Can We Teach Social Conscience?

Educator Brenda Dyck examines whether social conscience is caught or taught. She shares how a recent project about homelessness helped reshape her students' mental models.

"Children develop not because they are shaped through external reinforcements but because their curiosity is aroused. They become interested in information that does not quite fit into their existing cognitive structures and are thereby motivated to revise their thinking."

W.C. Crain, from Theories of Development

I've often found myself wondering whether social conscience is caught or taught. Is it our job as teachers to stir up students' social consciences and, if it is, how do we do that?

To answer those questions, I pulled out some learning theory from my university days. At that time, Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development were the irrelevant musings of a psychologist far away. This time around, however, Lawrence Kohlberg's theory was pungent with practical application for me. Using Kohlberg's philosophy of moral development as a lens, I took a critical look at The Eleanor Rigby Project, a tele-collaborative project about homelessness that I created for my language arts students. I considered how effectively the project's activities challenged student thinking about the issue of stereotyping the homeless and I evaluated whether the lessons students learned during the project supported ethical challenge and long-term moral action. As I watched my students get involved in the project, I was able to see many of Kohlberg's principles come to life. I even saw my students' thinking shift!

According to psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg,

-  most adults never get past level three of the moral development stages; and an individual can only progress through those stages one stage at a time -- they cannot "jump" stages.

-  people will come to a comprehension of a moral rationale only one stage above their own.

-  those who deal with children should present them with moral dilemmas for discussion, dilemmas that will help them to see the reasonableness of a "higher stage" of morality.

-  most moral development occurs through social interaction.

-  in order for children to reorganize their thinking they must be active in the process, not just passive listeners. Just listening to adults promote moral judgments will not promote moral development.

The Matrix

The Matrix (1999)

A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

 

Directors: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

 

Writers: Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

 

Stars: Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss

 

 

Storyline

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality, but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines that live off of the humans' body heat and electrochemical energy and who imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix. As a rebel against the machines, Neo must return to the Matrix and confront the agents: super-powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out Neo and the entire human rebellion.

The movie The Matrix is certainly a science-fiction/action thriller. However, it is also deeply profound, carrying meaningful threads of thought and truth on the most intense philosophical and spiritual levels. The film is full of allusions, messages, symbolism in the use of names, numbers, characters… and parallelism with our present world we live in.

See Movie Trailer

Click here to see LESSON PLAN based on the film

Gobal Day of Rage

15 October

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets around the world in a global day against corporate greed, banking excesses and other grievances that have crippled the world's economies.

In Madrid, tens of thousands of people converged on the central square. There were riots in Rome, protests in Paris, and at the Reichstag in Berlin police moved in to clear the area after protesters stayed beyond their allotted time. There were also demonstrations in America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

More than 950 demonstrations against the global financial system and corporate greed were held in more than 80 countries around the world yesterday.

In Madrid, the city's central square was overflowing with people supporting the "indignado" ("the indignant") movement, which has been building throughout this year as Spain's financial woes have mounted.

Tens of thousands filled the plaza and adjoining streets. Police in Barcelona estimate that 60,000 people took to the streets there and organisers in Seville, southern Spain, believe they had 20,000 people out. With another 60 cities organising protesters, and local news agencies giving numbers in their thousands or tens thousands from several of them, the overall indignado turnout rose above 200,000.  The protests were entirely peaceful, with children walking alongside parents and Spain's indignados feeling a sense of pride that their May camp-outs in the Puerta del Sol and dozens of other city squares helped inspire demonstrators around the globe.

In New York Occupy Wall Street protesters renewed their protests following yesterday's celebrations after a planned "clean-up" of their camp in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan had been called off.

In London about 1,000 protesters massed outside St Paul's Cathedral in a bid to occupy the London Stock Exchange in the nearby Paternoster Square. But the square was closed off by police and private security and the demonstration remained focused on the steps around the cathedral after attempts to enter failed.

John Paul II

Solidarity is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both

near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.

                                by John Paul II, Solicituo Rei Socialis, #38