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Education and the Growth of Conscience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Mannes Tidmarsh O.P.
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Consciences are neither born nor made, they develop. Development in living beings is the outcome of interaction between the individual and the environment; specifically, in the case of moral development, between the individual person and the culture. The child is born with the potential ability to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in terms other than those of immediate personal satisfaction to which the infant is limited, but the growing child can make assessments only in terms of the values which he is taught. He has. as part of his human make-up, the tendency to pursue the perceived good and to shun the perceived bad. What he actually perceives as good and bad depends largely on what the society into which he is born teaches him so to perceive. This is not to say that the individual's capacity for moral judgment is wholly dependent on the influence of external agents; the ultimate structure of conscience is unique because no two environments are entirely alike and no two individuals are entirely alike.

Though it has been said that moral development is the result of interaction between the individual and the culture one must be yet more precise. The child receives his values not from ‘the culture’ or from ‘society’ in a large and undefined sense but from a fairly circumscribed group of persons: parents and siblings, other adults in the family circle, school teachers and companions. This means that values are never transmitted to the child in a ‘pure’ state, they are always, in some way. modified by the person who mediates them.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 46 , Issue 542 , August 1965 , pp. 640 - 645
Copyright
Copyright © 1965 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 The ability lo assess situations in moral terms is only one part of ‘conscience’, used loosely: this cognitive ability must be complemented by the conative ability that enables action to follow upon moral decision. The discussion in this paper is concerned solely with the development of the cognitive ability, that is, with the development of ‘conscience’ in the strict sense.

2 MacRae, D.: ‘A Test of Piaget's Theory of Moral Development. J. Abnormal and Social Psych., 49, 1954.Google ScholarPubMed

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4 Sears, R., Maccoby, E. E., & Lewin, H.: Patterns of Child Rearing, 1957.

5 Harrower, M.: ‘Social Status and the Moral Development of the Child’, Brit. J. Educational Psych., 4, 1934.Google Scholar

6 Hoffman, M. L.: ‘Parental Discipline and the Child's consideration for Others’, Child Development. 34, 1963.Google ScholarPubMed

7 Dowd, Sr. M. Amadeus: ‘Moral Reasoning in Teen Age Girls’, J. Cath. University of America, 1948. Gilen, L.: ‘Moral Conscience Differences in 17‐year‐old Boys and Girls’. Lumen Vitae. 1957.

8 Boehm, E. & Naas, M.: ‘Social Class Differences in Conscience Development’, Child Development, 33, 1962Google ScholarPubMed. Boehm, E.: ‘The Development of Conscience: A Comparison of American Children of Different Socio‐Economic Levels. Child Development, 33, 1962Google Scholar.

9 It should be remembered that in the United States a public school IS the equivalent of a State school here and there is no religious instruction given in U.S. public schools.