Interestingly, this is also the age period when adolescents’ peer
relationships are also changing the most, becoming larger and more complex
(Brown, 1990; Brown et al., 1994). Thus, it might be argued that peer conflicts
related to issues of exclusion and teasing are the result of adolescents’ trying to
make sense of this expanding and increasingly complex peer system, as well as
their own place within that system.

DISCUSSION

The results presented in this chapter suggest that as adolescents are trying to
make sense of themselves and their expanding social world they are negotiating
and coordinating personal, conventional, and moral considerations in their peer
interactions. As adolescents are trying on and testing out different identity
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 123

expressions they are also doing this within a peer group structure that has norms
and conventions that impact how those identity expressions are perceived by
others. Within the peer system certain identity expressions are seen as more
normative than others and adolescents view the exclusion of those who are
perceived as nonnormative as more legitimate.
Additionally, the results suggest that adolescents who have more of an
investment in the peer social system will be more likely to view exclusion as
legitimate. For example, adolescents who identify with a peer group that
benefits from the system (through status) are more likely to view the exclusion
of those whose identity expressions are nonnormative as legitimate.
Additionally, middle adolescents for whom adherence to conventions and norms
is imperative to the maintenance of the system are also more likely to evaluate
the exclusion of those whose identity expressions are counter to the system as
legitimate.
Research on the development of the self also suggests that during middle
adolescence (14–16), when identity exploration is at its peak, adolescents are
grappling with the conflicts and contradictions within their own self-constructs
(Harter, 1999), putting them in a vulnerable position regarding their own sense
of self. This vulnerability makes them extremely sensitive to the norms and
conventions of the peer structure and the feedback this system gives them
regarding their emergent sense of who they are. If the peer system provides
positive and affirming feedback regarding their personal identity expressions,
they will try to maintain the norms and values inherent in that system by
excluding and teasing others who they view as a threat to this system. On the
other hand, if the peer system provides them with negative and rejecting
feedback regarding their personal identity expressions, they may try to do one of
three things. They may try to change themselves to fit into the peer system, they
may try to change the peer system, or they may place themselves (and their
values) outside of the peer system completely. At the extremes, either of these
options can lead to violence and harm directed toward the self or others. For
some adolescents, the only way to resolve the conflict between who they are
(their identity expression) and the norms and conventions of the adolescent
social world is to kill themselves. For other adolescents, the way to resolve this
conflict is to harm those that they perceive as negating or rejecting their identity
expressions.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL EDUCATION

Piaget (1939/1965) argued, “In order to discover oneself as a particular

individual, what is needed is a continuous comparison, the outcome of
opposition, of discussion, and of mutual control” (p. 393), Adolescents’ peer
groups do provide them with the conflict, resistance, and support necessary for
124 HORN

them to begin to understand who they are, what they want to be, and how they
fit within the larger social world (Pugh & Hart, 1999). Thus, there is a
component to adolescent peer conflict that is developmentally necessary and
appropriate when this conflict occurs between individuals of equal status and
within an environment that is generally supportive. It is often the case, however,
that adolescents’ peer interactions are also fraught with power imbalances in that
certain types of identity expressions afford individuals more power and privilege
within the peer system than others. In some cases, then, peer conflict, rather than
being developmentally appropriate or healthy, serves to perpetuate a system that
is unfair and often harmful.
Thus, one of the goals of moral education should be to help adolescents
coordinate their understanding of the social system (and the norms and values
associated with it) with their understanding of moral principles such as fairness,
individual rights, and human welfare. One way to do this is by asking
adolescents to analyze social systems and social practices that unfairly
advantage one group or type of person over another. For example, having
students systematically investigate issues such as segregation and affirmative
action will push adolescents to think about and try to coordinate issues of access,
privilege, and individual merit. Another way to do this would be to have
adolescents analyze the norms and values inherent in popular culture and how
these norms and values support or constrain the types of identity expressions
available to individuals.
A second goal of moral education should be to ensure that schools are places
in which healthy conflict, resistance, and opposition are fostered and in which
adolescents are supported in negotiating the personal, social, and moral
dimensions of their interactions with their peers. This can be done at the
classroom or school level by creating an atmosphere in which multiple identity
expressions and a diversity of views and opinions are encouraged, valued, and
supported. For example, schools that value excellence in multiple domains (arts,
sciences, athletics, leadership) create an environment in which multiple identity
expressions are valued and supported. This in turn reduces the likelihood that
certain identity expressions will be privileged over others, reducing the
stratification of the peer group system. Additionally, classrooms in which a
diversity of opinions and voices is presented, sought, and valued and in which
respectful argument and negotiation are fostered can help students understand
how to negotiate the complexity of the peer group world. Further, schoolwide
conflict resolution programs that help adolescents analyze the different facets or
perspectives within a conflict also help adolescents to practice coordinating the
personal, social, and moral dimensions of the situation.
Finally, a third goal of moral education should be to encourage adolescents to
interact with a diversity of people within their school and community
environment. Simple exposure to diverse groups, however, is not enough
(Allport, 1954). These interactions should involve diverse adolescents working
 6. ADOLESCENTS’ PEER INTERACTIONS 125

together toward a mutually beneficial goal. Through interacting with others,

adolescents get to know one another on a more personal level, thus breaking
down the stereotypes or assumptions they might have of one another.
Additionally, by working toward a common goal, adolescents come to depend
on one another and can begin to value the unique skills and knowledge that each
person brings to the group.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents’ peer groups are complex and negotiating relationships within the
peer system involves personal, social, and moral dimensions. During
adolescence, individuals are not only developing a broader understanding of
social systems, including the peer system; they are also constructing a sense of
who they are and who they want to be within this system. This can lead to
conflict for some adolescents or between some groups of adolescents. Although
some of this conflict may be helpful and developmentally appropriate, in
negotiating these conflicts adolescents will often make decisions about how to
treat others that are unfair or harmful. The goal of moral education, then, should
be to help adolescents better negotiate conflicts between issues of personal
expression and social norms so that they understand the impact that these factors
have on the decisions they make about others.

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 7
Negative Morality and the Goals of
Moral Education
Fritz K.Oser
Institute of Pedagogy
University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland

When she had been “clean and sober” for 15 years, a 36-year-old alcoholic in
our study of how alcoholics and addicts recover integrity explained to us how
she had finally learned from her mistakes. She was a very clever child, and had
always been able to get away with things. Her parents, busy professionals,
encouraged her creativity and independence. “I thought I had them fooled. I
didn’t understand how I hurt them,” she said, “I just kept heading down the
wrong road until I finally hit a wall.” The wall was named Officer McMurray.
“When he pulled me over and told me to step out of the car, I finally understood
where the line was. I’d been pulled over lots of times before, but somehow, this
time, even before I got out of the car, I had a flash… Everything before that was
wrong. I knew he was right to lock me up. I was too ashamed to call my parents
to bail me out. I knew from then on where the edge of the cliff was.” She went
on to describe her daily struggles with “the edge of the cliff,” but she felt sure,
after her awareness of the difference between right and wrong, that she now
knew better, and that “the people in the village below that cliff, my parents and
all—they’re safe now. I’m not a disaster waiting to happen anymore. I’m not
rolling down that cliff.” On the 15th anniversary of her sobriety, now an art
therapist and mother of two, she honored Officer McMurray because, she said,
he “showed me the line.”
This story from the work of the Blakeneys (R.Blakeney, Blakeney, & Reich,
2003) illustrates how negative moral experience may lead to a posi-tive insight,
to the will not to violate the trust of others, and the commitment to do the right
thing. It tells us also how complex and painful the moral learning process is. It
shows us that meaningful negative moral knowledge is constructed in situations
in which doing the right thing is contrasted with doing the wrong thing, in which
relationships and moral emotions of indignation are salient features, and in
which we learn to accommodate to the limits of being clever and successful. We
claim that moral learning without negative experience is not possible. In this
chapter I develop this particular thesis and its implications for a comprehensive
model of moral education.

129
130 OSER

Our approach is based on the premise that negative information has a

fundamental role in the construction of knowledge more generally. In effect, to
know what is right, we must keep in our episodic memory both the negative
knowledge and the underlying generated insight. But what is the epistemological
basis of negative knowledge?
“Do not cross this street when the light is red, because you could be hit by a
car and killed,” says a mother to her 4-year-old daughter. She holds her
daughter’s hand firmly, and the fear in her eyes expresses her seriousness. Such
an act builds negative knowledge. Because the mother wants to protect her
daughter, she believes that if the situation is serious and she is serious when she
tells her how to behave, her daughter will be protected. To talk about negative
knowledge means to express an epistemological necessity (Wittgenstein, 1990).
To know what is, one must know what is not. To understand how something
functions, one must know what this functioning inhibits. To know what to do,
we must know what not to do. To know what strategy works, we must know
which one does not work, and why. To understand the notion of a “just
community” we must also know why something like a “zerotolerance” school
can never be a just community school, and so on. Negative knowledge is a
necessary counterpart to positive knowledge, a mirroring, ordering schema that
frames any knowledge. Of course instead of using the term negative knowledge
we could also talk about knowledge of the negative side of any given subject,
topic, strategy, or process. However, this would only confuse the reader. We can
more clearly describe the mentioned epistemological basis of understanding
when we consider negative knowledge as a force shaping positive knowledge.
The distinction between negative experience and negative knowledge is that the
first describes the process of acquiring negative knowledge, the second is the
result that—partly through metacognition—remains in long-term episodic moral
memory.

NEGATIVE KNOWLEDGE AS KNOWLEDGE OF

ERRORS

Negative knowledge is functional in the sense that without it one cannot have a
firm grasp of any subject. Negative knowledge, knowledge of what a thing is
not, is inherent in understanding its parameters (i.e., what it is). Moreover,
negative knowledge also protects, supports, or preshapes positive knowledge.
The function of negative knowledge as a protective force can best be illustrated
in a nonmoral setting. An example that I like to refer to is that of the airplane
pilot (see Oser & Veugelers, 2003). A pilot knows many rules about how to fly
correctly, because he or she must be able to make the airplane take off, fly, and
land in complete safety. This system of rules that describes what the pilot must
do is supplemented by a whole range of rules about what he or she must not do.
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 131

However, these latter rules do not actually form part of the pilot’s competence;
rather they are simply rules about what not to do. Negative knowledge arises
through the mistakes the pilot makes in the simulator and the things he or she
does that he or she should not do. The simulator reacts quickly, the plane goes
into a spin, the pilot loses control, and the plane crashes. This experience
prevents the pilot from doing things, or failing to do things, that he or she must
not do, or must not fail to do. It is therefore a knowledge of errors that prevents
the pilot from failing to do the right thing or from doing the wrong thing. This
knowledge of errors is the pilot’s most important “knowledge.” It is episodic
and unstructured, but enormously effective. The knowledge of errors prevents
the pilot from doing things, or failing to do things, that lead to spinning out of
control, losing height too quickly, or indeed, to crashing.
Another function of negative knowledge is concerned with the process of
limiting something. To say that something is steep we must know when the flat
stops being flat and begins to ascend. This identifying marker is especially
important for concepts and strategies. We must, for instance, know when a
democracy can no longer be called a democracy because it becomes a
dictatorship. We must know, for instance, that interactive mental strategies are
not effective in a final exam because in an exam, individual competence—not
interactive competence—is assessed. One criticism that might be raised is that
the term knowledge is cold, external, objective, and trivial. However, from a
constructivist point of view, the term knowledge refers to more than formally
acquired information. In the cognitive psychological sense, what is meant by
knowledge is a processed, declarative, or strategically empirical knowledge. It is
knowledge that has become comprehension. Comprehension means that
knowledge is use-oriented. Comprehension is also an ordering schema within an
experienced context (Hörmann, 1982). Individual components are inserted into
the ready-made overall structure. “Comprehension is therefore a one-way street
which follows a natural gradient, from the individual to the all-embracing, from
the specific to the general, from the dread of the new to the brilliance of order”
(Hörmann, 1982, p. 22). Negative knowledge can be developed the same way,
whether it is declarative, procedural, strategic, or conceptual. With respect to
declarative negative knowledge, a person must experience cold to understand
hot, that which is bad to understand good; and that which is immoral to
understand what is moral. Declarative negative knowledge presupposes
knowledge about the opposite state of any object. With respect to procedural
knowledge, we must know what not to do. For instance, in working with a
computerized production engine, we must know which buttons not to press to
avoid stopping production. These examples illustrate the role of negative
knowledge in understanding and competently communicating negative
knowledge in a complex professional, social, and moral world.
The best way—but not the only way—to construct negative knowledge is by
making mistakes: by making one’s own mistakes or by being aware of the
132 OSER

mistakes of others. Processing these mistakes builds a storehouse of protective

knowledge. This is a complex and painful process that should never be
romanticized. On the one hand humans want to avoid mistakes, but on the other
hand mistakes can be fruitful for building episodic memories. In some cases, of
course, mistakes can be irreversible, as in the case of Chernobyl. In such tragic
cases we may also speak about advocacy-produced negative knowledge in
which the next generation in an advocatory way may learn from the mistakes of
prior generations without having to directly learn from personal situations. What
is interesting, however, from an educational point of view, is the degree to
which young people appear to need to experience the negative consequences of
actions; to produce their own mistakes to construct a full understanding of what
should be done.
On the one hand mistakes can produce what we call positive anger. This kind
of anger over mistakes is called positive because it leads to a developmental
change in thinking and goal orientation. On the other hand, there is negative
anger, which arises when one’s mistakes are cynically disparaged, when one is
openly blamed, chastised, or disrespected for one’s mistakes. Such negative
anger can turn into shame, guilt feelings, and sadness. It can completely block
any learning, especially creativity and learning involving taking risks, and it can
produce negative motivational consequences. As educators then, we can,
especially in the realm of procedural knowledge, use simulations for learning
through mistakes. On the other hand no one has the right to intentionally set
other people up to “learn from their mistakes.”
When we say that making mistakes is a good way to build up negative
knowledge we are aware that schools and learning situations can stimulate the
same effective learning process not by using mistakes but by contrasting
opposing bits of knowledge. If the teacher asks students why the American
Revolution was not a revolution, but rather a war for independence, students
have to be aware of the characteristics of a true revolution and balance it against
a kind of uprising that is not a true revolution. Similarly, if, during a drought, a
teacher asks children what kind of people will be happy when it finally rains, the
question of what kind of people will be unhappy when it rains would be
precisely the contrary. If I am talking about life I also have in mind death and its
implications.
Schools in general inhibit learning from both the introduction of meaningful
contrasts and the direct experience of negative actions. Teachers often try to
prevent students from building up negative knowledge in that they try to prevent
student mistakes, hide mistakes, scratch out mistakes, or overlook mistakes, and
thus hinder the construction of negative knowledge; and hence all the narratives
and episodes in popular culture related to it. Schools often prevent youngsters
from critical questioning as the movie Dead Poets Society suggests. Instead of
learning from contrary positions, mistakes, and contrasting procedures and thus
developing a culture of mistakes, schools inhibit mistakes. In our recent work,
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 133

we have developed an instrument for measuring the culture of mistakes in

schools, classes, and learning situations (Oser & Spychiger, 2004). What we
have found is that schools fail to achieve what we would consider to be a critical
pedagogical goal, namely learning from what is wrong to understand the right.
Our work has been done in Europe, but we doubt that the situation is much
different in schools in North America.

THE MORAL CONCEPT OF NEGATIVITY

How do these ideas apply to the construction of morality? The saying that
children who never ever lie, deceive, misbehave, and so on, could not become
moral persons has been attributed to Janusz Korczak, the great Polish pedagogue
and physician (Oser & Veugelers, 2003). This saying can be interpreted as
meaning that the experience of injustice enables it to be prevented, the
experience of wickedness leads to an emotional consciousness of such behavior,
and the experience of inadequacies makes it possible for them to be overcome.
From a psychological point of view, it is necessary to be able to hold up both the
downside of a possible moral solution and the upside, the positive and the
negative, and to do this not merely as the awareness of a possibility but as the
crystallized experience of this possibility (in such cases the warning deriving
from tradition, literature, and stories can possess a status similar to the genuine
episodic experience; see later).
Let us suppose that a person knows and has command of a set of moral rules
that state what is to be done and what is not to be done, including information
about that which is obligatory and that which is recommended. This set of rules
is only that, a set of rules. It does not show the person what noncompliance
means for him or her and for others. As a result, the person requires quasi-
models of “terror” (i.e., models that allow him or her to experience the effects of
positive and negative actions, both within the deliberative process and as an
outcome). It is not a consequentialist form of ethics that is expressed here, but an
ethics that for purposes of justification considers the possibility of the misery
created by failure. In other words, it is important that a person knows what he or
she has to do (positively and negatively) and what noncompliance means in the
extreme case. The rule “Thou shall not kill,” to be understood, requires that
there is knowledge of the kind of suffering, fears, and flagrant injustice that
murder and manslaughter involve. Being aware of the situation in which the rule
is broken, the negative knowledge, is what makes the rule valid in the first place
because it fills an empty abstract rule with rich, real, concrete content that can be
connected with one’s real life. This is what we describe as negative moral
knowledge. Why do children love books like Shock-Headed Peter, Pinocchio,
and Where the Wild Things Are, which are scandalous from a pedagogical
viewpoint? Presumably because negative moral knowledge is clearly and
134 OSER

unambiguously depicted as such. The rule is always shown in its opposite form,
in its violation. Every child therefore learns instinctively that the world operates
more smoothly when rules are obeyed, but what is actually exciting exists in the
incredibly painful consequences of not obeying the rules. Negative moral
knowledge is not, as the negative theology of Maimonides calculated, that man
can only say what God is not. It is rather the other side of a necessary or
nonnecessary obligation, a phenomenon that has until now scarcely been
investigated. It is the secret content with which people give substance to their
standards from the reverse side.
This was precisely what Kohlberg (1981, 1984) did not demand from his
experimental participants, or he only obtained it indirectly through his
interviews. It is true that he asked why Heinz should or should not commit
burglary to get the medicine that would save his wife’s life. However, persons
from a specific stage (e.g., stage 4) could have quite varied existential
background knowledge of what will cause the extent and intensity of the always
anticipated harm caused by noncompliance with any of these rules.
Noncompliance with a rule, however, is a necessary form for moral
epistemology. Morality grows through the experience of moral negativity and
through the emotions related to it. People who experience or suffer the utter
horror of violating a positive or negative rule are prevented from violating this
rule. People who are aware of the horror of the consequences of the absence of a
rule forbidding a particular action fight for creating such a law. (The military
saw no difficulty with laying land and sea mines only as long as the civilian
population knew nothing about it and was not directly affected. People who
have seen and experienced the misery of children who have stepped on such
mines have the protective knowledge that gives them the impetus to call for
these mines to be banned.) Negative knowledge thus “protects” compliance with
rules, even under conditions of conflict, stress, and situational pressure, whereas
the absence of such knowledge weakens rules, rendering them meaningless in
terms of understanding the rules’ functions. In this case the center does not hold;
public and private injustice increases; and the forces of overweening ambition,
lust for power and possessions, and so on, are let loose.
The individual acquires a set of negative knowledge components through his
or her experiences and these support his or her positive knowledge. Individuality
is characterized by episodic moral knowledge that has been gained through
making mistakes or having negative experiences. This becomes the prima facie
justification for compliance with a moral rule, namely the misery and sense of
revulsion that are imagined when one considers its violation. Episodic negative
knowledge is the hidden content of our moral reactions. For Freud, for whom
the superego is the wall that rejects or restrains certain desires, this negative
knowledge is not subject to nearly enough control by the ego, the person. It is
quasi-uncontrollable by the person himself or herself because it is processed
externally through the fear of loss of love. Freud did not see that empathy is just
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 135

as effective as compulsion, and that the experience of the negative motivates

one’s own long-term processing, which makes sense out of rules and guarantees
that compliance with these rules as a form of human reconstruction validates
their necessity.

THE NONAUTOMATIC MECHANISM THAT

PROTECTS US FROM OUR OWN WEAKNESSES

The mechanism of protective moral knowledge shall now be more precisely

elaborated against the following background. In one of our interviews, a 58-
year-old woman recounted how—after being newly married—she would often
shoplift small things whenever she had to buy something from a large store. She
did this just for fun, as she had when she was a teenager. She never was caught.
One day she arbitrarily began telling this to her husband, a successful and
famous attorney. On her hearing her story, he became pale and furious and
expressed his shame and indignation in no uncertain terms. There were terrible
scenes in which he told her that she had jeopardized his whole career, and the
like. She recounted that after this incident (especially at work) she was
repeatedly tempted, in the gray areas of social amorality, to steal little things,
evade paying taxes, or claim expenses that had never been incurred. In the face
of temptation, she would recollect the episode with her husband, and restrain
herself. Thus, in her case, negative knowledge, knowledge of the consequence
of rule violation, strengthened rule observance.
This example may be dismissed as simplistic, but at the beginning of all
morality we find indignation and the related feeling of being ashamed of oneself
(Tugendhat, 1984). Generally, the residual traces left behind by such indignation
have not been sufficiently stressed. They are the moral scars a person carries
with him or her, and they ache in similar situations and so recall key moral
experiences relating to this indignation. As we have seen in the case of
posttraumatic stress, humans reconstruct in a similar situation the past event, and
they act according to this reflection. There is no automaticity in this in a
behaviorist sense. Negative expert ences do not in themselves prevent one from
doing things again. However, the feelings accompanying the meanings attached
to an event do become integrated within the moral schemes that are constructed,
and may be invoked whenever the person is in a similar situation (Arsenio &
Lover, 1995), serving as a motive force within the person’s moral judgment.
In fact, it can be maintained that this recollection, even if vague and often
almost forgotten, is a form of protection against similar acts in new situations.
Without this indignation (either self-generated or generated by the environment),
moral rules are cold, sterile, abstract, and susceptible to unnecessary exceptions
dictated by selfishness. The more the experienced indignation is linked to the
generated rule, the more obligatory the rule becomes, not in the sense of blind
136 OSER

obedience but in the sense of an individual not acting indifferently, but

reflecting on and attributing responsibility. Knowledge gained from negative
experience encourages reliable and appropriate compliance with a rule. Negative
knowledge is like a wall that, in even extreme situations and conditions of stress,
restrains a person from doing wrong and hurting others. This inner moral
attitude, originating from the scars of one’s own failures, or the failures of
others, is the protection that is referred to here. It is the soil from which civil
rights activism grew (R.F.Blakeney, 2002). It is not conceivable without
experience.
In his book The Ethical Didactic of Kant, Koch (2003) stated that the
categorical imperative as a principle for finding a rule for the morally permitted
is based on the concept of universality. If we can state that universality is a
given, this leads to the morally permitted; if universality is not given, it leads to
the morally prohibited. But what, asked Koch, leads to the morally necessary?
He gave three answers: First, that a categorical imperative is a positive principle,
which implies that it is the criteria for the examination of an action maxim;
second that this categorical imperative is a negative criterion, which helps us to
find out what not to do; third, that only through the roundabout way of the
morally impermissible do we understand what is morally necessary. This is the
way to understand why positive duties are only possible through the negative,
through what is immoral and not desired. To avoid vices that lead to serious
misbehavior, one should avoid considering the good in egocentric terms at all.
The good in this sense cannot only be good because it meets the test of
usefulness. It must also be submitted to the universality rule. The duties of moral
self-survival are also negative. No virtues are recommended but vices are
prohibited.

WHAT IS EDUCATIONAL MORAL PROGRESS

CONCERNING THE ASPECT OF NEGATIVE
MORALITY?

If we know what negative morality means it is of crucial importance to ask what

implications this has for moral education. Education is related to progress. To
ask about moral progress in sociological terms leads to one central answer,
namely that during the last centuries man became more morally rational. Rorty
(2003), on the basis of the philosophical reflection of Baier (1995), denied this
hypothesis and instead believed that moral progress develops through moral
sentiments and moral storytelling in which feelings and sentiments for the weak
and strangers are articulated. The first author does not see that the sentiments for
the weak and the stranger are based on negativity. The second author does not
see it systematically. It is more than a suffering. It is a regret that this person
suffers. With this regret we develop feelings of empathy and morality, which
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 137

lead to rules and moral regulations. If we apply this idea to the educational and
developmental field in general, it could mean that progress in moral education
develops through the growth of negative moral feelings, through storytelling
with negative moral content followed by a positive outcome and possibilities to
put oneself in the shoes of others in the sense that they feel miserable and
negatively treated by life. In simple terms, reading Les Misérables from Victor
Hugo or Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart would be more effective in
facilitating perspective taking than rationally solving positive moral problems
(cf. Selman, 2003). Moral progress thus is not primarily more moral knowledge
or not simply a higher moral stage or not only a better judgment-action
relatedness. It is also a better protection from one’s own moral mistakes through
the concept of negative morality and its situatedness. Situatedness means that
with the created moral norm, the situation in which the negative experience
occurred is also remembered and produces a kind of moral warning, an immune
system against immoral behavior.
It is also crucially important to understand that we cannot stimulate pupils to
achieve a higher level of moral judgment (one form of rational progress) simply
by imparting knowledge, or by using teaching methods based on practical
experience and problem solving, or by treating personal experiences in a
creative and artistic manner, or by the teaching of strategies designed to improve
memory, and so forth. All these methods are important for general teaching, but
they will not lead to any accommodative transformation of cognitive moral
patterns, nor is it possible to succeed in achieving a higher level in a short space
of time. It is imperative, moreover, to be aware that transformations such as
these can be brought about only against the background of a development theory
and a transformational grammar appropriate to it, involving a constant process
of critical arguments and nega-tive events. Some knowledge about the
transformation of cognitive moral judgment is therefore required if others are to
be successfully stimulated to achieve a higher level, and it must also be
recognized that human beings are perennially disinclined to take steps to
transform and improve their patterns of behavior (to make progress). Negative
knowledge of equal complexity but different in nature is required for the task of
creating shared norms, or when a competency to act is aimed for. I return to
these points later.
The foregoing also suggests that moral education in situated contexts is a
complex and multidirectional phenomenon, that it can provoke a network of
suggestions for action, that norms play a role, that justifications are required,
and that negative moral acts from others are a basic raw material from which to
construct moral meaning. If however, as is often pronounced, a single method is
promoted as the only correct one, or if teachers subscribe to a single method
(e.g., the character education approach, or development-oriented education), this
will inevitably lead to false causal assumptions concerning the antecedents and
consequences of that moral education in question. When Leming (1997) asserted
138 OSER

that the character education movement is eclectic “both in terms of its

psychological premises and its pedagogical practices” (p. 47), we may counter
by stating that whatever system of education has precedence, practice is always
eclectic, and that until now there has been too little research devoted to
untangling the separate strands of simultaneous effects with respect to
negativity. One result of the debate in recent years is that there is no longer just
one type of moral education and a pedagogic method appropriate to it; we are
attempting rather to reach different goals at the same time in a consciously
differentiated manner, and to stimulate a corresponding learning activity each
with different concepts of negativity.
How can we create a synthesis of all these forces? How can we postulate a
moral education, which will enable and produce the complex formation of moral
sense in a young person? What are the minimal preconditions, and what is the
indispensable core of moral education?

THE TRIFORIAL SYSTEM OF MORAL EDUCATION: A

THEORY

The approach we propose involves three core elements, all of which work at the
same time; it is designated as triforial because the term suggests that the core
elements have something in common, namely their foundation, their support,
and their actualization of a moral structure. Based on three arched windows, a
triforium permits different things to occur at the same time each to be supported
in a different way. A triforium is a kind of gallery in the interior of Romanesque
and especially Gothic churches consisting usually of triple-arched windows
running under the roof space of the transept and nave.
Despite all the problems of borrowing analogies, the concept of a triforial
structure can readily be transferred to the realm of moral education, where the
tripartite arched positions signify the three core elements, the structure they
support, and the general formation to which the three core elements lead (cf.
Klafki, 1991). Why do we speak of this threefold or triforial moral education
and its accompanying threefold pedagogic practice (in which the figure of three
is used to describe the mere minimum of the many links that are always present
in educational modes of action)? I should like to formulate the problem in a
negative triforial manner as well:
1. Moral education is more than training to weigh and balance
adversarial positions. Although such experiences in critical reasoning
stimulate moral judgment, they do nothing more. The moral judgment is
merely a precondition for moral action.
2. On the other hand, one can also say that education designed to foster
character and inculcate values simply represents an attempt to influence
pupils through persuasion, and as such it often remains blind and
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 139

unreflective. This can readily be demonstrated through examples of

secondary values such as cleanliness, punctuality, discipline, precision, and
so forth (cf. Höffe, 1986). These values must always be linked back to
higher values (justice, solicitousness, objective neutrality), otherwise they
threaten to become fragile, dangerous or even fundamentalist. An extreme
example would be the carrying out of genocide in the name of exactness or
precision.
3. If we simply stimulate moral action, however, then we must always
deal with specific situations and use our intuition. However, intuitions are
frequently unfair, lacking in regard for others and crude. Thus, sentiments
and storytelling alone would be one-sided.
In short, each one of these approaches falls short, either because we lack
empathy, fall victim to a false belief, or fall victim to blind action. We are
courting the danger of being quasi-moral, of thinking and interpreting in a quasi-
moral manner. A deeper analysis shows that each of the theories represented
through these three components sets its sights on one extreme, and thus the
central goals of a comprehensive moral education cannot be achieved. We are
therefore in need of an overall theory that will enable us to combine different
goals in the proper manner. Different methodical or rather pedagogic modes of
acting must be integrated within this theory in different ways. Instead of
pursuing just one of the goals previously indicated, therefore, we need a triforial
theory of moral education, which will permit at least three central technological
frameworks of conditions and their negative counterparts. Figure 7.1 shows
these three fields that intersect with each other.

FIG. 7.1. A triforial theory of moral education: Descriptive part.

The judgment circle contains moral analyses, moral justifications, and a

progressive stage-by-stage anchoring of moral thinking. At a given stage we can
140 OSER

understand and elaborate the respective cognitive and knowledge based

arguments. We can also easily understand what it is that a person at a given
stage denies and how that person sees negative moral conflicts. The value core
(second circle) contains value knowledge, the intuitive knowledge deriving from
moral customs, and the respective specific moral culture. This is where moral
convictions and moral group identity (unconsciously internalized, or consciously
derived from direct participation) come into play. Here is also the place of
negative moral knowledge in general. A person has an episodic memory
concerning what happens with respect to moral failure and moral transgressions.
The action circle (3) contains forms of prosocial, moral, and participative
behavior. Here a person knows what does not function in a certain way and how
judgment and action can contradict each other. Qualities required here include
moral courage, moral sentiments, and also moral performance and the ability to
deal in moral terms with concepts of law and justice.
In Fig. 7.1 I placed particular emphasis on the intersections of the core
elements. Intersection 1 relates to content interpreted in a stage-specific manner
(e.g., children’s narratives are interpreted from the viewpoint of their belonging
to a certain stage). Kohlberg’s Stage 2 stresses the morality of exchange (you
will get something only when you do something for another person, but also
negatively, if you do not give you will not receive). Conversely, value
judgments and culture-bound moral contents enter into the judgment and modify
it. Intersection 2 emphasizes the necessity of combining judgment with action.
This is the point at which the hiatus between judgment and action becomes
apparent. A whole range of models illustrating this connection is available (cf.
Moralisches Urteil und Handeln; Garz, Oser, & Althof, 1999); more and more
variables are being investigated to establish their effect on prompting action,
including, for example, moral stage, strength of will, extent of obligations,
negative experiences, and so on. Moral culture (Intersection 3) possibly
constitutes an important variable affecting moral action, although there is
admittedly a relative lack of research in this area. The subjective acceptance of
value responsibility is determined through internal and external pressure against
or for a certain moral or prosocial course of action. In the absence of a
counterpressure, which resists the direct will, we cannot speak of the acceptance
of value responsibility (cf. Oser, 1999).
The overlapping process represents the moral self of an individual (cf.
Damon & Hart, 1982). The moral self combines judgment, knowledge (consent),
and action in a balanced manner. It always contains its counterpart negative side.
It is now possible to describe the triforial theory from the viewpoint of various
aspects of educational theory, such as (a) variations in goals, (b) diverse sources
of moral thought, (c) a model of moral transformation (moral pedagogy), (d)
negative moral thought or behavior, (e) the measuring of morality, and so on.
However, comprehensive coverage of these issues is beyond the scope of this
chapter.
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 141

HISTORICAL ASPECTS OF THE STRUCTURAL AND

DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO MORAL
EDUCATION

A core feature of our triforial theory is its connection to the work of Kohlberg
and subsequent cognitive-developmental theory. Before discussing work in
which we have applied our theory, I need to take a moment to discuss how our
approach builds from and differs from the classical Kohlberg model. When
Kohlberg (1958) introduced his theory he was responding to views of moral
growth based on nonrational processes of internalization and socialization. In
place of these earlier accounts, Kohlberg built from Piaget (1932) in an attempt
to develop a detailed genetic epistemological structure of morality. His work
resulted in the now widely known six-stage approach to moral development, a
theory that he himself improved at least three times. Kohlberg’s approach,
together with its assumed ideals of optimal conditions for potential decision
making and moral action, has a well-known attraction. His theory, however,
misses the negative counterpart to the forms of justification described by each of
his stages, and fails to describe the importance of negative experience in
understanding morality as a human necessity. This is especially relevant for
efforts to put into play Kohlberg’s catch-phrase “development as the aim of
education,” Kohlberg’s promotion of this interpretation of progressive education
has played a considerable role both in educational research and in the specifics
of practical intervention (Kohlberg, 1981,1984). In this view, education means
stimulation of development toward the next higher moral stage.
There have been numerous criticisms aimed at Kohlberg’s theory. These
include the criticisms that the theory overemphasizes on justice (see Gilligan,
1982), that the lower stages are less egocentric than Kohlberg had assumed
(Keller, 1996), and that Kohlberg’s stage descriptions include as a single
structure aspects of social cognition that comprise distinct domains of social
convention, morality, and personal discretion (Nucci, 1981, 1996, 2001;
Shweder, Mahapatra, & Millet; 1987; Turiel, 1983, 1998). Finally, the nature of
the higher stages as described by Kohlberg has been called into question
(Reichenbach, 1998; for earlier criticism, e.g., on measurement problems, see
Oser, 1981). The most important shortcomings of the Kohlberg theory, however,
from our point of view are concerns regarding (a) the lack of an integration
between abstract structures of judgment and the specifics of content and
knowledge to be applied in specific contexts, and (b) the lack of an adequate
account of the relations between judgment and action, and (c) the lack of
integration between moral structures and specific moral experiences and
emotions. These are all central concerns of our triforial model. In Kohlberg’s
defense, I must add the following points.
1. Much of this critical debate ignores the fact that Kohlberg conceived
of his developmental theory as a theory of competence. In describing
142 OSER

competence theories, we are not so much concerned with asking how

people form judgments in concrete situations but rather with the question
of how the highest and qualitatively best kind of judgment a person can
make is produced in a variety of general, mostly decontextualized,
situations. That is why our concept of negative moral knowledge is
complementary to Kohlberg’s work; it is content based and not
competence oriented.
2. It is also frequently overlooked that Kohlberg constantly stressed the
limited scope of his scheme. Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is
powerful because its area of applicability is clearly circumscribed and its
scope is both highly controllable and comprehensible. The structures are
abstract and therefore highly transferable creations. They indicate the
extent and nature of the reversible thinking that people can produce as
justifications for their deeds and intentions. The higher the stage, the closer
the judgment is to universal principles, the more adequate it is in terms of
philosophical theories, and the more the individuals are able to think
reversibly in the spirit of the Golden Rule.
3. Finally, a fact that is often ignored is that Kohlberg himself raised
numerous questions, such as these: What is the relationship between in-
telligence and morals? How does judgment relate to action? What role is
played by emotional elements under real conditions? Is principled thinking
also possible at the lower stages? Is moral judgment better described in
categories of a soft or hard stage concept (cf. Kohlberg, 1981, 1984)? Even
if Kohlberg was unable to provide answers to many of these questions (cf
Kohlberg, 1995), he was striving for a solution. However, he, like many
researchers rooted in the concept of enlightenment, was reluctant to engage
the question of negativity. He never spoke about the canon of moral scars
someone must have to become a moral person, and he apparently never
saw the reconstruction of the bad as a necessary detour to the morally right.
A criticism of Kohlberg and related cognitive-developmental approaches is
not the central purpose of this chapter In fact, it is possible to offer a description
of possible connections between the negative and each of Kohlberg’s stages. For
instance, in Stage 1 negativity is related to the experience of not having obeyed
or of being punished. In Stage 2 negativity is related to the fact that we do not
receive according to what we have given. At Stage 3 someone is not in accord
with the group, and the group excludes him or her arbitrarily; the boy is a bad
boy and the girl is not nice and is not accepted. In Stage 4 the negativity lies in
the experience of being an outlaw: having knowledge concerning the rights and
duties of everyone in a society, or to experience that societal forces misuse
power or are biased and unjust. At Stage 5 negativity is the experience of not
having the courage to use one’s knowledge to craft a just solution.
A question one might ask in relation to Kohlberg’s descriptions is how much
or what sort of negative experience a child must have at each developmental
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 143

period to construct a particular level of moral development? What sorts of

negative experience or encounters with contradiction are needed to move
someone to the next stage of development? It is conflict and contradiction, and
not merely confirmatory experience that Piaget postulated as conducive to
growth.

THE JUST COMMUNITY SCHOOL AND NEGATIVITY

We can get some idea of how negative experience works to promote moral
growth by looking at events that we observed in efforts to implement the Just
Community School. Kohlberg’s (1986) original idea in establishing what has
become known as the Just Community School was that schools could be self-
regulating communities in which the very regulations themselves would provide
opportunities for moral learning and the construction of a value system. This is
an approach to moral education, a concept that relies on the participation of
everyone. In Just Community meetings (a central feature of Just Community
Schools) all students and teachers of the school come together to discuss
controversial issues and to decide what to do (Higgins, 1989; Oser & Althof,
2001; Power, 1979). In one such meeting, I observed the creation of a
foundation to be sponsored by all members of the school community for
students who became victims of thefts. The most important part of this event
was the reconstruction before the entire community of the theft situations that
prompted the subsequent collective moral response. In this case, one student
related that he had returned from a break and discovered that his expensive pen
was gone. Another student told how he had gone to the bathroom and had his
jacket disappear. As students reconstructed their cases, they told of their shock,
outrage, and indignation; expressed their disappointments; and proposed
suggestions about what to do and how to punish the violators if someone were to
be caught. They also expressed sympathy for others who had been harmed. In
my view, this process was a rebirth of the evil these students had experienced in
that it released all of the contained moral emotions attached to experience of the
violation. The negative was brought to light, step by step, and everyone agreed
that one could only overcome and transform moral indignation if we first
reconstruct it. In this case, we see an instance where evil became the means for
the good. The negative urged the movement toward the positive. Moral mistakes
thus served at least three functions: (a) It demonstrated the font of moral rules;
(b) it helped confront the necessity to treat moral issues; and (c) it developed—
especially because of emotional and empathic reactions that were reconstructed
and remembered—a protective fence against recidivism.
This whole process illustrated in this example can be produced only through
a comprehensive transformation of the school as a place for discovering the bad
to overcome it. The core of this process is the forum, in which contentious
144 OSER

questions are clarified and proposals for change put to vote, and where every act
of voting always implies an important setting of standards within the system of a
particular school. The structural features of the Just Community allow for the
incorporation of the “bad” as an aspect of the formation of social and moral
sensitivity in the individual and the group in a fashion that is considerably
superior to most school-based methods of generating moral growth. This is
because the context of the Just Community supports the following.
1. First, there exists the ongoing possibility of putting oneself into the
shoes of the suffering other through the actual encounter of this suffering
other within a real-life situation. This in turn permits students to take on
different roles to engage in the defense of others, and to prepare for taking
positions against the negative. These processes of perspective taking made
salient through the engagement of an actual other raise the proba-bility that
students will generate the social flexibility required to arrive at an impartial
moral decision.
2. A second related aspect of the Just Community is that it puts into
practice a fundamental reconceptualization of the stated purpose of
developmentally based moral education, which is to increase students’
levels of moral reasoning. From the perspective being advanced in this
chapter, the development of morality is more than the simple attainment of
a higher stage of moral reasoning through discourse generated through
discussion of dilemmas relating to particular fields of study and school
events in general. Such discourse does raise “moral stage” as assessed by
traditional methods. However, the moral knowledge that results from
discussions about abstract or hypothetical situations, even when situated
within curricular content such as discourse about historical events does not
provide for the deeper confrontation with the negative requisite for genuine
moral knowledge. For genuine moral growth to occur, it is necessary to
deal with actual moral mistakes, with the morally negative. Only in
overcoming the morally negative does it truly make sense to be moral. For,
in the experiential context of the negative, we may speak of the stimulation
of two modalities of cognitive imbalance. The first is the widely
recognized and researched cognitive disequilibrium that comes from the
serious attempt to reconcile contradictory information. The second is the
moral indignation that one feels because of directly or indirectly
experienced immorality. This latter source of cognitive imbalance is
generally missing from typical classroom moral discourse.
3. A third element of the Just Community process is that student
identification through participation in wrongdoing is also transformed.
Through the engagement that transpires, students who are perpetrators of
moral transgressions are drawn into a recognition of the “bad” that entails
emotional involvement. This emotional component reduces the prospect
that the moral discourse will remain at a surface level. Accepted self-
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 145

shame helps to overcome immoral thinking and acting. It works especially

to combat moral weakness with respect to the courage to act according to
one’s own conviction. Only those who jointly decide to refute negative
behavior can truly feel responsible for what is to be done. Unlike the
unilateral process of punishment and recantation that is the hallmark of
traditional character education, the Just Community discourse engages
perpetrators, victims, and other members of the community in a mutual
process of responsibility, restitution, and reconciliation.
4. The fourth element of the Just Community consists in overcoming the
judgment-action dissociation (cf. Garz et al., 1999). In essence, the actions
to be decided on are ones that directly impact the actors in the discourse.
As such, the justifications and judgments are ones that cannot be abstractly
parsed from the effects of the actions. There is little room then, for moral
sophistry or moral cowardice. To be a moral coward means to know what
to do and not do it. The nuance here is the recognition that the limits of
one’s own freedom fall squarely at the curb, the crossing of which violates
others in some way. The others in this case are not abstract figures in the
school curriculum, but one’s peers and fellow community members.
5. The fifth component relates to the reality of life itself. Through the
process of codetermination and of fighting against the negative, school life
becomes an authentic entity. There are always two ways of seeing a moral
problem, one in which someone does not see that there is something
wrong, and one in which we see it. In the first case we have to make a
person feel the indignation of others. In the second case we have to help
translate the “good” decision into action.

THE ROUND TABLE MODEL AND NEGATIVE

MORALITY

The Realistic Discourse

I have abstracted these aspects of the Just Community process into what I refer
to as realistic discourse. I constructed this approach (Oser, 1999) in the spirit of
the situated learning movement. My goal was to build from that aspect of the
Just Community that employs lived student conflicts to construct a process of
social decision making that would stem from the everyday occurrences of school
life. This more generalized approach does not require the commitment of an
entire school. It can hold for any social subset, such as a classroom, in which the
decisions of members are binding on the participants in the discourse. The
process employs selection of an actual conflict as the focus of discourse. The
teacher serves to ensure that everyone involved in the discourse has the
opportunity to speak and to participate in the process of problem solving and
146 OSER

decision-making. This presupposes an attitude on the part of the teacher that

pupils are reasonable and capable of responsibility, even though they may
appear to be lazy, troubled, and stupid, or in other words to appear superficially
to be irresponsible. The fourth and final component of this realistic discourse is
that the solution must be put into practice. Thus, all parties to the discourse must
agree to the solution and that from the moment the approved solution is
considered the best, will be held to over the next days and months, even though
better solutions might be theoretically possible.
It is a model within which the primary aim is not to attain the next higher
stage, but instead it attaches central importance to finding a practical solution to
a moral violation acceptable to everyone. It is a dynamic model geared
horizontally toward action (and not oriented vertically toward a more
sophisticated structure of judgment). The basic principle of this model of moral
education is that the frictions (negative events) of everyday life in a school
provide moral learning opportunities. Research on Just Community moral
discussion has tended to emphasize an examination of the discussion process
and its outcome in terms of individual stage development and the moral
atmosphere of the community. Research has paid little attention to the necessary
reconstruction of the moral conflict in its negative aspects, or to the negative as
a condition for creating the good. Our position is that negative morality and its
emotional expression are a critical source for generation of the good.
One exception to the lack of attention to the role of the negative is the work
of the Blakeneys (C.Blakeney & Blakeney, 1991) in their approach to working
with “troubled youth.” In their program, youngsters, counselors, and teachers
used weekly roundtables (called discipline committees) to discuss the ways any
participant felt wronged by another, or when a participant (student or staff) was
“pulled up” for violating a community rule. Here the focus was on
reconstructing the underlying moral meaning of the misbehavior in question to
both achieve a just resolution (e.g., restitution for stealing a sweater) and turn
the negative behavior into a positive reformation. An illustrative example of
how they employ realistic discourse within their discipline committees took
place within the context of an incident of racial disrespect. In this case, one
student had referred to an African American peer as a “brown cow.”
“How is calling somebody a brown cow different from just calling somebody
a cow?” the teacher asked, when the students were reconstructing the incident.
After the hurt party expressed indignation and others shared related experiences
when they had felt “dissed,” one student argued that both racial disrespect and
individual disrespect hurt the same and should thus have the same punishment.
A second student replied that racial disrespect was worse because the person is
not only “dissing” you, but “they’re dissing your whole race.” A third student
said that when the disrespect is individual it is directed just at you, personally, so
it hurts more. After a bit more exploration, the teacher asked how to resolve the
problem. The teacher probed for student views of what could right the wrong
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 147

and restore what had been lost to the community—and to the relationship
between the individual students who had been involved in the incident. The
point here is that the negative was not taken as an abstract case. Instead, students
and staff were all able to experience and share times when they themselves were
“dissed” (disrespected), how it felt, and what they would have wanted in terms
of a just resolution. They could also talk about the impact of racial disrespect,
and its contrary—respect, tolerance, fairness, and caring—in a multicultural
community.

Realistic Discourse in Contexts of Unequal Power

In the cases we have discussed thus far, we have focused on situations in which
power relationships within the community are made relatively equal. Knowledge
of morally negative experiences, in interactive relationships that are not
symmetrical, educational, or productive, represents a special problem in
antagonistic situations. Children who are inwardly bruised and remain silent and
people who suffer injustice and say nothing too often become the subject of
decisions by superiors that are made without the suffering being properly treated
and worked through. On the other hand, superiors (e.g., teachers or section
heads) sometimes confront situations that they themselves cannot resolve
without producing further harm or more examples of injustice. An example is
the case of an employee who has been granted flexible working hours but who
shamelessly exploits the arrangement.
We have questioned professional people about such situations, and have
ascertained that in cases such as these three moral dimensions are in opposition
to each other, namely justice, respect for others’ feelings, and truthfulness. A
pupil who is making every effort but whose attainments are still poor can be
treated kindly; but perhaps an unjust decision is made, or we are less than
truthful and give the pupil the idea that his or her work is good, and vice versa.
Antagonistic situations arise primarily in professions with a high degree of
independence. A lawyer must decide whether he or she will act for someone
about whom he or she has negative information. A dentist is in a position to
reveal the shoddy work done by a colleague, but perhaps refrains from doing so.
We raised a number of such situations, standardized them, and presented
them to professionals. In the process, we discovered a range of decision types,
namely (a) evasion, which refused to take issue with the situation at all; (b)
delegation, which involved passing the problem up the line to higher authority;
(c) unilateral snap decisions, which could bring about greater harm or injustice
for people; and (d) incomplete and complete realistic discourse. As discussed in
greater detail next, the realistic discourses resulted in the most effective and
ethically defensible resolutions. These discourses amounted to roundtable
procedures in which negative knowledge is revealed and thus properly
experienced. Roundtable discussions in professional contexts are not ideal
148 OSER

places of negotiation, any more than they are in children’s classrooms. In both
settings they are partly irrational, emotionfraught processes seeking the right
way to respond to the situation.
The realistic roundtable, however, requires that certain important
preconditions be observed. First, there is the element of gentle constraint that
must be exercised to bring all those affected, even against their will, to the table;
a constraint-free search for a solution is rarely possible. Further, there must be
some guarantee that controversy will prevail; this is brought about by the
chairperson himself or herself playing an active part in making sure that the
injured parties and shy participants have their say. Third, it must be accepted
and assumed that everyone is capable of establishing a balance among justice,
regard for others’ feelings, and truthfulness, and that at any time the equilibrium
among the three can be coordinated. Finally, the solution that emerges from the
discussion is to be regarded as the best solution at the time, even though other
possibilities, such as those deriving, for example, from philosophical ethics,
could be found.
Investigations show (cf. Oser, 1998; Oser & Althof, 1992) that persons who
cultivate realistic discourse procedures are estimated to be more just, more
attuned to others, more successful professionally, and more committed than
persons who do not practice such procedures. They are perceived to be persons
commanding the respect of others and able to create a good social atmosphere,
commitment, didactic abilities, justice, truthfulness, and a feeling of well-being.
In connection with negative morality, however, there is a further important
matter. The roundtable is the place where negative moral knowledge is
communicated. Suddenly a person can notice that his or her remark has deeply
hurt or insulted another person. The roundtable thus does not merely produce a
rationalizing of rules and standards; it also succeeds in bringing negative moral
knowledge itself to light. Although the relationship of realistic discourse to
Habermas’s ethics of discourse (e.g., 1991) or the work of Appel (e.g., 1988)
has not been fully explored, some differences have already been mapped out.
The primary aim of realistic discourse is not to rationalize standards but to find
solutions through negativity. The constraint-free agreement does not exist here.
Establishing a balance demands antagonistic situations. Reason and
postconventional morality cannot be assumed. As I have shown, realistic
discourses take place with children, for example, who are capable only of direct
reciprocity in justifying their moral positions—a level of moral development
considerably below that of the assumptions generally maintained for moral
competence in a Habermas (1991) ethical discourse. Identical presuppositions
cannot be assumed to be held by all participants, but rather the discussion leader
of the roundtable will at an early stage introduce conditions for accepting
responsibility and for presenting arguments and will precisely through doing so
make possible their practice. In sum, realistic discourse offers a practical step
toward bringing the process of moral education into contact with an individual’s
 7. NEGATIVE MORALITY AND THE GOALS OF MORAL EDUCATION 149

lived experiences. A critical element of such discourse is that it make use of the
morally negative as a starting point for constructing what is morally meaningful
and positive.

FINAL THOUGHTS

We hear much these days about moral decay and the problems of our youth.
Many of the writers in this volume have addressed how such pronounce-ments
may be either exaggerated, politically motivated, or reflect a lack of awareness
of the degree to which youthful rebellion might signal moral shortcomings in the
positions of adult society. In my view, an overlooked aspect of these issues is to
understand the role of the morally negative in allowing for positive moral
growth. It would come as no surprise to hear math educators speak of the
importance of error in the development of mathematical competence. Why then
should it come as a surprise that an essential component of moral growth is
direct experience with moral error? In saying this, I am not dismissing the very
real problem of youth who engage in criminal or self-destructive conduct. In
such cases, we would need to explore what it is in the history of such youth that
has resulted in their willingness to engage in such a morally negative way of
being. (My colleague, Wolfgang Edelstein, has provided an analysis of such a
youth crisis in his chapter in this volume.) My focus instead is on the role of the
negative in allowing for the construction of morality among youth in general.
We can see the beginning of an empirical approach to the role of negative
moral experience for the construction of moral understanding in Turiel’s (1983)
quasi-naturalistic work, Turiel assumed that insight into the wrongness of a
moral violation is not provided through the emergence of logic or through
socialization, but that it arises from the perception of the consequences of one’s
own or other persons’ right or wrong actions (cf. Keller, 1996). “The experience
of physical harm or harm to someone’s interests is, according to his view,
directly apprehended by the child and is understood within a process of
observation via the proxy of empathetic reconstruction” (Keller, 1996, p 74).
This then, is how knowledge of how to act morally and do the right thing
originates. It is derived from these experiences. It is not an act of pedagogical
intervention or a socialized system of rules that creates this possibility, but
negative knowledge (a term not used by Turiel), The knowledge is thus gained
from experience as a process of abstraction that creates a moral perspective. A
kind of empathetic reconstruction is at work generalizing judgments along the
lines of “one shouldn’t do that…one must not do that… I wouldn’t do that.”
It would be incorrect to conclude that these experiences of young children
account for the entire phenomenon of moral cognition, moral sensitivity, and
moral action. However, one can see in these early experiences a set of parallels
to the range of phenomena that form the basis of our individual and collective
150 OSER

encounters with moral outrage that philosophers have speculated as the basis for
our universal efforts to generate shared moral positions. Here we begin to see
not only an account of the origins of moral knowledge, but also of moral action
(cf. Garz et al., 1999, Oser & Althof, 1992, 1993), Without the experience of
suffering, suffering cannot be imagined. Without having the negative experience
of victimization, as well as the consequences of being a victimizer, morality
exists as an abstraction. Through develop-ment, as we coordinate our own
suffering with that of others, we establish mutual constraints on our social
conduct. This constraint is not that of prisoners constrained by fear, but of
cooperative members of a mutual community of trust. The predictability of
moral action is connected with the sense of trust, which people show to one
another. Trust implies the assumption deriving from experience that the other
person will behave in a rationally predictable and fair manner. The prediction of
this trust, however, is not just a hypothetical option; in the daily course of
events, for example, when two people pass each other in the street without doing
anything to each other, causing any harm or performing an act of exploitation,
we are witnessing security and control. This control stems from the rational
rejection of such actions guaranteed through negative knowledge.
As we look at the indiscretions of youth, a part of what we see is an effort to
experiment anew with the limitations of negative morality. How far can one go
in a negative direction before the consequences are beyond what is acceptable to
the self and others? As we look at our efforts at education, we need to ask how
we make use of the negative. If we simply endeavor to suppress, repress, or
otherwise cover up the negative, then how can we hope to contribute to the
construction of deep-seated moral convictions that can only arise from genuine
encounters with the emotions and meanings that are requisite for the
construction of morality? How do we go beyond the superficial analysis of
moral issues raised in the curriculum to get at the real problems being addressed
in the lives of our students? This is a large and difficult question, but one that
education and developmental research needs to address.

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(Eds.), Zusammenhänge: Zur Verbindung von moralischem Urteil und Handeln (pp.
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Gestaltung des Schullebens [The Just Community: Learning through shaping the
school life]. In W. Edelstein, F.K.Oser, & P.Schuster (Eds.), Moralische Erziehung in
der Schuk (pp. 233–268). Weinheim, Germany: Beltz.
Oser, F.K., & Spychiger, M. (2004). Lernen ist schmerzhaft. Zur Theorie des Negativen
Wissens und zur Praxis der Fehlerkultur [Learning is painful. Towards a theory of
negative knowledge and the praxis of mistake culture]. Freiburg, Germany:
Universität Freiburg, Departement Erziehungswissenschaften.
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Rorty, R. (2003). Wahrheit und Fortschritt [Truth and progress]. Frankfurt, Germany:
Suhrkamp.
Selman, R.L. (2003). The promotion of social awareness: Powerful lessons from the
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Philipp Reclam.
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 Part III
Moral Education When
Social Injustice and Youth
Resistance Converge to
Produce Negative
Outcomes
 8
The Rise of Right-Wing Extremist
Youth Culture in Postunification
Germany
Wolfgang Edelstein
Max Planck Institute for Human Development

In the long decade that has passed since the unification of the two Germanics, a
new extremism has emerged in German youth, specifically in eastern Germany.
The main components of this right-wing extremism are xenophobia and
nationalism; anti-Semitism; and ideological commitment to authoritarianism,
inequality, and racism. Xenophobia is the lead variable, which, according to
surveys, affects at least one third of the young population and considerably more
locally, especially in the lower social strata (Bromba & Edelstein, 2001). In the
recent IE A Civics Study, German 15-year-olds held the most xenophobic
attitudes among the 28 participating countries (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald,
& Schutz, 2001). Anti-Semitism is on the rise, but perhaps rather less so than in
other European countries, and perhaps less for the traditional reasons than as a
consequence (at least partly) of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Israeli military
rollback in the Palestinian territories, which in many young people arouses
outrage rather than sympathy.
Every study shows that in eastern Germany the incidence of extremism as
measured by various indicators is about twofold more frequent than in the west.
More than 50% of all racist, xenophobic, and neo-Nazi incidents, and especially
of all such violent incidents, have happened in the eastern provinces, with less
than 20% of the German population living there (see Bromba & Edelstein, 2001;
Sturzbecher, 2001). In this sense, East Germany appears more similar to Eastern
Europe than to West Germany. In Eastern Europe (especially in Russia) a neo-
Nazi youth movement is definitely a threat.
In the following I do not pursue a discussion about the phenomenology and
the quantitative relevance of right-wing extremism. That is a topic of its own,
and I have written about it elsewhere (Bromba & Edelstein, 2001; Edelstein,
2002). I propose to accept it here as fact. I start with these remarks merely to
situate the problem and to demonstrate its importance. Although this is and
remains a German problem of great political and psychological relevance, one
might look at it more as a general youth problem emerging in Germany under
specific conditions in a specific form. In effect, I argue that what is taken to

157
158 EDELSTEIN

represent the local problem of neo-Nazi extremism may represent, in its own
idiosyncratic way, a general condition of adolescence in the modern world. The
treatment of the local problem thus is, in a way, vicarious, although the
phenomenology, the forms of brutality and violence, the symbolic presentations
of the self, the cultural manifestations, and the historical associations are, of
course, specific and vary across cultures and territories. There are universal
features that provide meaning to the local experience in a generation that is
involved in social, economic, and sociocultural transition.
Normatively, right-wing extremists are morally wayward in thinking and in
action. The concept of moral deprivation or waywardness points to the
psychosocial and moral implications of a syndrome that combines economic,
familial, educational, and cultural factors in variable ways. The causal
relationship of the elements remains moot. It is possible, however, to describe
the anomic correlates of social dispossession, individualization, and the
dissolution of institutional bonds. Adolescents may respond to these with either
hedonism or rebellion, and often with moral indifference. Adolescents who wind
up unsuccessful in jobs and who end failure prone in apprenticeships following
unsuccessful school careers may respond to the humiliation involved with a
violent ideological or socially rebellious reaction that protects the person’s self-
esteem. In Germany, these responses have often been viciously extremist,
xenophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic. This means a refusal to abide by the moral
conventions that until very recently have been the more or less unanimously
accepted basis of social action in the Federal Republic, where a historical
process of social learning after World War II has brought about political
consensus concerning universal human rights and the equality of all human
races.
It is the refusal to heed this covenant, generally accepted as politically correct
since the downfall of the Hitler state in 1945, that turns the youthful rebels into
racists and neo-Nazis. Needless to say, trying to comprehend the motives for this
development does not imply acceptance of the rebels’ Nazi convictions or
justify their stance. Compassion with the underdog or a position of solidarity
with an emerging underclass does not justify their behaviors or their ideologies.
(Similarly, understanding the Palestinian intifada does neither justify terroristic
acts nor the anti-Semitism of Palestinian fighters.) However, we need to ask
questions about the origins of these developments, and, while opposing the
actors, we need to view them as victims of their economic, social, and
psychological condition. Paraphrasing the title of one of Anna Seghers’s stories,
the question is this: How does a man become a Nazi (Seghers, 1977)? Who
becomes a Nazi? What kind of person is receptive to Nazi values? What are the
conditions and contexts that turn people into Nazis? Finally, are there ways and
means to counteract such developments? These concrete historical questions
then must be translated into the corresponding general code to understand the
general predicament of youth that is involved in the process.
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 159

In her story, Seghers reconstructs the socialization of a boy named Fritz

Müller in humiliated post-World War I Germany, where soldiers returned home
unemployed and devastated to bring up their children in misery. These children
of losers in their families, schools, and peer groups develop mechanisms of
compensation, character traits, and motives of spite and revenge that take them,
first, into the ranks of the storm trooper thugs, later into the SS, and finally,
years later, during the war in Eastern Europe, to their well-known involvements
in concentration camps, firing squads, and mass murder in Polish and Russian
villages and ghettos.
How do developmental prerequisites interact with the social opportunities for
action in adolescence? This question was equally important in the aftermath of
World War I as it is in the present globalization crisis. All individuals have
potential for development, but psychosocial needs and social opportunities
determine how individuals use their potential: whether for social adjustment, for
a career as moral exemplar, as maladapted neurotics, or as outright monsters.
Fritz Müller’s brothers joined the youth movement of the communist party,
whereas Fritz himself joined the Nazis. Beyond the social structures that operate
uncomprehended behind the individuals’ backs, differential opportunity
structures decide their fortunes. Among the differential factors we note social
class and family, schools and teachers, and the peer group, all providing
differential reinforcement for needs and dispositions. Seghers, in her story, drew
a picture of the school experience that affects Fritz Müller: Different teachers
exert different influences, using contrasting modalities of shaping and modeling
the characters of their dependent pupils. Note that the influence is not
necessarily linear, nor does it always work in the direction we might expect:
Thus there is a liberal and progressive teacher who overtaxes slow-learning Fritz
with his good intentions, and the unintended consequence is to move him closer
to his destiny. There is a Nazi teacher who recognizes that Fritz has restricted
potential, but instrumentalizing it promotes his successful monster’s career.
With remarkable empathy Seghers reconstructed the psychology, first of the
young, then of the adolescent schoolboy; his psychology could have opened a
pathway to a conventional life, but it also permits him to open the gate to a
different type of career, a different, evil kind of normalcy. The author described
the collective impoverishment in which Fritz’s family has its place. She
highlighted the solidarity of the deprived, where Fritz and his likes could earn
recognition. Caught in the dynamic of the process, he transcended the
boundaries to violence and, exerting power in the form of terror, he did earn
praise—from the Nazis. Fritz found himself master of life and death, rather
happenstance at first in the early years, but later, in Russia, in a systematic and
goal-oriented fashion, no longer incidentally, but entirely intentional.
Recognition and humiliation are central dimensions of adolescent experience,
not least in Germany’s selective schools. Recognition and humiliation are
woven into the fabric of pedagogy and instruction. They are aspects of teachers’
160 EDELSTEIN

and students’ roles, inevitable aspects of instruction, part of grades and

feedback, tests, and exercises. What is the hidden agenda of school in
development, and what is the voluntary influence exerted through grades and the
evaluation culture of the school? School plays an essential role in the emergence
of the extreme right in Germany, as we may recognize in individual stories such
as Seghers’s account of Fritz Müller’s career from a deprived childhood to Nazi
killer. More to the actual point, perhaps, are recent data of surveys about youth
and violence in eastern Germany. These surveys demonstrate that considerable
numbers of disaffected adolescents are utterly disappointed with school and see
very little meaning in the subjects they are taught. They are lost and distraught
in their schools, distrust their teachers, hold them accountable for their boredom,
perceive them as basically disinterested in their lives and fortunes, and accuse
them of a humiliating aloofness from their problems. Up to 40% of students in
the so-called comprehensive schools and vocational secondary schools in the
East German state of Brandenburg voice these complaints (Sturzbecher, 2001),
It is this very group of the educationally underprivileged who are the breeding
ground for right-wing extremism. Humiliation and deprivation of meaning foster
adolescent rebellion.
The school experience of young people is of interest, not so much because
the responsibility for the emergence of extreme right-wing positions in youth
should be attributed to the school, but because we should give the role of the
school in the development of educational losers more thought, together with the
role that schools might play in the prevention of such developments. How could
the school shape experience to prevent losers from seeking an extremist
compensation for their failure? How could a culture of the school provide its
youthful members with a life world of experiences that grant immunity from
neo-Nazi or other right-wing temptations and impul-sions to extremist action?
What can schools do to effectively oppose the active components of the
extremist syndrome: xenophobia, anti-Semitism, a racist affirmation of
inequality, and expressive nationalism? What are the cognitive and affective
strategies, the designs of instruction, the modalities of shaping the classroom
and school climates that counteract the assimilation of adolescents into extremist
subcultures? To come up with viable answers to these questions, we need to
understand the real causes of right-wing extremism among young people, and
going beyond the local context of school-based humiliation, we need to relate
the causes of adolescent rebellion and waywardness to the moral ecology of
adolescent experience, in which school plays an important part indeed.
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 161

MACROLEVEL PROCESSES: ANOMIC DISORDER AND

WEAK INSTITUTIONS

At first I propose to outline the model guiding the following description. On the
macro level, social structural changes produce contexts of psychological
experience that interact with developmental vulnerabilities of adolescents in
quest of identity. Given specific contingencies of the actual social context,
vulnerable adolescents will tend to develop dispositions toward extremist
orientations. Of the elements in the macro system that occupy the position of
“independent factors” in the analysis, the two important ones are anomie and
individualistic modernization, Anomie and individualistic modernization
represent psychosocial consequences of “long processes” of social
transformation. Mediating between the effects of long processes at the macro
level and the micro level of individual development are meso or family
processes that play a decisive role in the socialization of the children.
Researchers have shown that in Germany dismissive attachment patterns in
families with authoritarian rearing styles have played a distinctive role in the
socialization of right-wing extremists (Hopf, Silzer, & Wernich, 1999). When
these effects emerged in a cohort that for contingent reasons happened to harbor
special vulnerabilities, dismissive attachment patterns added to the saliency of
other developmental vulnerabilities. Cohort effects eventually trigger the
emergence of new orientations in youth, and therefore call for a detailed analysis
of their effects on individual and social development. Elder’s (1974) description
of the Children of the Great Depression is one model of this type of analysis. In
Germany an analogous study, Children of the Unification Process, would be
needed. We can assume that functionally equivalent analogs of the German
unification cohort exist in other regions of the world, from Palestine to Pakistan,
that experience corresponding forms of trouble.
Let us now turn to the systemic factors on the macro level. At the end of the
19th century, Durkheim introduced the notion of anomie to describe the
sociomoral consequences of the breakdown of traditional society with its stable
social formations, rules, and value systems (Durkheim, 1968). The breakdown
marks the transition to modern society, characterized by the industrial division
of labor. Whereas traditional society had been organized through
intergenerationally stable rules of “mechanical solidarity” with littie room for
individual variation and individual influence on the social order, and whereas
traditional loyalties and duties persisted against the onslaught of individual
needs, goals, and desires, the latter became the regulatory forces in the system of
competitive market capitalism that succeeded the traditional world of personal
bonds, inherited skills, and natural exchange. In the wake of that transition,
individual performance and the rational individual’s judgment had to provide a
substitute for tradition to guide action. Durkheim named organic solidarity the
principled, discursive, and universalist cognitive morality that replaced tradition
162 EDELSTEIN

as the regulatory force guiding individual action, locating it in the individual’s

educated and enlightened mind. Hence the importance of the school for moral
education in Durkheim’s theory.
The bleak side of the development to higher order organization and growing
functional differentiation is fragmentation and disorganization. Social and
cognitive conflicts tend to produce a more or less far-reaching sociomoral
disorder, a loss of moral consistency that, in the community, leads to “anomic”
withdrawal of the person, whose motivation increasingly depends on his or her
own needs and desires. Durkheim identified anomie as a situation of socially
generated individual risk, a deprivation of the socially sustained meaningfulness
of life. Loss of orientation and meaning (a consequence of the corrosion of
guiding traditions) may result in contradictory effects: One is retreat from
action, depressive withdrawal, and even death, as Seligman (1975) described the
consequence of anomic disorder, Durkheim, in his famous work about the
subject, developed the notion of anomic suicide (Durkheim, 1968). At present
we are learning that anomic despair can also take the form of rebellious action.
Rejecting the accepted public moral coordinates and refusing social control,
individuals may turn against prevailing norms and expectations in what is
simultaneously a moral and antimoral rebellion. Recently, we have learned with
shock that suicide can be an actively rebellious rather than a depressive response
to social anomie.
To bring the Durkheimian analysis of anomie to bear on the local and cohort-
specific story about the extremist youth rebellion in eastern Germany, it must be
applied to the sudden transition from the rigidly stable and centrally planned
organization of the (East) German Democratic Republic to Western-style
capitalism in the year 1989. Many young people saw themselves deprived of
perspectives, orientations, and expectations—a predicament adding up to a
cohort-specific experience of disenchantment. Some reacted with violence, most
of all against foreigners, but also against handicapped or homeless persons. This
reaction has been taken to represent protest against a “system” that was believed
to redistribute their entitlements to “parasites.” Deep down they were
presumably reacting to their own humiliation, and exacting a loser’s revenge on
who they believed were undeserving winners. Turning their backs on the
unsatisfactory present they look for the preservation of pride to an imaginary
better past that, due to the observed failure of socialism, could only be a past
preceding socialism. Adopting the insignia of racial superiority and using their
bullying power, they redeemed themselves from the status of victims of an
uncomprehended development. Vindicating empowerment, they turned to a past
that seems to compensate for the shameful experience of dispossession.
The development of anomie in the unification cohort is not the only process
affecting the development of youth in the 1990s. It is accompanied and
strengthened by the collateral effects of the long process of institutional
transformation. Using a concept that has gained wide currency, Beck (1992)
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 163

spoke about the emergence of a “risk society,” because the new type of social
order is characterized by weak social organizations coinciding with forceful
individualization. Heitmeyer et al. (1995) analyzed this process in terms of the
diminishing power of institutions that channel and support the course of
individual lives, first and foremost the family, whose ability to regulate
individual behavior and individual goals and intentions in life is weakened by
the continuous rise of individualism. Weak institutions mark a danger zone
through which the rising generations must travel, confronting an increasing
“risk” of loss of moral purpose, whereas the traditional agents of socialization
lose power of direction and guidance. Thus traditions progressively lose their
function as syntactic rules for the collective conduct of individual lives.
Increasing competition between lifestyles, standards, and styles of conduct bring
increasing pressure to bear on the integrity of the normative order, the
disintegration of which appears to those who experience it as an achievement of
liberation.
Increasing competition has multiplied the pressure on the modernization
losers. This process is salient in the economy and the labor market. Reciprocal
bonds weaken under the strain of market-driven interests. The stress emanating
from these tensions must be borne by the individuals alone, as the weak
institutions are unable to provide the normative support that is needed
psychologically. Economic modernization (the neoliberal dissolution of
protective institutions) and intensified competition subject individuals to
pressure from the forces of individualism. For victims and losers in this process,
the nostalgia of strong institutions and the flight into the security and relief of
groups represent strong temptations, often accompanied by the disaffection of
individual moral standards. This process is sometimes critically identified as
“the lure of fun society.” The alternative lure is the temp-tation of simplistic,
sometimes violent worldviews that are corroborated in alliances of the like-
minded.
To sum up the macro part of the analysis, the detraditionalization of society
generates anomie and its individual correlates—loss of orientation,
hopelessness, and depression. The correlative processes of the modernization of
institutions and the individualization of goals and motives impose the loss of
institutional supports on the losers of the long processes of social and
psychological transformation. In the West, these processes have typically been
viewed as representing the social dynamic of industrial capitalism. There are,
however, strong cues for similar processes of detraditionalization and
individualization worldwide, which, in conjunction with demographic change,
urbanization, migration, and neoliberal globalization, produce strong effects on
the growing masses of young people affected, sometimes activated and
sometimes demoralized, by the relative deprivation unfolding in the wake of
these processes.
164 EDELSTEIN

MICROLEVEL PROCESSES: VICISSITUDES OF

IDENTITY FORMATION AND SITUATIONAL
CONTINGENCIES

To this point we have argued about cohort-specific macro pressures on the

postunification youth generation in eastern Germany. A more in-depth
discussion of meso and micro factors that contribute to the predicament of the
cohort in question is now needed. Earlier, I briefly pointed out the role of
dismissive attachment patterns in the development of right-wing youth in
authority-prone families in Germany (Hopf et al., 1999). I omit a more detailed
analysis of the mesolevel phenomena here and proceed to the micro level of
individual experience. To represent the micro level we turn to the role of identity
development in potentially troubled adolescents.
To Erikson (1959,1975) we owe the classical theory of identity formation in
the context of historical change. For Erikson, ego identity is the feeling of trust
in the reliable unity and continuity of the self, as mirrored by supportive others.
This feeling provides strength and motivation for action in the present, and hope
and perspective for action in the future. The support of families, schools, and
peer groups is needed for this development. In the vulnerable phase of
adolescence the failure of these support structures can threaten the process of
identity formation and put the person at risk of identity diffusion, disintegration,
or identification with the aggressor. Ideological movements and other collective
forces are then called on to supply surrogate supports and lend strength to the
weak and vacillating psychological structure from which identity emerges.
Erikson (1975), in Life History and the Historical Moment, described vividly
how the youth movement of the 1960s provided structure and meaning to the
budding adolescent identities of the times. When the social situation—for
whatever reason—fails to provide support for the positive collective process of
identification with transindividual meanings and purposes, this leaves room for
unresolved inner conflicts to surface, thwart the development of a stable
identity, and generate some variety of identity confusion—guilt and weakness,
inability to work and to concentrate, defeat and depression, or, alternatively,
anger and negative reciprocity—a negative form of identity engaging the person
in a destructive developmental career. (Recall Fritz Müller’s career as described
by Seghers.)
“Youth,” wrote Erikson (1968), “is sensitive to any suggestion that it may be
hopelessly determined by what went before in life histories or in history” (p.
247). This is why humiliation witnessed or experienced, opportunities forgone,
and perspectives blocked or reserved for others arouse anger and resentment
among youth whose future is threatened or foreclosed. In Germany, their affect
targets those who they believe have appropriated the benefits of welfare that
should have been their due: foreigners, Jews, asylum seekers, the handicapped—
all alleged parasites of a system that deprives them of their future. It is a
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 165

provocative challenge in the prevailing system in Germany to identify with the

Nazi—the objects of moral shame and collective guilt. The rebels refuse to share
the politically correct consensus about Germany’s Nazi past. The posture of
rebellion provides token control over their own lives, a show of meaning to
compensate for the experience of powerlessness, humiliation, and deprivation
(Frey & Rez, 2002; Skinner, 1996). To achieve a feeling of control over one’s
life is indeed the developmental function of identity formation in adolescence—
a process failed at the cost of confusion and depression, or even death. However,
achieving control is also a process that may, at times, only succeed at the cost of
one’s life.

Situational Contingencies

After long processes at the macro level, cohort effects and family influences at
the intermediate level, and identity formation at the individual level situational
contingencies determine the lifestyles, living conditions, consumption patterns,
and social experience of the cohort. Such contingencies, in fact, require a
systematic description, because the choice of rebellious and sometimes even
violent lifestyles is supported by mechanisms and forms of life that need to be
known and appraised. A thick description of the background of neo-Nazi group
culture is obviously needed, but this would exceed the scope of this chapter.
Minimally, however, the set of factors characterizing the life world of the
extremist groups and contributing to their attitudes and motivations needs to be
mentioned, because any program of prevention and moral education for these
groups must respond to the experience they are exposed to. The following three
situational factors appear influential:
Group Life and Group Cohesion. The lives of right-wing extremists,
skinheads, and their fellow travelers are organized in highly cohesive groups
that cultivate a common lifestyle, mostly attached to local gathering places such
as specific pubs. Right-wing music—a very important force—beer drinking, and
expressive aggression are important beyond the occasional but forever latent
violence directed at outsiders and the defined objects of their instinctive and
ideological hostility. Life in groups (as well as the drinking) makes it more easy
to defuse the moral responsibility of the individual and serves to enforce and
maintain the ideological belief system of inequality, racism, and xenophobia,
and a system of authoritarian group leadership. The addictive rock music of the
right-wing scene, combining brutal text and beat, appears to serve an
emotionally effective function of arousing the group to violent action—an
effective strategy for moral desensibilization,
School Experience. As mentioned before, a common element of rightwing
adolescents’ careers is a negative and disappointing school experience. Right-
wingers most often come from the lower tracks of the selective German school
166 EDELSTEIN

system, and thus frequently share an experience of humiliation and exclusion

that is generated by the organizational features of school and instruction. School,
curricula, and instruction, therefore, are often rejected as meaningless and
frustrating, and provide a setting for continuous defeat and alienation.
Employability is a significant issue that occupies an important segment of racist
and xenophobic discourse (“They take away jobs from their rightful German
owners”). The myth of unrightful appropriation of jobs by foreigners serves to
quench the shame that employability forgone through insufficient school
achievement elicits in educational losers.
Media Experience. Experience of the modern media (TV and computer) is a
global attribute of youth worldwide. The media carry images of Western
lifestyles around the world, and with them a set of expectations and aspirations
that for most of the world’s youth including even many in the West, are out of
reach. This is bound to foster feelings of relative deprivation probably never
experienced as strongly and extensively before. Simultaneously the media
transport images of violence that never before have been instantaneously
available on a worldwide scale, extended once again in the globalized form of
violent computer games. The long-standing debates questioning media effects
have finally given way to more realistic discussions concerning mechanisms that
relate media consumption and aggression, and the sniper skills learned in
computer games (Grossman & Degaetano, 1999). A German study has found
that extremist adolescents view violent videos five times more frequently than
other adolescents (Weiss, 2000). Cell phones and the Internet have produced a
qualitative change in communication among groups locally as well as
internationally, enabling groups to sustain ideological exchange, but also quick
strategic planning and tactical deployment—the very same advantages that
terrorist groups draw from the availability of the electronic media.

YOUTH AS A GLOBAL PLAYER AND A VICTIM OF

RISK

In an increasingly globalized world, no place can remain an island. Thus, to

conclude this chapter, it seems in order to address, at least briefly, the youth
scenery beyond the confines of local conditions. In a recent issue of the Journal
of Research on Adolescence (Larson, Brown, & Mortimer, 2002) and in two
book publications (Brown, Larson, & Saraswathi, 2002; Mortimer & Larson,
2002), Larson and his coauthors unfold the vision of youth as a new global
actor. What the authors describe is the emergence of adolescence as a global
phenomenon, a global problem, and, to some extent, a global player. The term
player generally connotes conscious and intentional action. Thus, global players
in business, the international corporations, clearly have definite goals and
strategies that guide their actions on a worldwide scene. Although youth is not,
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 167

in this sense, an intentional actor on the international scene, the emerging

presence of youth on that scene is nevertheless a force that is on its way to
changing the situation in the world. Thus, youth is a global player by dint of
demography. However defined or demarcated, youth is going to be, for an
unspecified time, the largest segment of the world’s population, perhaps one
fourth now, and increasing. This group raises serious problems of schooling,
health, and the availability of work. In many regions of the world, largely
media-generated rising expectations stand in contrast to the scant opportunities
available. Youth around the world are, of course, an extremely variegated group,
living under extremely varied conditions, depending on very different cultural
norms, and abiding by radically different values, traditions, and orientations.
Thus it may appear almost impossible to impose any sort of unity on a scene of
which the very essence seems to be its total lack of uniformity.
However, besides the obvious differences, Larson and his coauthors
demonstrated a set of similarities across the world. They highlighted the
emergence of separate youth cultures across the globe, a widespread sexual
revolution, expectations of schooling, and concomitantly the inaccessibility of
education to the masses of the poor. “For the poor in developing nations,”
Larson and Verna (2002) wrote, “the luxury (of the new adolescence) is out of
reach” (p. 23). Due to the omnipresence of the visual media, however, they are
aware of this luxury. They are exposed to a new type of deprivation, the
ubiquitous awareness of a promise that is out of reach. Transported by the
media, by the new global consciousness industry, the awareness of a lifestyle
and simultaneously of its unfulfilled promise is carried into the remotest corners
of the world. As the vast poor majority of the world’s youth are at increased
risk—due to urbanization and crowding, the diminishing quality of life and
health, and the increasingly unequal distribution of social, economic, and
cultural opportunities—youth have become aware of the discrepancy between
the standards of the wealthy, especially in the West, and their own disconnection
from this privileged world. As Larson and Verna put it, “This disconnection
combined with high demands can be expected to create stress, alienation and
purposelessness for some youth…. It also can create conditions of generational
revolt and civic unrest” (p. 24). This is almost a definition of relative deprivation
on a worldwide scale, a condition added to the absolute economic deprivation
prevailing in large parts of the world. Relative deprivation, however, is a
conscious condition. It implies comparison of one’s own group’s condition with
that of another that provides a standard for one’s entitlements and expectations.
The fact of comparison has consequences for one’s conscious attitudes. It may
lead to a state of frustration, disaffection, alienation, and purposelessness, to a
condition of anomie. However, it can also arouse moral emotions, humiliation,
anger, or outrage, and in extreme cases it can trigger violent and even suicidal
action.
168 EDELSTEIN

The intention pursued with this chapter was the presentation and
classification of a rather specific German phenomenon: the rise, among young
people between, say, 14 and 24 years old, of a right-wing, extremist,
xenophobic, and often racist youth movement in mostly eastern and less
frequently western Germany. The topic was a mostly local challenge—how to
understand the local conditions and find locally valid answers. Gradually,
however, the rise of the local neo-Nazi youth movement came to fit within a
wider and less local perspective, as part of a larger issue—the global issue of an
emergent crisis of youth. Although the local issue of neo-Nazi youth continues
to be interesting, relevant, and challenging politically, morally, and
educationally, and although it remains necessary to deploy locally effective
strategies to counter its onslaught, there appears something can be gained from
placing it in the wider frame of the global process described by Larson and his
coauthors.
The gain from the wider perspective may be twofold: The analysis of the
local, regional, or national phenomena will benefit from the broader ranging
theories needed to account for the worldwide process, including a more critical
attitude to the Western or American bias in research on adolescence.
Conversely, it may be helpful to ask what light the local data and findings can
shed on the larger processes. It is impossible, of course, to do empirical research
directly on the world scene, but it is possible to enrich our percep-tions of the
more local phenomena by using encompassing concepts derived from the global
analysis of worldwide processes. The new global data present a challenge to our
traditional cultural relativism.
So the question is the following: Can anything be learned from the German
case? Can the emergence of a neo-Nazi youth culture be understood as an
instance of a larger process? The tension produced by this double approach may
defy quick resolution, because it is complex and needs extensive treatment. Our
aim here is to open a window on the huge problem of disempowerment of youth
around the globe who have precious little to lose by rejecting enlightened
standards and adopting violence instead.

STRATEGIES OF EDUCATIONAL PREVENTION: A

FEW SUGGESTIONS

To end a brief chapter in a small volume it would be presumptuous to present a

program aspiring to worldwide prevention in response to a worldwide problem.
Any response must, of course, address the local problem (or, more adequately
perhaps, the local representation of the worldwide problem). Therefore, at the
close of this chapter, I briefly list a few aspects of school quality that promise to
counteract the consequences of anomic waywardness, moral disillusionment,
and deprivation of meaning that vitiate the school experience of so many
 8. EXTREMIST YOUTH CULTURE IN POSTUNIFICATION GERMANY 169

students, especially in the lower tracks of German secondary schools, but

certainly also in other schools elsewhere.
Many students of German secondary schools experience both the subject
matter and the learning process as meaningless and useless in view of their
present lives and their expectations for their futures. The most effective and
sustainable strategy against the painful and consequence-ridden boredom that
determines the experience of young people in many schools would be a switch
from instruction for memorization to teaching for competence, from the
hoarding of information to the acquisition of knowledge for action (Rychen &
Salganik, 2001). There are good empirical reasons to believe that young people
who are satisfied with school because it involves them in work they experience
as meaningful will not be as easily prone to brainwashing by violent or
fundamentalist groups or neo-Nazi ideologues. However, the seemingly simple
switch to teaching for competence and understanding nevertheless entails a
radical transformation of the school, instruction, teacher competence, and the
entire spirit of educational praxis, and thus of the educational experience
shaping the lives of the young.
Learning for understanding and competence is best promoted in settings of
situated learning (Palincsar, 1998) in projects that require knowledge for
constructive action. Ever since Dewey (1938/1963) it has been known (if not
always recognized) that experiential education in projects engages human
agency in the process of its development, enhancing the construction of
sociomoral and political competence through the planning and exercise of
shared purpose, cooperative goal setting, functional division of labor, and
mutual coordination of perspectives (Adalbjarnardóttir, 1999; Selman &
Adalbjarnardottir, 2003). No method is better suited than sustained project
learning to combine individual experience with mutual recognition among
collaborating participants. No method is better organized to enlist individual
motivation for common goals than learning in projects. No institution or
arrangement is better able to prevent humiliation and to foster moral growth than
the participatory setting of a co-constructive community of purpose.
The greater the distance from the experience of democracy as the practice of
participatory decision making in the institutional settings of everyday life such
as the school, the greater is adolescent disaffection with politics, including the
egalitarian regulation of relationships in groups, respect for others, and listening
to other voices. From this disaffection derives the resistance to peaceful
regulation of conflicts between contractual equals and the susceptibility to resort
to violence to impose authority, hierarchy, inequality, and the self-centered
satisfaction of needs. Hence there is the necessity to provide adolescents with
the basic experience of participation and empowerment in an institution
appropriated as one’s own, and thus, with the feeling of belonging, the
experience of commitment to a moral order that transcends the self. Following
Dewey (1964) and Kohlberg (1985; Power, 1985), learning democracy implies
170 EDELSTEIN

participating in an institutionally ordered life world where standards (and thus

conflicts) are negotiated, responsibility is shared, and commitment is valued
(Edelstein & Fauser, 2001).
Not only is the school in Germany an authoritarian and hierarchical
institution, but a deep divide exists between the school and the community. This
makes it difficult to turn the universal experience of schooling into an
experience of lived democracy available to everyone. If school experience were
to function as a deterrent from racist aggression and contempt for those who are
different, the participatory model of democratic self-government needs to be an
integral part of that experience (Piaget, 1998). This would provide students with
a model of responsible action in civil society instead of projecting an image of
authoritarian domination. In the United States, service learning is a widespread
opportunity structure for the exercise of civil responsibility linking school and
community (Schine, 1997).
Europeans would be well advised to adopt this model and to push it beyond
the somewhat narrow and formal obligation it represents in many U.S. schools.
When developed to its full potential, it obliges the young person to engage in the
self-transforming practice of cooperation, discourse, and social development that
continues the promise of Dewey’s democratic workplace with the moral
atmosphere of Kohlberg’s just community.

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 9
Race and Morality: Shaping the Myth
William H.Watkins
University of Illinois at Chicago

Morality continues to be an emotional hot-button issue in America’s culture

wars. Many see our nation in decline as they rekindle images of Babylon, the
Roman Empire, and other “decadent” societies. For the general public, morality
is most often associated with the erosion of the core values that made us “great.”
We have all heard that frugality, sobriety, piety, and chastity have given way to
sloth, greed, and carnality. In the Western world this may be an eternal debate,
as every generation demonstrates concern and fear that the young have
abandoned the values of their forefathers.
Beyond those issues, our highly stratified industrial society faces other moral
concerns with profound social consequences. An ethnically and racially
heterogeneous society demands accommodation among diverse people if it is to
function. The plague of racism, ethnocentrism, and prejudice remain deeply
embedded in U.S. history and culture. Serious and organized public discourse on
racism is mostly lacking or absent.
Powerful political and religious groups are demanding that schools
increasingly participate in moral “uplift.” The concerns of the fundamentalists
and “hard” right focus mostly on character. Although some character-building
initiatives are being integrated into the curriculum, there is little meaningful
excavation of problems on race and privilege. Sponsored school
multiculturalism (Watkins, 1994) has done little to ameliorate hardened
attitudes. Public education has substituted gimmicky schemes of diversity and
empty tokenistic celebrations of third-world people for meaningful discussions
of the deep roots and effects of racism and privilege in our society.
The role of morality within racism is deeply rooted in America’s social and
political history. Over time inferiority and immorality were joined. Although
notions of genetic inferiority were easily undermined, the linkage of immorality
to people of color has proven to be tenacious and adaptable. The nexus of racism
and morality is not widely understood by society in general or (moral) educators
in particular.
This is an effort to explore how notions of morality were used in the social
construction of racism, segregation, prejudice, and oppression in the United
States from colonial times through the 19th and 20th centuries. Although not a

173
174 WATKINS

thorough history, it is intended to examine some of the ideological and political

foundations of morality and race that have become a part of this nation’s cultural
legacy and social practice.
The story is told by looking at four periods crucial to the shaping of ideology
on morality and race. It is argued that views advanced during these periods
became salient, and perhaps permanent fixtures in U.S. social life. Those four
periods include the colonial, reconstruction, “scientific racist,” and the turn of
the (20th) century,
America’s enduring views on race emerged early in the colonial period and
became institutionalized in the late 18th century. Disdaining the “usurpations”
and oppressive policies of the king of Great Britain, the new “experimental”
country with its mix of religious zealots, asylum seekers, indentured servants,
slaves, entrepreneurs, and other assorted people developed its own national
forms of privilege and oppression. Notions of morality advanced by Puritans,
founding fathers, and other culture makers (Takaki, 1990) became building
blocks of a new American ethos.
Second, the reconstruction period (1865–1875) found America trying to
overcome regionalism and rebuild in preparation for dramatic industrial
expansion. Previously enslaved Africans were “fit” into the modern rapidly
changing nation. The “Negro question,” situating the Negro, took on
monumental importance for the nation’s long-term goals. Samuel Armstrong,
founder of Hampton Institute, was a principle race ideologist of the time. His
views on race and morality influenced the next 150 years.
The scattered imperial racial attitudes of Europe were exported to the shores
of the new world, but the expansion of slavery gave rise to new “justifications”
and “explanations” of that “peculiar institution” (Stampp, 1956). Midway
through the 18th century, scientific racism emerged. It was a period where
biologists, physicians, scholars, politicians, and intellectuals attempted to
systemize outlooks supporting the biological and genetic inferiority of people of
color (Ehrlich & Feldman, 1977; Gould, 1981; Watkins, 2001). Notions of
morality were an integral part of these emergent views.
Finally, the turn of the 20th century witnessed a consolidation of racial
attitudes that would characterize the country for the next century. The place of
morality in racism was central to the time. Popular literature often illustrated the
racial attitudes of the new American century.

MORALITY AND RACE IN EARLY AMERICA

Puritan Ideology

Conceptions of morality arose early in the history of colonial America. Whereas

Calvinism often found resistance and opposition in certain parts of Western
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 175

Europe, adherents found asylum in frontier New England. The Puritans called
for moral regeneration in a world they found overrun with sin and corruption.
Their definition of morality became an important building block in American
culture.
The Puritans rejected modern explanations of man, society, and duty. For
them, such matters were defined and ordained in the scriptures. God’s will was
clearly written for all to embrace. No aspect of human conduct could be left to
chance as the scriptures were seen to address every aspect of life. Whereas the
“word” was clear, the fate of individuals was not, for all would not live up to
expectations. God predestined some men for salvation and others for damnation.
Puritanism was ambiguous and filled with contradictory issues that had to be
interpreted. How could helpless men, mired in sin, save themselves to secure
God’s grace?
Middlekauff (1971) untangled some tenets of Puritan theology as it was
practiced in colonial New England. Predestination, he observed, was drawn
from the relationship of God and man. God is omnipotent, whereas man is weak
and dependent. Vaughan (1972) described fundamental covenants of God in
puritan doctrine. The first covenant was that God created Adam and gave him
free will. Adam’s fall spelled the end of man’s free will. God accommodated to
a second covenant, the “covenant of grace,” wherein a sinner could by faith and
deeds attain salvation. Bearing a sinful makeup, man must seek to be Christ-like.
The entire self must be devoted to God’s cause and lived in conformity with
strict injunctions.
Whether man lived eternally or condemned to hell was not determined by
himself but instead by God’s judgment of his deeds. Thus salvation was
attainable but not easy. A strict code of moral conduct had to be followed to be
considered for redemption.
Puritan views on morality became an integral part of the call for
independence and eventually the Revolutionary War. Luxury and extravagance
were viewed as immoral and decadent. The King of England and by association
his people were thus not only oppressive in their economic and political actions;
they were also intemperate, immodest, licentious, and extravagant. Their
immoral qualities more than justified breaking with them. Summarizing the
views of colonial insurrectionists, cultural historian Takaki (1990) wrote:

Americans thought they saw the symptoms of the British disease.

Luxury and effeminacy seemed to be appearing everywhere, and
“Venality, Servility, and Prostitution” seemed to be spreading
like “Cancer.” Determined to protect and isolate Americans from
the disease of British corruption, patriot leaders sought to enact
sumptuary laws to check the growth of luxury and to prohibit
plays and extravagant dress and diet. (p. 6)
176 WATKINS

Takaki further examined early conceptions of morality. His discussion of

“Republicanism” points to the self-governing man. The self-governing man had
to be virtuous, industrious, sober, and thrifty. Giving in to one’s passions and
lust was antithetical to the path of the republican man. Restraint was a personal
proposition but had dire social consequences.

Privilege and Subjugation: The Puritan Way

Social stratification and differentiated privilege in biblical history and Puritan

society required explanation. Puritan doctrine, relying on scripture, offered
definitive views of master to servant and servant to master role expectations.
Those views helped provide the foundation for ongoing cultural views of the
treatment of subservient people.
Masters were to care for those that served them. Vaughan (1971) explored
Wadsworth’s (1712) The Well-Ordered Family to understand Puritan views on
treating subservients. He summarized the central responsibilities a master owed
his servant as required by scripture:
1. Masters should suitably provide for the bodily support and comfort of
their servants. Servants are of their household, and if they provide not for
such, they’re worse than infidels and have denied the faith. 1 Timothy
5:8…
2. Masters should keep their servants diligently employed. Indeed they
should allow them sufficient time to eat, drink, sleep, and on proper
occasions some short space for relaxation and diversion may doubtless be
very advisable.
3. Masters should defend and protect their servants. Since their servants
are under their care, and employed in their business, if any would wrong or
injure them, they should endeavor to protect and defend them.
4. Masters should govern their servants well. They should charge them
to obey God’s commands, to live soberly, righteously, and godly. They
should use their authority in furthering their servants in a blameless
behavior and in restraining them from sin.
5. Masters should teach and instruct their servants well. When masters
take apprentices, to teach them some particular trade or occupation, they
ought in duty and conscience to give them all the skill and insight they can
in such their occupation, (pp. 186–187)
Masters, overseers, rulers, and governors had a paternalistic duty to manage
their charges. Cruelty was not encouraged but neither was equality. Role
distinction and privilege were clearly acceptable. Although not specifically
directed to named racial or ethnic groups, this model of conduct was easily
applied where ethnic difference was evident.
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 177

The responsibilities of servants toward masters were far more expansive as

they guaranteed the power of privilege and subservience. Vaughn (1972) again
summarized the Bible-based tenets for servant conduct:
1. Servants should fear their masters. Malachi 1:6
2. Servants should honor their masters. Timothy 6:1
3. Servants should obey their masters, diligent and faithful to their
service and to their interest. Colossians 3:22
4. When a servant disobeys his master, he disobeys God.
5. Obey your master willingly, heartily, cheerfully, and with good will.
Ephesians 6:6
6. Servants are wicked if they are lazy and idle while in their master’s
service. Matthew 25:26
7. Servants should not cheat their masters financially nor steal from
them. Titus 2:10
8. Servants should not run away as it was God who established their
arrangement of servitude.
9. Servants should bear any chastisements directed toward them with
patience. 1 Peter 2:19, 20
10. Servants should pray for God’s blessing upon their masters. Genesis
24:12 (pp. 188–192)
Thus the Puritan defense of servitude provided a rationalization for the
stratification that would soon evolve throughout the nation. If the Bible
sanctioned servitude then it could be explained as man’s natural state.
To enforce their views on servitude and all doctrine, the Puritans insisted on
obedience. They believed God would judge an entire community that allowed an
individual to transgress. They meant to maintain order at any cost. They
understood that the imposition of law was accompanied by lawbreakers and the
enforcement of doctrine would yield heretics. They developed a theory of
exclusion giving authorities the right to punish and expel. The exclusionary
concept became oppressive on non-Puritans, such as Anglicans, who resided
within Puritan communities. Thus the notion of an “other” was established in
their social order. The “other” could easily be viewed as deviant. The
ideological foundations for discrimination were thus deep within Puritan dogma.

BUILDING A “UNITED” STATES: SITUATING THE

BLACKS

General Samuel C.Armstrong: Educator and Moral Theorist

Samuel Chapman Armstrong (1839–1893), son of missionaries, officer in the

Confederate Army, and educator was an important actor in the theorizing about
178 WATKINS

morality and race. Founding Hampton Institute (in Virginia), a teacher training
and vocational skills institute for African and Native Americans in 1868,
Armstrong was enmeshed in the ideological shaping of attitudes about race,
morality, politics, and culture in the post-Civil War period. For the next several
years he utilized the pages of the widely circulated Southern Workman, a
Hampton Institute paper, to present his views to the nation.
As a nation builder, pragmatist, and patriot Armstrong rejected regionalism in
favor of a broad political agenda. He wanted the country to move forward in
unity and prosperity. Although committed to segregation and White supremacy,
Armstrong broke with the primitive racialism of the slaveocracy. One example
of his views surfaced in opposition to the popular racist notion that people of
African descent were genetically moribund and would die off. The respected
Boston Journal wrote:

Nearly all the statistics relating to the subject, now accessible, are
those coming from the larger Southern cities, and those would
seem to leave no doubt that in such centers of population the
mortality of the colored greatly exceeds that of the white race,
(cited in Southern Workman, January, 1878, p. 4)

Convinced that some people of color (e.g., certain Pacific islanders) were
moribund, Armstrong put America on alert that the Black race was here to stay.
He concluded that because they are here they should continue to be put to work.
He wrote:

There is no source whatever of a suitable supply in lieu of Negro

labor. The large, low, swampy, malarial, but highly productive
area of the South would become almost a desert without it.
The successful Southern farmer knows that he has the best labor
in the world. The Negro is important to the country’s prosperity.
The decrease of the race would be a serious matter in many
ways; it would destroy their morale. Young colored men, seeing
no future, without hope, enthusiasm or esprit de corps, would
gradually degenerate; there would be an appalling number of
worthless blacks, mere driftwood, creatures who would care only
for the passing day. (cited in Southern Workman, January, 1875,
p. 4)

Armstrong, the educational leader, recognized the need for a more realistic
vision on the role and place for Blacks. Foreshadowing his views on race, he
insisted Blacks could learn but were immoral. He recognized the need for new
formulas that would build on accepted traditions. Embracing segregation and
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 179

Negro inferiority, he understood if North and South were to be reconciled and

the industrial economy made viable, a new politics had to be established.
Armstrong was instrumental in shaping the politics of sharecropping and
accomodationism that offered “semicitizenship” to Black Americans.
Having lived and worked among the enslaved Africans in Virginia,
Armstrong developed keen and uncommon insights into Black life. He marveled
at the indefatigable quest of the slaves to educate themselves. Having seen the
intellectual development of the slaves thwarted, he understood their potential
and hence could not accept the popular biological or genetic explanations of
inferiority.
How then would he justify and defend segregation and Black subservience?
The answer for him resided in long-standing moral arguments of the earlier
colonial period. In his words:

Lack of brains is not the greatest difficulty with tropical or

oriental races. The Hindoos and the Zulus have poets and orators.
A people in the ruts of barbarism, as were some of the ancients,
may have a literature and science that will not in the least relax
their bondage to vice.
We cannot reason from intelligent Negroes necessarily, to a
civilized progressive race. The question with them is not one of
special proficiency, of success in one direction—the pursuit of
knowledge—but of success all around. It is one of morals,
industry, self-restraint, of power to organize society, to draw
social lines between the decent and indecent, to form public sen-
timent that shall support pure morals and to show common sense
in the relations of life. (Southern Workman, July, 1876, p. 50)

He asserted that morals were the dividing characteristic between White and
Black people:

Moral force is the heavy artillery that Providence takes sides

with. This and not his machinery and manufactures is the success
of the Anglo Saxon. (Southern Workman, July, 1876, p. 50)

On Morals, Politics, and Black Life

As a patriot Armstrong committed his life first and foremost to the well-be ing
of the nation. Settling citizenship, educational, and vocational issues was
important in stabilizing the Black population. Armstrong was convinced that
stabilizing the Black population was key to reconstruction and nation building.
180 WATKINS

His examinations and explanations of the Negro focused on their sociocultural

life. An important aspect of that development for Armstrong was morality.
Throughout his writings he politicized morality as an important area of inquiry:

In portions of the South there seem to be a relapse into

barbarism. What else can be expected when the people are, in
some places, in mental darkness and moral deadness, left to the
guidance of demagogues, of preachers who are blind leaders of
the blind, victims of whatever is low and base in themselves,
unable to read, destitute of schools, cast by emancipation upon an
impoverished and ill-feeling country, to pass through the fiery
furnace of reconstruction, and to care for themselves after six
generations of dependence. (Southern Workman, March, 1876, p.
18)

Because of his sensitive position as “principal” of Hampton, elected officials,

philanthropists, educators, clerics, and policymakers paid close attention to
Armstrong. A major address delivered to the American Missionary Association
at Syracuse, New York, on October 24, 1877, summed up his lifelong views. It
was presented as a kind of broad, sweeping overview of the “Negro question.”
This essay revealed deep-seated beliefs in the immorality of the Black race. It
was the lack of morals constraining their racial and social progress. He believed
the Negro could excel intellectually but he would continue to trip over his moral
shortcomings. Thus it was the Negro, not the system, who was to blame for his
own status.

The Negro question of the day is the Negro himself… For

generations to come it will be his deplorable condition, his
deficiencies, and how to make the most of him… In his mental,
moral, and material destitution, he has as much power as
anybody to make the next President, or to decide on questions of
tariff, currency, or war. Hence the Negro question is and will be,
as it has been for the past forty years, a foremost one.
The difficulty with him is, mainly a subjective not an objective
one; himself, not his relations. His low ideas of life and duty, his
weak conscience, his want of energy and thrift, his indolent,
sensuous, tropical blood are, rather than mere ignorance, the
important and unfortunate facts about him. (Southern Workman,
December, 1877, p. 94)

Commenting on what he perceived as glaring moral contradictions in Black life,

he wrote:
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 181

Pastors and deacons can sell whisky and lead loose lives without
scandal; and ex-jailbird returns to his former social position; in
politics and in society character goes for little or nothing.
The power of Christian education and of right public sentiment
has never reached the Negro race; it has been made impossible.
(Southern Workman, December, 1877, p. 94)

Further:

His worst master is still over him—his passions. This he does not
realize. He does not see “the point” of life clearly, he lacks
foresight, judgment, and hard sense. His main trouble is not
ignorance, but deficiency of character; his grievances occupy
him more than his deepest needs. There is no lack of those who
have mental capacity. The question with him is not one of brains,
but of right instincts, of morals and of hard work.
The differential of the races seem to be in moral strength.
(Southern Workman, December, 1877, p. 94)

Education and Morality

Although Armstrong never believed Blacks could be intellectually equal to

Anglo-Saxons, he did hold out hope that education, especially, his Hampton
version of education, could provide both intellectual and moral uplift. Again
drawing from the long-standing notions that virtue resides in hard work,
Armstrong steadfastly advocated such.
The following passage sums up his lifelong philosophy for Negro education:

They need a system of training which aims at the formation of

character, and of self-respect; these rest upon a foundation of
morals and good habits. We can best aid them by Christian
example and teaching…When his whole routine of life is
controlled, the Negro pupil is like clay in the potter’s hands.
Drill, training, toning up, is the important feature…it is, I
believe, a well balanced, thorough-going system of culture,
aiming directly at the mark, mingling mental with moral and
physical training.
The natural indolence of the Negro is as much in his way as his
ignorance. In salvation by hard work is his hope. (Southern
Workman, December, 1877, p. 94)
182 WATKINS

Armstrong’s reconstructionist politics developed alongside the

institutionalizing of biological “explanations” of racial inferiority. The
movement of scientific racism gained adherents as it theorized a social role for
Black people.

SCIENTIFIC RACISM*

The brutal exploitation of people of color provided context for “color coding”
and classifying. Scientifically rendering dark people as inferior helped justify
and rationalize colonial plunder. If proof could demonstrate that nature rendered
Whites superior, a ready-made explanation for social hierarchy could be
established.
As world hegemony and power shifted from Europe across the Atlantic
during the 19th century, America became the main locus of White supremacy.
Its virulent brand of slavery outlasted most others. Long after most European
countries abandoned slavery and the slave trade, the United States continued
building both its economy and social order on the foundations of slave labor,
exploited labor, and subservience. This economic base could not help but shape
social ideology. By Reconstruction, a modern sociology of race was firmly
embedded. Race influenced every aspect of America’s social order. Moreover, it
made its presence felt in both culture making and among the culture makers
(Takaki, 1990,1994).

Defining Scientific Racism

Scientism was an important theme in 18th-century intellectual life. Social

scientists looked to quantification as they attempted to construct lawlike
assumptions about societal and human development. Issues surrounding race
began to receive great attention.
Gould’s (1981) celebrated work The Mismeasure of Man offers a thorough
discussion of the pre-and post-Darwinian movement to measure intelligence,
classify races, and critically examine the genetic arguments that have influenced
the social sciences for more than 200 years.
Notions of difference in the social order have long been a part of the Western
intellectual tradition. These views can be found as early as in the writings of
ancient Greeks, including Aristotle (1970). Although space does not permit a
complete historical examination, a look at important theories and theorists since
the 18th century is useful to understand racial naturalism and the emergence of
scientific racism. A glimpse of Arthur de Gobineau provides foundation for
further understanding.

*
An earlier version of the section of Scientific Racism appears in Watkins (2001). See
references.
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 183

The Father of Scientific Racism

The earliest significant intellectual racist was Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882)

of France, although far too little public knowledge circulates about this seminal
racist historical figure. In the mid-1840s, Gobineau worked as a journalist and
frequent contributor of political articles to a variety of journals. Soon he moved
beyond French politics and wrote on issues of German regionalism and
nationality. He favored the Prussian aristocracy in its expanding conflicts with
the more lower classes.
For the next several years, Gobineau wrote widely on a variety of topics, such
as Christianity, the Renaissance, and philosophy. He struck up a relationship
with Alexis de Tocqueville and both found their discussions intellectually
rewarding. Support for aristocracy and nationalism were common themes in
Gobineau’s writings. Soon he turned to an exploration of race theory.
The source of virtue was of interest to Gobineau. Christian doctrine had
always linked virtue with faith. Questioning this notion, Gobineau began to
associate virtue with bloodlines (Biddiss, 1970). He looked at the Aryans,
northern Europeans, as he asserted that blood purity was responsible for the
heroism and intellect in the Aryans, He argued that racial integrity had to be
maintained.
Gobineau’s theoretical racism was articulated in his magnum opus entitled
Essai sur I’lnegalite des Races Humaines (1854/1967). In it, he wrote that the
racial question overshadowed all other issues in history. The inequality of races
explained all destinies. Of most significance to Gobineau was social decay, or
social decline. He rejected social decline as the product of excesses or
misgovernment. Rather, he insisted that it was the product of miscegenation
between the races. He argued that tribes were unable to remain pure and virile
when the mixture of blood has been introduced. He wrote:

The human race in all its branches has a secret repulsion from the
crossing of blood, a repulsion which in many branches is
invincible, and in others is only conquered to a slight extent.
Even those who most completely shake off the yoke of this idea
cannot get rid of the few last traces of it; yet such peoples are the
only members of our species who can be civilised at all. Mankind
lives in obedience to two laws, one of repulsion, the other of
attraction; these act with different force on different peoples. The
first is fully respected only by those races which can never raise
themselves above the elementary completeness of the tribal life,
while the power of the second, on the contrary, is the more
absolute, as the racial units on which it is exercised are more
capable of development, (cited in Biddiss, 1970, p. 116)
184 WATKINS

He further argued that all civilizations derive from the White race, especially
the superior Aryan stock. Mankind is thus divided into races of unequal worth.
Superior races are in a fight to maintain their position. Racial relationships then
become the driving force in history.
He offered a hierarchy of race that influenced the next century and a half. At
the top were the Caucasian, Semitic, or Japhetic peoples. The second or yellow
group consisted of the Altaic, Mongol, Finnish, and Tartar peoples. The lowest
group was composed of the Hamites or Blacks. He set out descriptions of each
group.
White people were characterized by “energetic intelligence,” great physical
power, stability, inclinations to self-preservation, and a love of life and liberty.
Their great weakness, according to Gobineau, was a susceptibility to cross-
breeding. Asians were mediocre, lacked physical strength, and wished to live
undisturbed. They could never create a viable civilization. Black people, the
lowest of all, possessed energy and willpower but were unstable, unconcerned
about the preservation of life, given to absolutes, and easily enslaved.
Theoretically, Gobineau developed a notion of racial determinism. He
insisted racial determinism was objective and could be reduced to scientific law.
His racial view of history meant that race had driven all events back to the
beginning of time. Race theory was more scientific than politics, morality, or
state organization.
In The Essai (1854/1967), Gobineau wrote about race and social order. He
believed civilization defined itself in the process of war, conquest, and
migration. It was, however, these interactions that allowed miscegenation to
occur. If unchecked, miscegenation would undo civilization.
For Gobineau, advanced status and civilization, such as possessed by Aryans,
could only survive in a rigidly hierarchal order. An elite must totally dedicate
itself to the maintenance of racial and social hierarchy, and use force and
domination to maintain that social, racial, and economic organization. Society
must not be disrupted by the popular classes or lower racial groups.
Gobineau, the “racial prophet” (Biddiss, 1970), was among the first to
articulate a political sociology of race and racism forecasting social decline. His
ideology helped frame a generation of “scientism” on questions of race and
social development.

18th-Century European and American Influences

In 1735 Carolus Linnaeus, the acclaimed biological taxonomist, was among the
first (Ehrlich & Feldman, 1977; Gould, 1981; Tucker, 1994) to classify human
beings by race. He used both skin color and personal characteristics for his
typology. His essay Systema Naturae divided people into White, Black, Red,
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 185

and Yellow. He found Whites to be innovative and of keen mind, whereas

Blacks were lazy and careless. The notion that races exhibited different mental
and moral traits became a central part of a new discourse.
German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, an early advocate of Darwinism, authored
Anthropogenie (1874). In this book he situated Blacks on an evolutionary tree
below gorillas and chimpanzees. He hypothesized that individuals, in the course
of development, relive their evolutionary history; that is, ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny. Building on this theme a century later, race theorists such as Brinton
(1890) argued that some races retained infantile traits, rendering them inferior to
others (Ehrlich & Feldman, 1977).
In 1781, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, physiologist and founder of modern
anthropology, added aesthetic judgments to race. He introduced the term
Caucasian as he considered White people as beautiful as the southern slopes of
Mount Caucasus. For Blacks the pejorative term “oran-outangs” became popular
as it placed them in the realm of chimpanzees and monkeys. President Thomas
Jefferson used the term “oranootan” in his writings to describe Black men and
even himself when he surrendered to his own passions (Takaki, 1990). Perhaps
his dalliances with slaves, notably Sally Hemmings, were examples of such
surrender.
In 1799, British surgeon Charles White added a new dimension to the race
dialogue. He asserted that Blacks were a separate species, intermediate between
Whites and apes (Tucker, 1994). His book An Account of the Regular Gradation
in Man and in Different Animals and Vegetables and From the Former to the
Latter (White, 1799) argued that the feet, fingers, toes, legs, hair, cheekbones,
skin, arm-length, skull size, size of sex organs, and body odor placed Blacks
closer to the animal kingdom, most notably apes.
Undergirding the writings of the natural scientists was the philosophical
embrace of natural inequality, an Aristotelian idea that inequality was the
foundation of the natural order (Tucker, 1994). Natural difference came to be
viewed as hierarchical. Organisms and races could be rank-ordered. A central
task of science came to be the ranking of living organisms. Colonialism, 18th-
century slavery, and the exploitation of fertile and mineral-rich foreign lands
provided economic and political context for the new pseudoscience to take hold.
These early scientific racists wrapped themselves in the robe of science.
White repeatedly declared his lack of enmity toward the Black race, claiming he
sought only insight into nature.

Expanding the Discourse: Medicine and Science

Scientific racism was reinforced and expanded when the established medical
profession entered the field. Notions of anatomical, physiological, and
psychological difference framed their inquiry.
186 WATKINS

Benjamin Rush, founding father, signer of the Declaration of Independence,

and medical doctor, contributed to views of race and racial inferiority in the
early period of the nation. As Surgeon General in the Revolutionary Army and
professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Rush had a national
podium. Concerned with the survival of the young republic, he spoke out on
questions of politics, morality, education, and race.
Rush examined the “savage” American Indian, claiming they were given to
“uncleanness,” “nastiness,” “idleness,” intemperance, stupidity, and indecency.
By the early 1770s he was writing about Black Americans, slavery, and race
relations. Intellectually and politically opposed to slavery, he nevertheless
advocated a segregated society (Takaki, 1990).
He believed Blacks to be pathologically infected. Their coloration was
disease driven. In a paper delivered to the American Philosophical Society
entitled Observations Intended to Favor a Supposition That the Black Color of
the Negroes is Derived From Leprosy (Rush, 1799), presented views on Black
“pathology.” He argued that the big lip, flat nose, woolly hair, and Black skin
were the characteristics of lepers. He also wrote about insensitive nerves,
uncommon strength, and venereal desires. Blacks needed to be civilized and
restored to morality and virtuosity through righteous living. As a political figure
and doctor, Rush helped shape the culture of racism characterizing early
America and evolving over the next two centuries.
Much of his medical practice involved work with the mentally ill as he turned
his attention to the “diseases of the mind.” His preoccupation with morality and
virtue came to be joined with his exploration of mental disease. He began to
insist that idleness, intemperance, masturbation, and sexual excess were
associated with mental diseases (Takaki, 1990). His book Diseases of the Mind
(Rush, 1812) presented “remedies” for these problems.
In the mid-19th century, physicians such as van Evrie (1853) offered a
“scientific” justification of slavery. He wrote that dark-skinned people were
diseased and unnatural and that Blacks possessed impeded locomotion,
weakened vocal organs, coarse hands, hypersensitive skin, narrow longitudinal
heads, narrow foreheads, and underdeveloped brains and nervous systems. Van
Evrie concluded that the aggregation of these traits translated to human
inferiority. He asserted that even the animal kingdom recognized Negro
inferiority and said that a hungry tiger was more likely to prey on Blacks than
Whites.
Also writing on this topic in the 1850s was Dr. Samuel Cartwright, who
chaired a committee to inform the Medical Association of Louisiana about the
Black race. His Report of the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro
Race (Cartwright, 1851) gained attention for its “scholarly” approach. It spoke
of the insufficient supply of red blood, smaller brain, and excessive nervous
matter found in the Negro. This combination of problems, wrote Cartwright, led
to the “debasement of minds” in Blacks. The physical exercise provided by
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 187

slavery would help increase lung and blood functions according to Cartwright.
Slaves, he argued, were sometimes afflicted with “drapetomania,” a disease of
the mind making them want to run away. The prescription for drapetomania he
argued, was care and kindness, but the whip should not be spared should
kindness fail.
Dr. Edward Jarvis (1844), a specialist in mental disorders and President of
the American Statistical Association, wrote that insanity for Blacks in the North
was 10 times greater than for Blacks in the South. He concluded that slavery had
a salutary effect on Blacks, sparing them the problems that free self-acting
individuals faced.
Thus the scientific racists established a body of views that served as a
foundation to explain race for the next 150 years. Conservatives, reactionaries,
and apartheidists would draw on these themes for their partisan outlooks.

ENTERING THE 20TH CENTURY: REFINING NOTIONS

OF RACE AND MORALITY

The United States underwent monumental social and political change as it

entered the 20th century. Agriculture gave way to industrialization. Rural
dwellers found their way to the crowded polyglot urban metropolis. Hostile and
overt manifestations of regionalism yielded to nationalism although muted
allegiances silently lived on. No longer isolated by geography and policy,
America was manifesting imperial urges and actions in the Pacific, Caribbean,
and Great Northwest.
The rise to world power was accompanied by scientific and academic
revolutions. The scientific revolution touched both business and government. In
business and manufacturing Taylorist efficiency became the watchword. More
productivity, less wasted motion, and attention to bottom-line profits drove the
factory. In government the concept of planned rational change would be
employed to manage the wildly gyrating experimental society with myriad
ideological and ethnic and social class diversity.
Great changes were also underway in the academic arena. The knowledge
revolution was off and running. Advocates of various social science disciplines
were calling for scientism and empiricism and equally important, autonomy.
Thus sociology, anthropology, and political science would assert their individual
integrity as disciplines. The umbrella concept of social science would lose
steam.
Many scholars within the new disciplines embraced scientific racism or
eugenics. Notables included Edward Thorndike, Louis Terman, Robert Yerkes,
Goddard, David Pearson, and Johann Frederich Blumenbach, Of special
importance was Columbia professor Franklin H.Giddings. Giddings was the first
full-time professor of sociology in the United States. He was a leader in the
188 WATKINS

scientific (measurement) movement, a vigorous proponent of sociology as an

independent discipline, and a theorist on race and morality. Giddings wanted
assessments of the social order to move away from moral philosophy into
empirical research. His lifelong research on social stratification argued that there
was a hierarchy of mental, moral, and personality types. His hierarchy was
associated with race and ethnicity.

Classifying People and Groups

For Giddings, quantification served the interests of classification. He believed

natural evolution rendered distinct classes. Those classes were of people,
behaviors, abilities, intelligence, and so on. Sociology must be able to
understand the distinct nature of people. The most important distinctions for
Giddings were physical, mental, and social. To understand these distinctions
would allow us richer explanations of societal development. Classification
became a focus of his work.
Giddings believed people and races were divided physically into three vitality
classes: high, medium, and low. The high group was described by bodily vigor,
high mental power, a high birth rate, and a low death rate. The medium group
experienced adequate bodily vigor, high mental power, a low birth rate, and an
equally low death rate. The lowest groups experienced low bodily vigor, low
mental power, extremely high birth rates, and high death rates. The higher
groups described European people, whereas people of color, especially Blacks,
belonged in the low vitality group.
Giddings’s classification of mental or personality types also offered three
categories. The high group was called the inventive. This was the genius group
who made disproportionate contributions to the world in business, law,
government, art, literature, music, and so on. He calculated that this group
numbered approximately 250 out of every 1,000,000 people. The second
personality or mental group was called imitative. This was the middle group,
who was led by the high group. The lowest mental group for Giddings was the
defective. They were the incompetents, cripples, insane, and imbecilic. This
helpless group had few grounds to justify their existence.
Regarding social class, Giddings constructed four groups: the social,
nonsocial, pseudosocial, and antisocial. Similar to his other categorizations, this
one was hierarchical and full of implicit ethnic references.
Members of the highest group were identifiable by their consciousness.
Those in this group were aware of their surroundings, their legacy, and were
guided by higher calling. They were dedicated to the betterment of the social
order. They were the leaders and pillars of the community. The second group,
the nonsocial, represented for Giddings the majority of society. This was the in-
between group capable of moving in either direction. The pseudo-social group
represented the third category. This group contained the “congenital and
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 189

habitual paupers.” Giddings believed that this group pretended to be the victims
of misfortune but were really shirkers and loafers who leeched from the public
trough.
The final antisocial grouping had no redeeming value. They existed totally
without virtue. This was the class of criminals who carried out aggression
against the other classes. This group grew with the expanding affluence of
society, living off its surplus.
These social classes, for Giddings, were difficult to escape. They were the
products of lengthy evolutionary development; thus it was extremely difficult to
abandon one’s class moorings. An individual’s social class was manifested by
his or her “consciousness of kind” or his or her “social mind,” both of which
were allegedly indicators of one’s level of civilization.
Giddings’s writings on sociology were saturated with these classification
schemes. He believed that differences were the essential dynamic within hip
mankind. We could never understand society and its various ability and racial
groups unless we could explain difference.
Another influential racial sociologist, Edward Ross, contributed to the genetic
and moral arguments of the early 20th century. His popular book The Old World
in the New (Ross, 1914) attacked the character and physical features of
Mediterranean Europeans. He wrote of “low foreheads,” “open mouths,” “weak
chins,” “skew faces,” “knobby crania,” “servile,” “wife beaters,” “criminals,”
“alcoholics,” and “given to crimes of sex and violence.”
Like other academic racists he also embraced the argument that the darker
people were morally inferior:

That the Mediterranean peoples are morally below the races of

northern Europe is as certain as any social fact. Even when they
were dirty, ferocious barbarians, these blonds were truth-tellers.
Be it pride or awkwardness or lack of imagination or fair-play
sense, something has held them back from the nimble lying of
the southern races. Immigration officials find that the different
peoples are as day and night in point of veracity, and report vast
trouble in extracting the truth from certain brunet nationalities,
(p. 293)

Among his objectives was to demonstrate significant differences between

northern and southern Europeans. The underlying premise suggested that darker
people were morally inferior. He wrote:

In southern Europe, teamwork along all lines is limited by

selfishness and bad faith… One of the maxims of Greek business
life, translated into the American vernacular, is ‘Put out the other
190 WATKINS

fellow’s eye.’ “These people seemed incapable of carrying on a

large cooperative business with harmony and success.”
Nothing less than venimous is the readiness of the southern
Europeans to prey upon their fellow. Never were British or
Scandinavian immigrants so bled by fellow-countrymen as are
South Italian, Greek and Semitic immigrants… The Greek is full
of tricks to skin the greenhorn… The Greek…exploits his help as
mercilessly as ever he was exploited, (pp. 294–295)

Ross was a staunch nationalist. For him, if America was to take its place as
leader in commerce and military might, it would require sturdy men who could
be relied on for the daunting task ahead. The darker peoples lacked both the
sturdiness and ethical foundation necessary. He argued:

The Northerners seem to surpass the southern Europeans in

innate ethical endowment… The southern Europeans, on the
other hand, are apt, in their terror, to forget discipline, duty,
women, children, everything but the saving of their own lives. In
shipwreck it is the exceptional Northerner who forgets his duty,
and the exceptional Southerner who is bound by it. (p. 295)

Ross concluded his book by insisting that Europe was keeping its solid citizens
and allowing only the deficient to immigrate to America. He wrote:

There is little sign of an intellectual element among the Magyars,

Russians, South Slavs, Italians, Greeks or Portuguese…
The fewer brains they have to contribute, the lower the place
immigrants take among us, and the lower the place they take, the
faster they multiply, (p. 299)

His final insult was that the southern immigrants were as repulsive as the
Negroes, in some cases more so:

In their homes you find no sheets on the bed, no slips on the

pillows, no cloth on the table, and no towels save old rags. Even
in the mud-floor cabins of the poorest Negroes of the South you
find sheets, pillow-slips, and towels, for by serving and associ-
ating with the whites, the blacks have gained standards, (p. 300)

Grants’s (1918) widely read The Passing of the Great Race continued the
attack on southern European groupings, which was ultimately, aimed at all dark
 9. RACE AND MORALITY 191

peoples. Like Ross he pointed to both the physical and moral qualities of his
targets:

Such are the three races, the Alpine, the Mediterranean and the
Nordic, which enter into the composition of European
populations of to-day and in various combinations comprise the
great bulk of white men all over the world. These races vary
intellectually and spiritual attributes are as persistent as physical
characters and are transmitted substantially unchanged from
generation to generation. The moral and physical character are
not limited to one race but given traits do occur with more
frequency in one race than in another. Each race differs….
Mental, spiritual and moral traits are closely associated with the
physical distinctions among the different. European races,
although like somatological characters, these spiritual attributes
have in many cases gone astray, (pp. 226–227)

Dr. Carl C.Brigham (1923), psychology professor at Princeton, supported the

aforementioned conclusions on physical traits and morality in his celebrated
work A Study of American Intelligence (1923). He wrote:

In a very definite way, the results which we obtain by

interpreting the army data by means of the race hypothesis
support Mr. Madison Grant’s thesis of the superiority of the
Nordic type: “The Nordics are, all over the world a race of
soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of
rulers, organizers, and aristocrats…” The pure Nordic peoples
are characterized by a greater stability and steadiness than are
mixed peoples such as the Irish, the ancient Gauls, and the
Athenians, among all of whom the lack of these qualities was
balanced by a correspondingly greater versatility, (p. 182)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Racism, racial stratification, inequality, and the myth of racial inferiority persist
into the 21st century. Although the language of shiftlessness, flawed character,
and intemperance no longer appear in polite public discourse they are deeply
embedded in the stereotyping of people of color.
The racial myth has gone far beyond personal attitudes and folklore. It is
inextricably connected to social engineering, international politics, labor
economics, and public policy. Although it may make us uncomfortable as
192 WATKINS

Americans to do so, several points compel reflection, particularly in the context

of an effort to engage in meaningful moral education.
Any society built on privilege must justify inequality. America today is
without question one of the most dramatically stratified societies in the history
of the world. With what can be arguably viewed as an oligarchy firmly in place,
the economic gap between those at the top and those at the bottom rivals the
distance between the masses and the monarchs of feudal Europe. The now
dramatic and accelerating pyramiding of our society is tied to both meritocracy
and race. Those who enjoy privilege are seen to have earned it. The correlation
of wealth to race continues to be viewed in terms of capabilities and ingenuity.
Second, the world has changed in the 21st century. Post-Cold War
unilateralism has fueled the impulse toward empire. The United States is rapidly
rebuilding its military (The Project for the New American Century, 2000) as
many commentators raise fears about a new period of aggression (Bookman,
2002; Pilger, 2002), How will such actions be justified? It appears that race and
religion will continue to provide salient points to construct the “other” who is
unlike us, evil, primitive, and lacking in democracy.
Finally, although repeated until it is now almost trite, the ideology of racism
is a taught and learned phenomenon. Racism and the myths supporting it are
transmitted through the institutions we encounter daily whether it be family,
church, school, or other milieus. The world and humanity can never peacefully
coexist until the bane of racism is eliminated from our midst.
Several issues and challenges remain for citizens and (moral) educators alike.
Morality and moral education must be both politicized and historicized. We
need to explore moral issues and moral development within the context of power
and human group relationships. Race and morality must be viewed within
today’s dynamic social and political context. How can we expand the public
discourse on morality beyond sex, stealing, and fighting? How can we expand
the sociology of morality so that it turns our attention to the serious excavation
of race and privilege?

REFERENCES

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Biddiss, M.D. (1970). Father of racist ideology: The social and political thought of
Count Gobineau. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Bookman, J. (2002, September 29). The president’s real goal in Iraq. Atlanta-Journal
Constitution, Fl.
Brigham, C.C. (1923). A study of American intelligence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Brinton, D.G. (1890). Race and peoples. New York: Hodges.
Cartwright, S.A. (1851, May). Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the
Negro race. New Orleans and Medical and Surgical Journal, 691–715.
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Ehrlich, P.R., & Feldman, S.S. (1977). The race bomb: Skin, color, prejudice and
intelligence. New York: Quadrangle.
Gobineau, A. de. (1967). Essai sur I’inegalite des races humaines [Essay on the
inequality of human races]. New York: Fertig. (Original work published 1854)
Gould, S.J. (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton.
Grant, M. (1918). The passing of the great race or the racial basis of European history.
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Haeckel, E. (1874). Anthropogenie. Leipzig, Germany: W. Engelmann.
Jarvis, E. (1844). Insanity among the coloured population of the free states. American
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Middlekauff, R. (1971). The Mathers: Three generations of puritan intelkctuals, 1596–
1728. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pilger, J. (2002, December 16). America’s bid for global dominance. The New Statesman.
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Oxford University Press.
Takaki, R. (1994). From different shores: Perspectives on race and ethnicity in America.
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Illinois Press,
van Evrie, J.H. (1853). Negroes and Negro “slavery”: The first and inferior race; the
latter, its normal condition. New York: V L. Dill.
Vaughan, A.T. (1972). The puritan tradition in America 1620–1730. New York: Harper
& Row.
Watkins, W.H. (1994). Multicultural education: Toward a historical and political inquiry.
Educational Theory, 44, 99–117.
Watkins, W.H. (2001). The White architects of Black education: Ideology and power in
America, 1865–1954. New York: Teachers College Press.
White, C. (1799). An account of the regular gradation in man and in different animals
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 10
Moral Competence Promotion Among
African American Children: Conceptual
Underpinnings and Programmatic
Efforts
Robert J.Jagers
Howard University CRESPAR
Morgan State University Public Health Program

Over the past few years, my project team and I have been working to develop,
implement, research, and evaluate a multi-component social and emotional
competence enhancement program for urban African American school-aged
children. We have pursued this work with an eye toward reducing risk for
problem outcomes, but perhaps more important, with an interest in promoting
desirable developmental competencies (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, &
Hawkins, 1999; Weissberg & Greenberg, 1997). It is fairly well known that
African American children are placed at elevated risk for academic
underachievement, substance abuse, aggression, and delinquency. Although
eliminating risk for such problems is essential, what constitutes a well-
functioning African American child has not been clearly articulated.
Social and emotional competence entails an array of intra-and interpersonal
characteristics, which, if considered from a distinct domain perspective, reflect
aspects of personal, prudential, conventional, and moral domains of social
development (Turiel, 1983). This chapter highlights elements of our work
deemed germane to children’s moral competence development. Moral
competence refers to the ability to assess and respond to ethical, affective, or
social justice dimensions of a situation (Catalano et al., 1999). This is
particularly important to us in light of the persistence and intensity of
community violence and its implications for the moral development of children
and youth. We understand this violence to be intrapsychic, interpersonal, and
structural in nature (Jagers, Mattis, & Walker, 2003; Sparks, 1994; Ward, 1988,
1995).

Portions of this chapter were presented at the meeting of Association of Moral

Educators, Chicago, November 8, 2002.

194
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 195

Among the principal assumptions of this effort is that there is considerable

variation among African American people. We suggest that some of that
variation is explained by the complex intersection of gender, culture, class, and
race, which yields multiple moral communities among urban African
Americans. We have proposed four racialized cultural identities, and outlined
some of the associated moral cognitions and emotions that prompt or inhibit
violence involvement by members of the distinct identity groups. A second
assumption is that historical and contemporary circumstances dictate that
programs for African American children explicitly prepare them to realize their
potential and responsibility to contribute to the ongoing struggle for self-
determination and empowerment within the American democratic system.
In this chapter I first discuss oppression and liberation as overarching
organizing concepts for our endeavors. The four racialized cultural identities—
acquisitive assimilationist, acquisitive oppressed, communal humanist, and
communal nationalist—are then described, A tentative competence model is
offered and our proposed target moral competencies are presented prior to
outlining competence promotion efforts in family and school contexts.

OPPRESSION AND LIBERATION AS POINTS OF

DEPARTURE

It seems uncontroversial to say that African Americans continue to experience

oppression and exploitation in American society. Regardless of income level, a
glance at any indicator of health, economic, or social status will usually find
African Americans hovering near the bottom as compared with other identified
race or ethnic groups. Watts and his colleagues (Watts & Abdul-Adil, 1998;
Watts, Williams, & Jagers, 2003) defined oppression as the unjust use of power
by one socially salient group over another in a way that creates and sustains
inequity in the distribution of coveted resources. Power is needed both to
establish and perpetuate oppression. Shweder’s (1996) distinction among
authoritarianism, paternalism, and pure moral authority as types of power is
useful to our thinking about the broader context of our competence promotion
efforts.
For the most part, African Americans have endured the imposition of
authoritarian power. An authoritarian social order is one in which those in power
act in such a way that only their own interests are served. Although participants
in this social order recognize this situation, they lack the ability to stop the
exercise of authoritarian power. This can be contrasted with a paternalistic social
order, in which those in authority strive to promote the true interests of others,
but participants do not recognize them as having moral authority. A paternalistic
power can either force participants to do what is good for them or engage in
benign neglect until participants recognize the ability of the authority to help.
196 JAGERS

Although it is clear that African Americans have been coerced and have
experienced benign neglect, it is debatable whether a paternalistic power has
ever had the true interests of African Americans in mind. By extension, pure
moral authority has seldom been evident. In a moral social order, authority is
derived from the recognized ability to promote the growth and development of
others.
As Watts et al. (2003) suggested, liberation requires challenging gross social
inequities between social groups and creating new relationships that dispel
oppressive social myths and values. This process necessitates personal and
institutional changes that support the economic, cultural, political,
psychological, social and spiritual needs of individuals and groups. Of course,
issues of power are relevant to liberation processes and outcomes as well.
These observations raise important questions for us about the current and
projected context of Black child development. For example, what are the points
of commonality and divergence among various segments of the African
American community? What are the potential alliances and contestations with
other marginalized foreign and domestic groups? What is the most effective
strategy for dealing with a White power agenda that vacillates between pseudo-
egalitarianism on one hand and domestic repression and neo-imperialism on the
other?

THE CONFLUENCE OF CULTURE AND RACE

We have pursued a cultural psychology approach to the social development of

African American children. The concept of culture has a long history in the
social sciences (Shweder, 1991; Turiel, 1998). After losing favor in the 1950s,
cultural approaches were advanced by African American psychologists in the
late 1960s (Boykin, 1983; Nobles, 1991) and have recently regained currency in
mainstream American psychology as well (e.g., Betancourt & Lopez, 1993;
Cooper & Denner, 1998; Greenfield & Cocking, 1994; Shweder, 1991).
Cultural psychologists tend to conceive of cultures as shared systems of
meaning that are transmitted within and across generations. These meaning
systems contain an array of fundamental themes to which individuals orient
themselves. Cultural orientations imply repertoires or scripts of personhood and
collective identity that define the preferred functional psychology (e.g.,
cognitive, emotional, and behavioral inclinations) of individuals, groups, and
institutions.
Some of the more compelling critiques offered of the prevailing cultural
psychology approaches have focused on the assumption of cultural homogeneity
among members of distinct cultural groups (e.g., Turiel, 1998; Turiel &
Weinryb, 2000). It is argued that one can find disagreement, dissension, and
subversion within such groups and that much of this conflict is informed by the
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 197

gender or socioeconomic status within these groups. We find considerable merit

in such a critique and consider it as an invitation to interrogate the complexities
of present-day African American culture.
We start from the premise that African Americans have to negotiate
simultaneously three intersecting realms of social experience: mainstream
American culture, their African cultural legacy, and racial minority status
(Boykin, 1983). A host of themes have been attributed to these cultural realms.
In our view, the themes of acquisitive individualism and communalism are
primary considerations for understanding the social psychological development
among African American children and youth.
Acquisitive individualism is but one form of individualism. It refers to an
orientation in which the effective control and accumulation of people, material
objects, knowledge, and influence is seen as a primary indicator of self-worth
and social standing (Boykin, 1983). By contrast, communalism connotes an
orientation in which the fulfillment of social duties and responsibilities reflects a
premium on the fundamental interconnectedness, interdependence, and well-
being of one’s group (Boykin, Jagers, Ellison, & Albury, 1997; Jagers, 1997).
The assumption is that these orientations influence various types of social
relationships, to include family, peer, and race relations.
Jagers et al. (2003) attempted to outline the ways in which communal and
acquisitive orientations might inform race-related attitudes and coping strategies
that African Americans can adopt. We opted to use the racial ideology
dimension of a multidimensional racial identity model (Sellers, Smith, Shelton,
Rowley, & Chavous, 1998). As racial ideology reflects one’s sense of how
African Americans ought to think and behave, we reasoned that an acquisitive
orientation can be likened to an assimilationist ideology because it similarly
promotes the desire to integrate fully into mainstream American consumer
culture. Acquisitiveness was also paired with an oppressed-minority ideology
reflective of the self-depreciation brought on by exploitation and limited
mobility within American society. On the other hand, a commu-nal orientation
coincides with the reciprocity and human interconnectedness featured in a
humanist ideology. It also shares much in common with a nationalist ideology
that emphasizes the uniqueness and primacy of the African American
experience.

RACIALIZED CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND

MORALITY

The preponderance of scholarship on African American morality has proceeded

from a cultural deficit perspective. It is assumed that most residents of low-
income and working communities embrace a Black oppositional street culture,
which prescribes moral depravity (Anderson, 1999; Reed, 2000; Wilson, 1996).
198 JAGERS

Moral decency in this population is thought to derive from the internalization of

mainstream American values and practices (Anderson, 1999; Wilson, 1996).
Others contend that moral decency among African Americans derives from
African cultural retentions (e.g., Ward, 1995)
The moral implications of acquisitive assimilationist, acquisitive oppressed,
communal humanist, and communal nationalist identities as they related to
community violence have been outlined elsewhere (Jagers et al., 2003). In brief,
whether it is manifested in terms of assimilation or internalized oppression, the
acquisitive individualistic orientation implies a bourgeois morality characterized
by utilitarianism and instrumentality in social relations (Scheler, 1994). Such a
moral stance mitigates the type of sustainable personal or collective well-being
we advocate for. We are especially concerned about internalized oppression
among low-income African Americans. The effects of oppression are often
mistaken for indigenous Black culture (Anderson, 1999; Massey & Denton,
1993; Ogbu, 1985; Wilson, 1996), However, it is fairly evident that at least
some of the central features of oppressed identity like, for example,
hyperconsumerism and the use of violence to establish and maintain dominance
are contextualized applications of mainstream American cultural thrusts.
On the other hand, a communal orientation corresponds with caring and
justice moralities, especially when framed in humanist terms. This moral stance
eschews violence and is probably best typified by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
during the Civil Rights struggle. Nationalists also place a premium on caring
and justice, but tend to focus on cultivating relevant moral norms among African
Americans to obtain human rights and counter the oppressive and exploitative
cultural hegemony associated with the prevailing bourgeois morality.
Conservative (typically middle-income) nationalists generally leave it at that.
Political nationalists tend to be less well-off financially and may take this a step
further, promoting a revolutionary morality (Santucho, 1982), which supports
sustained struggle and sanctions the use of violence, if necessary, to establish a
more equalitarian moral order. This derives from the conclusion that
revolutionary violence by the oppressed is the only mechanism by which
oppressors can be forced into “reciprocal recognition” or full acknowledgment
of the humanity and integrity of the oppressed (Fanon, 1963).

TOWARD AN ACTION RESEARCH AGENDA

Rather than being seen as rigid, static categories into which African Americans
can be pigeonholed, the four racialized cultural identities just offered are
construed as rough anchor points for our applied research on competence
development. Specifically, we were interested in cultivating a communal
orientation as it holds the potential to reduce risk and to promote moral
competence development. This includes the type of critical consciousness
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 199

needed to identify and correct asymmetric social relations (Watts & Abdul-Adil,
1998).
For example, a communal orientation has been associated with prosocial
interpersonal values such as helpfulness and forgiveness, a sense of closeness to
in-group and perceived similarity to family and same-race others among college
students (Jagers & Mock, 1995). In a study of community activists, Mock
(1994) found a positive association between a communal orientation and both
agentic hope and a sense of vision for collective well-being. Finally, a
communal orientation was consistent with greater levels of community
volunteering among African American men (Mattis et al., 2000).
Among children and preadolescents such an orientation corresponds with
greater empathy and perspective taking (e.g., Jagers, 1997) and higher levels of
sociomoral reasoning (Humphries, Parker, & Jagers, 2000). It is also predictive
of reduced violent behaviors (Mock, Jagers, & Smith, 2003).
We certainly recognize the limits of a communal orientation. However, we do
not think that a priority on communalism erodes an appreciation for autonomy,
self-expression, or personal achievement associated with individualism. Rather,
it provides the necessary grounding for such pursuits, hopefully reducing the
unfortunate tendency in American consumer culture to place things over people.
In addition, we are not partial to either the humanist or nationalist position. It
seems more prudent and adaptive to cultivate entrepreneurial sensibilities
couched in an awareness of past struggles and a commitment to collective well-
being in a complex present and uncertain future.

CHILD COMPETENCIES

The dearth of available cultural theory required us to generate a preliminary

model to guide our basic and applied research efforts. This model is shown in
Fig. 10.1.
It seems reasonable to assume that cultural orientations, like communalism,
evolve out of children’s understanding and expression of moral emotions.
Children form generalized scripts of sociomoral events that include typical
affective consequences, such as happiness resulting from receiving help
(Arsenio, 1988; Eisenberg, 2000; Hoffman, 2000). We assume that these scripts
can help young children to develop cultural orientations, which reflect preferred
or idealized patterns and outcomes of social interactions.
200 JAGERS

FIG. 10.1. Hypothetical model of children’s developmental

competencies.

We borrowed from Arsenio’s (Arsenio, 1988; Arsenio & Lover, 1999)

distinct domain framework for exploring emotional expectancies. A focus is
placed on prosocial morality, which highlights the use of private resources to
create beneficial outcomes for others (e.g., sharing, cooperating); active
morality, which concerns interventions on behalf of victimized others (e.g.,
helping, comforting); and inhibitive morality, which involves victimization and
unfairly depriving others of their rights (e.g., hitting, stealing, disrespecting;
Arsenio, 1988; Arsenio & Lover, 1999).
Given the prevalence of violence in low-income African American
communities, inhibitive morality warrants particular attention. Chronic violence
exposure can contribute to the development of a “victim complex” (Bulhan,
1985, p. 126). This complex frequently entails generalized fear, suspicion,
anger, and a heightened sensitivity to personal slights or disrespect (Anderson,
1999). This may result in some children manifesting symptoms consistent with
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Osofsky, 1995) or gravitating toward drugs
and alcohol as a means of numbing themselves. Still others resort to violence
themselves (Fitzpatrick & Boldizar, 1993).
Indeed, the probability of a violent response to personal victimization is made
more likely by the common perception that failure to respond in kind may invite
further victimization (Anderson, 1999). As tor (1994) reasoned that a history of
violence exposure prompts youth to key in on the immorality of intentional (or
unintentional) provocation (e.g., hitting, name calling, lying, and stealing) and
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 201

construe physical retaliation as a form of reciprocal or street justice. Rather than

de-escalating the situation or relying on sanctioned authority figures to intervene
on their behalf, children and youth feel compelled to take revenge on those who
transgress against them.
In our current project, 50% of participating third-to sixth-grade children
would resolve a conflict about an accidental bump through retaliatory physical
or verbal aggression. Another 25% would avoid any further conflict, and the
remaining 25% would actively work to resolve the conflict. Roughly one quarter
indicated that they would respond to a conflict over turn-taking by resorting to
aggression. Almost 60% would work to peacefully resolve the situation. Finally,
most students (43%) indicated that they would ignore a classmate who was
trying to aggravate them during class. However 25% would respond with
physical aggression, and 17% would use verbal aggression. Only 15% reported
using prosocial problem-solving strategies.
Although variations in strategies used for specific provocations are evident,
the reliance on retaliation is also apparent. It does not require a huge leap to
envision an oppressed trajectory of anger at victimization leading to alliances
with deviant peers for protection, and escalating lethality of street justice being
linked to activity in the street economy.
This is part of the reason why the moral emotions of empathy and guilt are
privileged in our efforts. Empathy is an other-oriented emotion that refers to an
affective response more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own and is
thought to be foundational to human concern for others (Hoffman, 2000). Guilt
is a self-conscious emotion, which refers to “an agitation based emotion or
painful feeling of regret that is aroused when the actor actually causes,
anticipates causing or is associated with an aversive event” (Ferguson & Stegge,
1995, p. 20). It has been linked to the constructive management of anger to
include, moral restraint, remorse, and reparative action (Tangney, Wagner, Hill-
Barlow, Marschall, & Gramzow, 1996). In addition, admission of guilt precedes
forgiveness, which refers to a”giving up of resentment, hatred and anger and
taking up a stance of love and compassion” (Enright & the Human Development
Study Group, 1991, p. 64).
We have consistently found a positive connection between a communal
orientation and empathy (e.g., Humphries et al., 2000; Jagers, 1997) and
forgiveness (Jagers & Mock, 1995). As expected, the anticipated positive
relationship between a communal orientation and guilt emerged in our ongoing
project.
In addition, we speculated that a communal orientation would also be
consistent with social skills. Social skills are goal-directed behaviors that
facilitate effective social interactions. We are particularly interested in
selfcontrol and cooperation. Self-control is relevant to prosocial and inhibitive
morality as it refers to appropriate responding in turn-taking, teasing, and other
situations in which conflict is possible. Cooperation implies compliance,
202 JAGERS

helping, and sharing behaviors and thus is germane to prosocial morality. As

expected, a communal orientation was positively associated with both self-
control and cooperation.
A related area that warrants attention is children’s beliefs about their ability
to behave morally in various contexts, Bandura (1991) delineated several
interrelated self-sanctioning processes that can prompt and sustain moral
engagement. These include adhering to humane principles rather than pursuing
expedience, refraining from using worthy social ends to justify destructive
means, willingness to sacrifice personal well-being rather than participating in
unjust social practices, remain sensitive to the plight of others, taking personal
responsibility for the consequences of their actions, and highlighting
commonalities with others rather than accentuating differences (Bandura, 2002).
Being morally engaged may help to determine whether prosocial, active, and
inhibitive moral sensibilities and related skills get translated into meaningful
moral action in family, school, and community contexts.
With age, race-related attitudes become increasingly important in children’s
social relationships, especially in school and community contexts. The
multidimensional racial identity model advanced by Sellers et al. (1998) offers
additional prospects for understanding the emergence of humanist and
nationalist ideologies. In addition to the ideology dimension, the model includes
three other dimensions (racial centrality, racial regard, and racial salience).
Centrality and regard are stable dimensions that can readily be thought of from a
developmental perspective. Racial salience is a more complex dimension that
refers to the extent to which race is an important personal characteristic in a
given situation or point in time. As such, its expression may be contingent on
centrality, regard, and ideology dimensions (M. Sellers, personal
communication, July 2003).
For example, we speculate that children might first develop the private and
public affective appraisals comprising racial regard. The private component
reflects the degree to which one feels closeness or pride in his or her racial
group membership, whereas public regard concerns one’s perception of the way
in which African Americans are viewed by others. These sensibilities might help
inform racial centrality, which indicates the degree to which race is a core aspect
of the person’s self-definition. Sellers et al. (1998) lend some support to this,
reporting that, among 474 African American college students, racial centrality
was positively associated with both private regard and nationalist ideological
attitudes. On the other hand, centrality was negatively related with
assimilationist and humanistic ideological attitudes.
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 203

COMPETENCE PROMOTION EFFORTS

We have approached our competence promotion efforts assuming coherence and

purpose to the African American experience. This implies a need to fully
collaborate with stakeholders, who possess or must acquire the knowledge,
preferences, skills, and abilities necessary to enhance and sustain social and
emotional learning processes and outcomes for children. Such an approach
requires us to be cognizant of power dynamics as we attempt to craft a shared
vision of viable, realistic program goals and pursue effective implementation
processes. The underlying aim is to provide children with a narrow socialization
pathway (Arnett, 1995) that offers consistent, morally relevant messages and
experiences across family, school, and community contexts.

Family Programming

In our view, largely tacit family socialization processes contribute to young

children gravitating toward a given cultural orientation. For example, culturally
grounded factors such as the affective quality of early adult-child relationships,
the allocation of family responsibilities, parental discipline strategies, and race-
related socialization are all thought to guide the emergence of children’s moral
sensibilities. These types of family experiences provide children with a
rudimentary understanding of moral issues such as fairness, compassion,
reciprocity, need, accountability, envy, anger, empathy, guilt, forgiveness,
legitimate authority, and the like.
Our attempts at a culturally grounded family strengthening component reflect
best practices in the area (e.g., Kumpfer & Alvarado, 1998), but are designed to
meet the specific concerns of low-income African American families. For
example, the stress, anger, and frustration associated with personal financial
strain and living in an under-resourced community can undermine effective
parenting (e.g., Elder, Eccles, Ardelt, & Lord, 1995). As such, social and
emotional health and well-being of caregivers, to include outlets and supports
for coping, is addressed prior to entering into discussions of caregiver roles and
responsibilities. We explore ways in which material and emotional concerns
might be addressed, with an emphasis on mobilizing family and neighborhood
resources (Bowman, 1990; Sampson, 2001; Taylor, Casten, & Flickinger, 1993).
Although this strategy has been shown to moderate the stress-parenting
linkage in both African American mothers and fathers (Bowman, 1990; Taylor
et al., 1993), we are increasingly interested in a more nuanced understanding of
resource pools available to individual families (Jarrett & Burton, 1995). Briefly,
heterogeneous pools include working and middle-income relatives who can
provide more substantive assistance than may be available in economically
homogeneous pools.
204 JAGERS

Attention is then turned to the historical context of Black child development.

Notions of caregiver identity, responses to oppression, and empowerment and
liberation strategies are broached in the context of discussing parenting
philosophies, goals, and developmental imperatives for children. Separate
workshop sessions are used to describe normative benchmarks for African
American children’s intellectual, social, and emotional competence
development. Associated childrearing strategies and practices are discussed,
with a particular focus on emotional socialization, discipline strategies, and race-
related socialization.
Emotional socialization of children occurs through modeling of emotional
expressiveness, reactions to children’s emotions, and teaching about emotions
(Denham, 1998). There tends to be a positive relationship between the emotional
expressiveness of parents and their children. Research on emotional
socialization in African American families has highlighted mothers’ tendency
toward negative emotionality and its impact on children’s understanding of
anger and sadness (Garner, Jones, & Miner, 1994; McLoyd, 1990). It is assumed
that explicitly addressing stress and coping and highlighting children’s
normative development will create emotional awareness and foster relational
skills that will assist caregivers in becoming more affectively balanced with
their children (Denham, 1998). In this connection, we promote effective
regulation and communication of anger and more open expression of pride and
joy, as well as the modeling and coaching of moral emotions such as empathy
and guilt.
It is commonly held that the pervasive negative emotionality among African
American caregivers contributes to authoritarian parenting, featuring harsh,
power-assertive discipline techniques (e.g., McLoyd, 1990). However, research
suggests that these caregivers use a variety of discipline strategies (e.g., Jagers,
Bingham, & Hans, 1996; Kelly, Power, & Wimbush, 1992), Although induction
contributes to young children’s moral reasoning, the use of ignoring undermined
it but physical discipline did not (Jagers, et al., 1996). In addition, corporal
punishment does not appear to prompt children to become aggressive and such
restrictive parenting practices are construed to be effective in protecting children
in risky neighborhoods (e.g., Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Petit, 1996).
Consistent with Brody and Flor’s (1998) notion of no-nonsense parenting, we
emphasize that the proximal environment requires caregivers to exercise firm
control within an affectionate, caring parent-child relationship. Emphasis is
placed on family meetings and constructivist problem solving as well as making
caregivers aware of the benefits of aligning discipline strategies with the social
domain characteristics of the children’s transgres-sion (Smetana, 1995). One
complexity we face is caregiver responses associated with children fighting in
response to provocation. Although caregivers generally resonate with
encouraging their children to avoid conflict, they also insist that their children
fight back if hit by a peer. This tactic may be essential for children to effectively
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 205

negotiate their neighborhood, but is inconsistent with school rules that often
feature a zero-tolerance policy for violence.
The contribution of household work to fostering responsibility is another
aspect of the family component that is worthy of comment. Consistent with
Grusec, Goodnow, and Cohen (1996), we advise that family care, as compared
with self-care work, assignments enhance children’s concern for others.
However, as Jarrett and Burton (1995) pointed out, within low-income African
American families, family responsibilities and associated authority are often
defined by the age structure of the family unit. They contrasted an age-extended
structure, which has 18 or more years between generations, with an age-
condensed structure, where there are only 13 to 17 years between children and
their parents. It is suggested that age-condensed structures often force children
to assume adultlike self-and family-care responsibilities in the home. This not
only limits adult authority, potential for guidance, and monitoring, but it also
makes it difficult for children to fulfill age-appropriate expectations in schools
and other public settings.
Caregivers’ cultural and racial-related attitudes and practices should have
implications for their race-related socialization of children. Such socialization
has been identified as an important factor in the competence development of
children of color (Coll et al., 1996). Racial socialization is used in the literature
to encompass both cultural and race-related socialization efforts. Although a
majority of African American parents engage in race-related socialization
(Thornton, Chatters, Taylor, & Allen, 1990), low-income single parents were
least likely to do so. Most parental messages emphasize personal attributes
needed to integrate into mainstream American culture, with a smaller percentage
of parents focusing on racial pride and cultural heritage. Hughes and Chen
(1997) found that among middleincome parents, parents’ perceptions of
workplace bias and the age of the child help to determine the content of race-
related socialization messages. Consistent with these developmental trends, we
emphasize the need for younger children to be exposed to Black history and
heritage. As children get older, we suggest caregivers prepare them for the
prospects of confronting racial stereotypes and biases.
Finally, we highlight the need for consistent proactive caregiver advocacy for
children in school and community contexts. Strategies for cultivating
meaningful relationships with school personnel, especially classroom teachers,
are provided. An effort is made to identify and develop partnerships with
community members and organizations that can assist in supporting the healthy
development of children. We support a sense of collective efficacy (Sampson,
2001), which refers to “the extent of social connections in the neighborhood and
the degree to which residents monitor the behavior of others in accordance with
socially accepted practices and with the goal of supervising children and
maintaining public order” (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000, p. 326).
206 JAGERS

This seems particularly important given that almost half of responding

children felt that community problems resulted a lack of caring (48%) or know-
how (25%) to make needed improvements. We assume that interactions with
caring, committed community residents and institutions will help to contribute
to the emergence of a moral-civic identity and a propensity toward sustained
community activism (Youniss & Yates, 1999). Corresponding efforts to achieve
community uplift are consistent with the development of communal humanist
and communal nationalist identities.
Given our concern with empowerment and liberation processes, we are
moving toward a caregiver-led program. This mutual-help group model
encourages and supports local stakeholders in activating and sharing experiential
wisdom and in evolving existing relationships into sustainable support systems.
This strategy parallels the cooperative group activities featured in our child
curriculum and is aligned with our recommendation that classroom teachers use
class meetings and cooperative learning techniques to create a caring community
of learners (e.g., Jagers & Carroll, 2002). The notion of a caring community has
been used to characterize effective mutual help groups as well (Roberts et al.,
1999). This invites research attention to the ways in which individual
characteristics of caregivers and group helping processes impact on program
outcomes for caregivers and children.

School-Based Efforts

School-based programs offer an effective way to promote and refine moral

competencies, as they are natural gathering places for students and their
socializing agents within their community. There has been a groundswell of
support for the infusion of social and emotional learning into the core classroom
curriculum (Payton et al., 2000).
It makes sense to use classroom teachers as implementers of school-based
programs if there is a desire for sustained infusion of the program into the
normal school day. However, many teachers are exposed to and subsequently
internalize negative assumptions about the intellectual and social competencies
of low-income African American children (e.g., Pigott & Cowen, 2000). Their
diminished expectations, pity, frustration, anger, or cynicism can lead to
excessive permissiveness or harsh, punitive treatment of children. Such
interactions reflect the exercise of paternalistic and coercive power authority,
respectively, and often precipitate children’s poor school adjustment and
discipline problems (Waxman, Huang, Anderson, & Weinstein, 1997).
In our evolving professional development, we encourage teachers to consider
education as a cultural and political process. Discussion addresses professional
goals and their relevance to preparing African American children to assume
responsible and transforming roles in their families, communities, and the
broader society (Hale, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 2001).
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 207

Attention is then turned to ways in which the necessary moral authority can
be developed and exercised in several ways. For example, class meetings are
promoted because they feature democratic principles. They minimize the
hierarchical relationship between teachers and students and allow both to
express their opinions and suggestions about classroom rules and processes
(Developmental Studies Center, 1996; Nelsen, Lott, & Glenn, 2000). This
provides an opportunity to align these norms and practices with children’s
notions of justice and harm (Nucci, 2001). Once agreed on, rules, procedures,
and practices should be actively taught to ensure that they are understood and
can be performed well.
Positive recognition and encouragement are encouraged (Emmer & Stough,
2001). When inappropriate behavior does occur, the focus should be on
highlighting moral consideration and brainstorming, selecting, and enacting a
just solution, rather than blaming and punishing students (e.g., Nelsen et al,
2000; Nucci, 2001). There is some evidence that using these classroom
management strategies can yield positive results with low-income African
American children, (e.g., Freiberg, Stein, & Huang, 1995; Ialongo et al., 1999).
These teacher-student relational strategies set the context for the infusion of
social and emotional competence modules into the regular classroom instruction.
Social and emotional curriculum modules are intended to teach the requisite
understanding, skills, and abilities students need to become productive,
responsible members of a caring community of learners and to contribute to
their families and broader community. Proponents of the social and emotional
learning movement suggest that programs should entail the core skills of
awareness of self and others, positive attitudes and values, responsible decision
making, and social interaction skills (Payton et al., 2000).
Our curriculum modules are intended to extend best practices in social and
emotional learning through a critical treatment of self-other relationships in
African American cultural and racial contexts. An initial set of lessons is
intended to guide students through an exploration of who they are from a
cultural history perspective so that they can appreciate various aspects of their
personal and communal identities. This provides a foundation for valuing
themselves as unique, but deeply connected individuals. It also prepares them to
learn to identify and understand the antecedents and consequences of their moral
emotions, with special attention to empathy and guilt, anger and stress
management, self-efficacy, persistence, and goal setting.
A subsequent set of modules addresses various levels of self-other relations.
The critical need to respect others and a have a sense of social responsibility is
supported by the discussion of interpersonal and situational cues and the
importance of prosocial verbal and nonverbal communication processes. As
children experience frequent and often intense interpersonal conflict, we explore
the causes of disagreements, prosocial goals, and problem solving as part of a
critical examination of familial, school, and community relations. The
208 JAGERS

connection is made between school success and family and community well-
being and moral questions associated with oppression are addressed, including
evidence of its internalization. The value of community service participation is
highlighted and meaningful, replicable opportunities are created through
community partnerships. Only after these issues are addressed is attention turned
to multiculturalism and diversity.
Similar to the family component, collaborative learning and hands-on
activities are featured prominently in each module. The critical analysis of books
and films accents and brings additional substance to each module. There is a
focus on children’s comprehension of moral themes (Narvaez, 2001). There is
an effort to promote moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, and moral motivation
through reading comprehension strategies like discerning feelings, perspective
taking, fact versus opinion, cause and effect, drawing inferences, and predicting
outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS

Morality is a pivotal concern in our competence enhancement efforts. There is

much to learn about the moral lives of low-income Black children in family,
school, and community contexts. However, when placed in the context of
oppression and liberation strivings, their arrested life chances and undeveloped
potential suggest that we do not have the luxury of pursuing basic research
without making some distinct contribution to improving the quality of life of
these children and their families.
This chapter was intended to summarize some current work, and I have
admittedly not done justice to the issues raised. For example, there is much more
conceptual and theoretical development to be done, especially if we want to map
out trajectories for the various racialized cultural identities for males and
females. Effectively assessing processes and outcomes from this research
presents significant challenges as well. Strategies for creating sustainable school
and community-based programs for children and families also deserve attention.
In addition, the chapter does not give adequate attention to issues of gender
and socioeconomic status. This is not because they are deemed unimportant.
Despite the fairly obvious concern for young mothers, related matters such as
evolving definitions of manhood and womanhood in popu-lar youth culture and
among middle-income people warrant close and indepth attention. In a similar
way, we need to explore the intersection of class and racialized cultural identity.
We are concerned, for example, with the draw of the oppressed minority identity
for middle-income children and youth as well as with middle-income activism in
the context of conservative attacks on civil rights.
 10. MORAL COMPETENCE PROMOTION 209

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The work reported herein was supported by a grant from the Institute for
Educational Science (formerly the Office of Educational Research and
Improvement), U.S. Department of Education. The findings and opinions
expressed in this report do not reflect the position or policies of the Institute for
Educational Science or the U.S. Department of Education.

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 Author Index
A Bates, J.E., 203, 209
Abdul-Adil, J.K., 194, 198, 212
Abu-Lughod, L., 13, 18, 75, 87
Aciand, C., 94, 110
Adalbjarnardottir, S., 170, 171
Adelson, J., 71, 73, 88
Aksan, N., 39, 48, 76, 89
Albury, A., 196, 208
Allen, J., 84, 87
Allen, W., 204, 212
Allison, A.W., 64, 67
Allport, G., 125, 151
Althof, W., 141, 144, 145, 149, 150,
152
Alvarado, R., 202, 210
Anderson, C.A., 40, 48
Anderson, E., 199, 212
Anderson, L., 197, 206, 208
Appel, K., 149, 151
Ardelt, M., 202, 209
Ardila-Rey, A., 80, 87
Arend, R., 38, 49
Aristotle, 182, 191
Arnett, J.J., 202, 208
Arsenio, W.F., 136, 151, 199, 208
Asquith, P., 72, 74, 77, 90
Astor, R.A., 200, 208
B Braeges, J., 72, 74, 90, 91
Baier, A., 137, 151
Bakan, D., 38, 46
Bakhtin, M., 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100,
101, 102, 103, 110
Baldwin, J., 65, 68
Bandura, A., 37, 46, 201, 208
Barbaranelli, C., 37, 46
Barber, B.K., 83, 87
Bargh, J.A., 36, 46
Barkley, R.A., 39, 46
Batson, C.D., 37, 47
Battistich, V., 33, 47, 50
Baumrind, D., 22, 26, 34, 36, 39, 43, 47
Beck, U, 163, 171
Bell, K., 84, 87
Bengston, V L., 75, 87
Bennett, W.J., vii, xiv, 13, 18, 32, 47,
54, 55, 56, 68, 70, 86, 87
Benninga, J.A., 33, 34, 47
Berent, R., 72, 74, 90
Berglund, M., 193, 194, 209
Berkowitz, L., 40, 47
Betancourt, H., 195, 208
Biddiss, M.D., 183, 192
Bingham, K., 203, 210
Bitz, B., 78, 83, 85, 90
Blakeney, C., 129, 147, 151
Biakeney, R.F., 129, 136, 147, 151
Bloodworth, M.R., 205, 206, 211
Blos, P., 81, 87
Bok, S., 13, 18
Boldizar, J.P., 199, 209
Bolin, G., 94, 110
Bookman, J., 191, 192
Bourne, E.J., 11, 19
Bowman, P.J., 202, 208
Boykin, A.W., 195, 196, 208
Brigham, C.C., 190, 192
Brinton, D.G, 184, 192
Brody, G.H., 203, 209
Bromba, M., 157, 158, 171
Bronfenbrenner, U., 44, 47
Brooks, G., 59, 68
Brooks-Gunn, J., 205, 210
Brown, B.B., 114, 123, 125, 126, 167,
171, 172
Brown, C., 206, 210
214
 AUTHOR INDEX 215

Brown, J.R., 6, 18, 85, 87 D

Buchanan, C.M., 83, 88 Daddis, C., 72, 83, 91
Bukowski, W., 118, 126 Damon, W., 31, 47, 81, 88, 141, 151
Bulhan, H.A., 199, 209 Deater-Deckard, K., 203, 209
Buhrmester, D., 82, 88 Degaetano, G., 166, 171
Burton, L.M., 202, 204, 210 Delucci, L., 33, 47
Demos, J., 70, 73, 88
C Demos, V., 70, 73, 88
Cacioppo, J.T., 36, 50 Denham, S.A., 203, 209
Calasso, R., 99, 110 Denner, J., 195, 209
Caldwell, E., 69, 87 Denton, N.A., 197, 210
Campione-Barr, N., 72, 77, 91 DeVries, R., 85, 88
Caprara, G.V., 37, 46 Dewey, J., 169, 170, 171
Carroll, G., 205, 210 De Zengotita, T., 58, 68
Cartwright, S.A., 186, 192 Didion, J., 57, 68
Casten, R., 202, 212 DiLalla, D.L., 38, 47
Catalano, R.F., 193, 194, 209 Dinnerstein, J.L., 37, 47
Chadwick, O.F., 71, 73 Dienstbier, R.A., 39, 47
Chandler, M., 109, 110 Dishion, T.J., 40, 50
Chartrand, T.L., 36, 46 Dobson, D.M., 40, 50
Chatters, L., 204, 212 Dobson, J., 43, 47
Chavous, T.M., 196, 201, 211 Dohrn, B., 94, 110
Chuang, S.S., 72, 76, 90, 91 Dodge, K.A., 203, 209
Chen, L., 204, 210 Dolan, F.E., 64, 68
Chen, Z., 84, 88 Dornbusch, S.M., 84, 88, 89
Cocker, J., 63, 68 Douvan, E., 71, 73, 88
Cocking, R.R., 195, 209 Dreikurs, R., 85, 88
Cohen, E., 53, 68 Duffet, A., 69, 88
Cohen, H., 43, 47 Dunn, B.E., 40, 49
Cohen, J., 53, 68 Dunn, J., 6, 18
Cohen, L., 204, 209 Dunphy,D., 114, 126
Cohen-Sandier, R., 69, 87 Durkheim, E., 31, 41, 42, 48, 162, 171
Colby, A., 31, 47 Dworkin, R., 23, 48
Coll, G.C., 204, 209
Collins, W.A., 72, 82, 89 E
Collmann, B., 163, 171 Eccles, J.S., 83, 88, 202, 209
Coon, H.M., 75, 90 Edelstein, W., 157, 158, 170, 171
Cooper, C.R., 84, 88, 195, 209 Ehrlich, P.R., 174, 184, 192
Conrads, J., 163, 171 Eisenberg, N., 199, 209
Cowen, E.L., 205, 211 Elder, G.H., 161, 171, 202, 209
Coy, K.C., 39, 48, 72, 89 Ellison, C., 196, 208
Crean, H.F., 72, 77, 91 Emerson, C, 99, 102, 103, 108, 109,
Crittenden, P.M., 38, 47 110
Crnic, K., 204, 209 Emery, R.E., 72, 88
Crockenberg, S., 39, 47, 81, 82, 87 Emmer, E.T., 206, 209
Cummins, D.S., 14, 20 Engels, F., 22, 48
216 AUTHOR INDEX

Enright, R.D., 200, 209 Greenfield, P.M., 195, 209

Erikson, E.H., 81, 88, 114, 126, 164, Grinder, R.E., 14, 18
165, 171 Grotevant, H.D., 84, 88
Etzioni, A., vii, xiv, 23, 41, 48 Grossman, D., 166, 171
Grunwald, B.B., 85, 88
F Grusec, J.E., 43, 48, 204, 209
Fanon, F., 198, 209
Farkas, S., 69, 88 H
Fauser, P., 170, 171 Habermas, J., 27, 48, 149, 152
Feldlaufer, H., 83, 89 Haeckel, E., 184, 192
Feldman, S.S., 174, 184, 192 Haidt, J., 35, 36, 48
Ferguson, T.J., 200, 209 Hale, J.E., 206, 210
Fitzpatrick, K.M., 199, 209 Hallett, D., 109, 110
Flanagan, C., 83, 88 Hancock, L., 94, 110
Flickinger, S.M., 202, 212 Hans, S., 203, 210
Flor, D.L., 203, 209 Harmin, M., 33, 50
Follansbee, D., 84, 88 Hart, D., 81, 88, 114, 124, 127, 141,
Fornas, J., 94, 110 151
Foster, S.I., 72, 90 Harter, S., 123, 126
Fowers, B.J., 29, 48 Hartshorne, H., 14, 18, 32, 37, 48
Frankena, W.K., 26, 48 Hatcher, C., 198, 210
Freeman, V.G., 14, 18 Hauser, S.T., 84, 87, 88
Frey, D., 165, 171 Hawkins, D., 193, 194, 209
Freiberg, H.J., 206, 209 Hegel, G., 41, 48
Fuentes, D., 71, 88 Heitmeyer, W., 163, 171
Fuligni, A.J., 77, 82, 88 Helwig, C., 116, 117
Furman, W., 82, 88 Hersh, M., 36, 48
Higgins, A., vii, xiv, 144, 152
G Hildebrandt, N., 39, 49
Gaines, C., 72, 74, 91 Hill, J., 82, 88
Garcia, H.V., 204, 209 Hill-Barlow, D., 200, 212
Garner, P.W., 203, 209 Hinshaw, S.P., 40, 48
Garz, D., 145, 150, 152 Höffe, O., 139, 152
Gilligan,C., 142, 152 Hoffman, M.L., 199, 200, 210
Girnius-Brown, O., 39, 49 Hopf, C., 161, 164, 171
Glenn, H.S., 206, 211 Holmbeck, G.N., 82, 88
Gobineau, A.de., 182, 192 Hörmann, H., 131, 152
Goines, D.L., 36, 48 Horn, S.S., 116, 117, 118, 126
Goldman, D., 107, 110 Huang, S., 206, 209, 212
Goodnow, J.J., 43, 48, 204, 209 Hughes, D., 204, 210
Gould, S.J., 174, 182, 184, 192 Hume, D., 31, 48
Graczyk, P.A., 205, 206, 211 Humphries, M., 198, 200, 210
Grady, K., 106, 107, 110 Hyles, J., 42, 43, 48
Graham, P., 71, 90 Hyman, I.A., 43, 48
Gramzow, R., 200, 212
Grant, M., 190, 192 I
Greenberg, M.T., 193, 212 Ialongo, N., 206, 210
 AUTHOR INDEX 217

J Leming, J.S., 33, 34, 49, 138, 152

Jacob, T., 71, 90 Lesser, G.S., 71, 73, 88
Jacobson, A.M., 84, 88 Leventhal, T., 205, 210
Jagers, R.J., 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, Lewis, M., 14, 19
200, 203, 205, 208, 210, 211, 212 Lickona, T., vii, xiv, 32, 33, 49, 70, 86,
Jarrett, R.L., 202, 204, 210 89
Jarvis, E., 186, 192 Lightfoot, C., 94, 96, 110
Jenkins, R., 204, 209 Lin, Y, 206, 210
Johnson, J., 69, 88 Litman,C., 39, 47, 81, 82, 87
Jones, D.C., 203, 209 Loeber, R., 39, 40, 49
Lonczak, H.S., 193, 194, 209
K Lopez, S.R., 195, 208
Kampf, H.C., 37, 47 Lorber, R., 39, 49
Kandel, D.B., 71, 73, 88 Lord, S., 202, 209
Kellam, S., 206, 210 Lott, L., 206, 211
Kelley, M.L, 203, 210 Lover, A., 136, 151, 199, 208
Keller, M., 142, 150, 152 Luke, D.A., 205, 211
Kemmelmeier, M., 75, 90 Lynch, J.H., 41, 50
Killen, M., 73, 80, 87, 88, 89, 116, 117, Lytton, H., 40, 49
126, 127
King, M.L., 4, 18 M
Kinney, D., 114, 123, 126 Maalouf, A., 66, 68
Kitayama, S., 11, 19, 75, 89 Maguire, M., 6, 18
Klafki, W., 139 139, 152 Mahapatra, M., 142, 153
Kobrynowicz, D., 37, 47 Mahler, M.S., 81, 89
Koch, L., 136, 152 Makarenko, A.S., 48, 49
Kochanska, G., 38, 39, 48, 49, 76, 89 Males, M., 94, 110
Koenig, A., 76, 89 Markus, H.R., 11, 19, 75, 89
Kohiberg, L., vii, xiv, 21, 25, 32, 33, Marschall, D.E., 200, 212
37, 42, 48, 134, 141, 152, 170, 172 Marx, K., 22, 25, 41, 46, 49
Krawis, D., 163, 171 Massey, D.S., 197, 210
Kuczynski, L., 38, 39, 43, 48, 49 Matas, L., 38, 49
Kuhnel, W., 163, 171 Mattis, J.S., 194, 197, 198, 210
Kumpfer, K.L., 202, 210 May,M.A., 14, 18, 32, 37, 48
Kuypers, J.A., 75, 87 McAdoo, H.P., 204, 209
McGlothlin, H., 73, 88, 116, 117, 126
L McLellan, J.A., 115, 126
Ladson-Billings, G., 206, 210 McLoyd, V.C., 203, 211
Lakoff, G., 22, 49 Mechling, J., 94, 110
Lalonde,C., 109, 110 Mernissi, F., 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 19
Lamberty, G., 204, 209 Midgley, C., 83, 89
Lamborn, S.D., 84, 89 Middlekauff, R., 174, 192
Larson, R., 167, 172 Milgram, S., 36, 49
Laupa, M., 5, 19 Mill, J.S., 22, 49
Laursen, B., 72, 82, 89 Miller, J.G., 142, 153
Lawhon, D., 198, 209 Miner, J.L., 203, 209
Lee-Kim, J., 73, 88, 116, 117, 126 Mock, L.O., 198, 200, 210, 211
Lehmann, R., 157, 172 Moffitt, T.E., 85, 89
218 AUTHOR INDEX

Moller, R., 163, 171 Payton, J.W., 205, 206, 211

Montemayor, R., 72, 89 Pepper, F.C., 85, 88, 90
Mont-Reynaud, R., 84, 88 Petit, G.S., 203, 209
Morrison, T., 66, 68 Petty, R.E., 36, 50
Morson, G., 99, 108, 109, 110 Phelan, T.W., 69, 90
Mortimer, J., 167, 172 Piaget, J., 4, 5, 11, 19, 96, 97, 111, 124,
Mory,M., 114, 123, 126 127, 141, 142, 153, 170, 172
Moshman, D., 109, 110 Pigott, R.L., 205, 211
Mullally, P.R., 75, 89 Pilger, J., 191, 192
Munn, P., 6, 18 Polakow, V., 93, 111
Murphy, E., 198, 210 Power, C., vii, xiv, 144, 153, 170, 172
Murray, Y., 39, 48, 198, 210 Power, T.G., 203, 210
Powers, S.I., 84, 88
N Pugh, M.J., 114, 124, 127
Naipal, V.S., 9, 19 Pulkkinen, L., 40, 50
Narvaez, D., 207, 211
Neff, K., 12, 19 R
Neisen, J., 206, 211 Radke-Yarrow, M., 39, 49
Neruda, P., 66, 68 Rambusch, N., 35, 50
Newman, B.M., 114, 115, 126 Rappaport, J., 205, 211
Newman, P.R., 114, 115, 126 Rathore, S.S., 14, 18
Noam, G.G., 84, 88 Raths, L.E.. 33, 50
Nobles, W.W., 195, 211 Rawls, J.A., 23, 24, 50
Nucci, L P., vii, xiv, 7, 19, 73, 75, 76, Reed, A., Jr., 197, 211
80, 85, 89, 97, 110, 116, 118, 126, 127, Regalia, C., 37, 46, 50
142, 152, 206, 211 Reich, K.H., 129, 151
Nussbaum, M., 11, 12, 13, 19, 26, 49 Reichenbach, R., 142, 153
Reid, J.B., 40, 50
O Restrepo, A., 72, 91
O’Connor, T., 84, 87 Reuman, D., 83, 88
Offer, D., 84, 90 Rez, K, 165, 171
Ogbu, J., 197, 211 Richardson, F.C., 29, 48
Okin, S.M., 12, 19 Ritter, P.L., 84, 88
Olsen, J.E., 83, 87 Roberts, L.J., 205, 211
Orwell, G., 58, 68 Robin, A.L., 72, 90
Oser, F.K., 131, 133, 141, 142, 143, Rorty, R., 137, 153
144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 153 Ross, E.A., 189, 192
Osofsky, J.D., 199, 211 Rowley, S.A., 196, 201, 211
Oswald, H., 157, 172 Rush, B., 186, 192
Oyserman, D., 75, 90 Rutter, M., 71, 73, 81, 90
Ryan, J.A., 193, 194, 209
Ryan, K., vii, xiv, 32, 34, 50
P Ryan, R.M., 41, 50
Paley, V.G., 34, 49 Rychen, D. 169, 172
Palincsar, A.S., 169, 172
Parker, B., 198, 200, 210
Pastorelli, C., 37, 46, 50 S
Patterson, G.R., 39, 40, 50 Saarni, C., 14, 19
Salem, D., 205, 211
 AUTHOR INDEX 219

Salganik, L.H., 169, 172 Sternberg, R.J., 40, 50, 89

Sampson, R.J., 202, 205, 211 Stough, L.M., 206, 209
Santucho, M.R., 197, 211 Straus, M.A., 43, 50
Saraswathi, T.S., 167, 171 Sturzbecher, D., 158, 160, 172
Scheler, M, 197, 211 Sueyoshi, L., 80, 89
Schiefele, U., 83, 88 Sulmasy, D.P. 14, 18
Schine, J., 170, 172
Schmaling, K.B., 39, 40, 49 T
Schulman, K.A., 14, 18 Takaki, R., 174, 176, 182, 185, 186,
Schulz,W, 157, 172 192
Seghers, A., 159, 172 Tangney, J.P., 200, 212
Seidman, E., 205, 211 Taylor, J.H., 40, 50
Seligman, M.E., 162, 172 Taylor, R.D., 202, 212
Sellers, R.M., 196, 201, 211 Taylor, R.J., 204, 211
Seiman, R., 114, 127, 137, 153, 170, Tennenbaum, D.L., 71, 90
172 Thorton, M.C., 204, 212
Sen, A.K., 26, 50 Tisak, M., 73, 91
Shagle, S.C., 83, 87 Tocqueville, A., 36, 50
Shakespeare, W., 94, 111 Tompsett, C.J., 205, 206, 211
Schaps, E., 33, 50 Torney-Purta, J., 157, 172
Shelton, J.N., 196, 201, 211 Toro, P.A., 205, 211
Shweder, R.A., 11, 19, 142, 153, 194, Tracz, R.K., 33, 47
195, 211 Triandis, H.C., 11, 19
Silver, M., 69, 87 Tsang, J., 37, 50
Silverberg, S.B., 41, 50, 71, 72, 82, 90 Tucker, W.H., 184, 185, 192
Silzer, M., 161, 164, 171 Tugendhat, E., 135, 153
Simon, S.B., 33, 50 Turiel, E., 5, 6, 12, 19, 73, 75, 86, 91,
Sippolla, L., 118, 126 116, 118, 122, 127, 142, 150, 153, 194,
Skinner, E.A., 165, 172 195, 196, 212
Slomkowski, C., 6, 18
Smetana, J.G., 40, 50, 72, 73, 74, 76,
77, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, U
116, 127, 204, 211 Ulricth-Herman, M., 163, 171
Smith, M., 196, 201, 211
Smith, R, 198, 211 V
Smollar, J., 82, 91 Van Evrie, J.H., 186, 192
Sokol, B., 109, 110 VanGeest, J.B., 14, 20
Solomon, D., 33, 47, 50 Vaughan, A.T., 174, 176, 177, 192
Sommers, C.H., 13, 19 Veugelers, W., 131, 133, 153
Sparks, E., 33, 47, 194, 212 Verna,S., 167, 172
Spitz, R.A., 81, 91 Vokey, D., 23, 50
Spychiger, M., 133, 153
Sroufe, L., 38, 49 W
Stampp, K.M., 174, 192 Wagner, P.E., 200, 212
Stangor, C., 116, 117, 126 Wainryb, C., 12, 19, 196, 212
Stegge, H., 200, 209 Walker, K., 194, 197, 210
Stein, T.A., 206, 209 Walker, L.J., 40, 50
Steinberg, L., 41, 50, 82, 84, 91 Wallwork, E., 42, 50
220 AUTHOR INDEX

Walton, A., 59, 68 Wigfield, A., 83, 88

Wang, S., 206, 210 Wikan, U., 12, 13, 19
Ward, J.V., 194, 197, 212 Williams, N., 194, 195, 212
Wardlaw, D.M., 205, 206, 211 Wilson, A.D., 37, 47
Wasik, B.H., 204, 209 Wilson, I.B., 14, 20
Watkins, W.H., 173, 174, 192 Wilson, W.J., 197, 212
Watts, D., 40, 49 Wimbush, D.D., 203, 210
Watts, R.J., 194, 195, 198, 212 Wittgenstein, L., 130, 153
Waxman, H.C., 206, 212 Wynia, M.K., 14, 20
Weber, E.K., 80, 89 Wynne, E.A., vii, viii, xiv, 13, 20, 32,
Weinfurt, K.P., 14, 18 34, 50, 86, 91
Weinstein, T., 206, 212
Weiss, B., 84, 88 Y
Weiss, R.H., 167, 172 Yates, M., 205, 212
Weissberg, R.P., 193, 205, 206, 211, Yau, J., 72, 73, 74, 80, 90, 91
212 Yeats, W B., 96, 111
Wentzel, K.R., 34, 50 Youniss, J., 82, 91, 115, 126, 205, 212
Wernich, J.M., 161, 164, 171 Yule, W., 71, 73, 90
Werthamer, L., 206, 210
Weston, D.R., 5, 19
White, C., 185, 193 Z
Zan, B., 85, 8
 Subject Index
A Character education, vii, 29, 31–34, 45,
Adolescence and conflict with parents,
40, 70–72, 74, 81–82
and defiance, 40
and parental authority, 76–78, 84
and school practices, 83–86
and risk taking, 94–95, 103–105
and teacher authority, 76, 78–80
negative views of, 69–70
positive relations with parents, 71–
72, 82
Affect and morality, 35–36
African-Americans and child
competencies, 198–205
and social exploitation, 194–195
families and adolescents, 72, 77
youth at risk, 193
Agency, 38
Aggression, 40
Assimilationist ideology, 196
Authority, 5, 12, 38
and authoritative classroom, 34, 45–
46
and parenting, 43–44, 77
Autonomy, 41, 80
and morality, 5, 42
as developmental process, 81–82
in adolescence, 40, 74, 76
B
Black Americans
and moral stereotypes, 178–180,
188–190
and moral education, 181, 191, 207
C
Care in classrooms, 33
Categorical imperative, 22, 136
Character, 30–31, 38, 42, 53
55, 138
Competence promotion
with families, 202–205
with schools, 205–207
Compliance, 39
as behavioral, 38
as dispositional, 38–39
Conflict in childhood, 63–64
Conventional domain,
see also social con-vention, 73, 77,
116, 142
Culture, 11
and adolescent-parent conflict, 73–
74, 77
and race, 195–196
and relativism, 29 221
and treatment of women, 8–13, 29
and value of person, 24
D
Domain theory, 73, 116
Deontic moral theory, 23–25, 45
Dialectical materialism, 21–23, 44
Discourse theory, 97–100
E
Ethics, 54–55, 64–65
G
German reunification and nee-Nazism,
157–160
and neo-Nazism, 157–160
and anomie among youth, 161–164
H
Honesty, 13
and deception, 14
and social inequality, 15
222
223 SUBJECT INDEX

I N
Identity and peer exclusion, 123–124 Negative knowledge, 129–132
and adolescent neo-Nazism, 161– Negative morality, 129–130, 133–135
166
racialized identity and morality, O
197–198 Oppression, 26
Individualism and collectivism, 11, 12, and freedom, 9, 16
75
and acquisitive individualism, 196
Intuitionism, 35–37 P
Peer exclusion, 113
and convention, 117–120, 122
J and development, 122
Just community school, 130, 143–146 and gender, 116
and realistic discourse, 146–149 and morality, 117, 120
and race, 116–117
L and sexuality, 118–120
Liberalism, 23 Peer groups in adolescence, 113–115
Lowrider Art, 105–108 Personal (psychological) domain, 7, 80,
116, 142
M and social exclusion, 117
Montessori classroom, 35 in adolescence, 74–75, 78
Moral atmosphere, 34, 45 Punishment, 43
Moral competence, 194 Puritan ideology, 175–176
Moral decay, current period of, vii, viii, and race, 175–178
55–56, 70, 93–94, 149–150
Moral development as entailing R
resistance, 3, 11, 63–65 Relativism, 28
Moral discourse ethics, 27 and morality, 29
Moral domain, 7, 73, 77, 116, 142 and tolerance, 29
Moral education as developmental Resistance and subversion among
process, vii, 31, 137, 169–170 women, 8–13
as identity formation, 60–61, 169 and culture, 12
and Kohlberg, 142–143 and social change, 4, 9–10, 16–17
and peer exclusion, 124–125 as developmental process, 3, 11
and teachers, 61, 66 in adolescence, 76, 81–82
Morality, 30, 95–96 in childhood, 4–6, 39, 63
and agency, 37, 97 in social relationships, 3, 7, 16
and authority, 5, 42, 96 Rule utilitarianism, 22
and humanism, 58
and racism, 174 S
and religion, 58 Scientific racism, 182–187
and school rules, 5, 63 Self and consciousness, 97–98
and self, 109 as carnival, 101–102
disengagement from, 37 as novelistic, 99–101, 108–109
 SUBJECT INDEX 224

Social convention, 5, 64 U
Social hierarchy, 12 Utilitarianism, 23, 25
Socialization, 42–43
Standpoint theory, 13, 26–28 V
Values clarification, 33
T Violence prevention, 198–200
Taliban, 9, 10, 17 Virtue, vii, 13, 21, 25, 31–32, 45, 54–
Tolerance, 29 56
Triforial system of moral education,
138–141