The Moral Intelligence of Children by Robert Coles

Author:Robert Coles [Coles, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79981-4
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Language for Opinion

A child attending elementary school is much more able than a preschooler to pause and look self-consciously at the world, wonder aloud and stop to think silently about it—to try to be good, yet also ponder the good, ask what “good” is, how it ought be expressed in the course of a life. Now, a more accomplished capacity for the utilization of language, a more skillful way with words, serves not only the purpose of communication but also introspection. Now children go to Sunday school or Hebrew school. Now they turn to science, as my young astronomer friend did, and as a consequence of the same whys that theologians in a different way ask of themselves, of us. Now they begin to read, to hear others read, and thereby their world is vastly increased. All sorts of others, long gone from this life (historical figures, for example) become remembered companions of sorts: their words, their stories, are taken up and in various ways, wittingly or unwittingly, are taken to heart. Now children have teachers to attend as well as parents, and scout masters and athletic directors or coaches, and of course, friends; and now they watch television, are taken to the movies. No wonder, then, that parents sometimes feel that they are losing a bit of control over their children, even as they are presumably glad to have their son or daughter get older—more rational, more capable physically, better able to follow directions and comply with instructions, better able to deal with the emotions that have a way of asserting themselves at the dining table, for instance, or in the family room, where people gather to be together and sometimes contend with each other as well as enjoy one another’s company.

Now “yes” and “no” aren’t so easy to impose upon a child, nor do many of us, certainly including teachers, want it to be otherwise. After all, the heart of the classroom, even in elementary school, has to do with (so one hopes) expression, consideration, discussion, amplification—not only the rote memorization of true and false, but reflection upon the complexity, ambiguity, inconsistency, and variation of this world’s events, that side of the world’s life that is waiting to be comprehended. Moreover, at school a child learns from classmates as well as from teachers and books—how someone of his or her age says something that may be unlike what a parent or a teacher has so far said, and therefore all the more unforgettable. This is a time when opinion comes to children—when language is not only for getting along with elders essentially on their terms, but for the assertion of the self: words a musculature at the beck and call of feeling, of concern and wonder, as they come to the young mind.

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