Question

Make sure to write in complete sentences and realte it to children nothing else

Explain how children reason in Kohlberg’s three levels of moral thought: preconventional moral thought, conventional moral thought, and postconventional moral thought. For each level, report a) what children emphasize as important as their basis for their moral beliefs and b) provide an example from the Heinz dilemma that reflects that type of moral reasoning. Each explanation (what children emphasize)

Answer 1

Preconventional Moral- This level of moral development coincides approximately with the preschool period of life and with Piaget’s preoperational period of thinking. At this age the child is still relatively self-centered and insensitive to the moral effects of actions on others. The result is a somewhat short-sighted orientation to morality. the child adopts an ethics of obedience and punishment—a sort of “morality of keeping out of trouble.” The rightness and wrongness of actions is determined by whether actions are rewarded or punished by authorities such as parents or teachers.

Eventually the child learns not only to respond to positive consequences, but also learns how to produce them by exchanging favors with others. The new ability creates Stage 2, an ethics of market exchange. At this stage the morally “good” action is one that favors not only the child, but another person directly involved. A “bad” action is one that lacks this reciprocity. If trading the sandwich from your lunch for the cookies in your friend’s lunch is mutually agreeable, then the trade is morally good; otherwise it is not.

Conventional Moral- As children move into the school years, their lives expand to include a larger number and range of peers and (eventually) of the community as a whole. The change leads to conventional morality, which are beliefs based on what this larger array of people agree on—hence Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional.” At first, in Stage 3, the child’s reference group are immediate peers, so Stage 3 is sometimes called the ethics of peer opinion. If peers believe, for example, that it is morally good to behave politely with as many people as possible, then the child is likely to agree with the group and to regard politeness as not merely an arbitrary social convention, but a moral “good.”

as the child becomes a youth and the social world expands even more, he or she acquires even larger numbers of peers and friends. He or she is therefore more likely to encounter disagreements about ethical issues and beliefs. Resolving the complexities lead to Stage 4, the ethics of law and order, in which the young person increasingly frames moral beliefs in terms of what the majority of society believes. Now, an action is morally good if it is legal or at least customarily approved by most people, including people whom the youth does not know personally.

Postconventional Moral- As a person becomes able to think abstractly (or “formally,” in Piaget’s sense), ethical beliefs shift from acceptance of what the community does believe to the process by which community beliefs are formed. The new focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has been created through fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected.

The realization that ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals toward Stage 6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. At this final stage, the morally good action is based on personally held principles that apply both to the person’s immediate life as well as to the larger community and society. The universal principles may include a belief in democratic due process (Stage 5 ethics), but also other principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural environment. At Stage 6, the universal principles will guide a person’s beliefs even if the principles mean disagreeing occasionally with what is customary (Stage 4) or even with what is legal (Stage 5).

The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. There are two versions shown from the dilemma in moral and ethics classes as- why heinz should have stolen the drug and why not. Like- in Preconventional Moral, Self-interest, prison is an awful place, and he would more likely languish in a jail cell than over his wife's death, that is why he shoud not steal the drug. In Conventional Moral, Conformity, stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you cannot blame him. In, Postconventional Moral, Social contract orientation, the scientist has a right to fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.