When I read the furore over the punishment of a few students for defaming a teacher in Georgia, My Fox Atlanta seemed to illustrate Kohlberg’s stages 2-6 quite clearly.

This is personally relevant: my middle-school daughter complains about her teachers on Facebook.

Detail

Kohlberg moral stages in news about Facebook [PDF]

Conclusions:

The kids’ quotes fit Kohlberg’s stages 2-4 (expected at age 9-20), and adults’ quotes fit stages 4-6. In the light of that difference, we should not be surprised if parents are frustrated by a resolution that satisfies the kids, or if the kids feel that the agreement reached by adults is needlessly complicated.

Calling in lawyers sounds like bad strategy, possibly just bluster. It raises the stakes beyond anything the kids seem to want, and no one in this story has a solid legal position. Facebook users implicitly agree to “not use Facebook if you are under 13.” So who lied in order to set up Facebook accounts? Are parents responsible for the defamation by minors? Did the school fail its duty of care, by letting students on Facebook, knowing that they were under-age?

Acceptance of a stage-theory of moral development can unfortunately lead to sequestering of moral authority and codification of rules which are inexplicable to students, such as bans on Web 2.0 sites or explicit lyrics. On the other hand, it can inform a greater engagement with character development. We can expect middle-school students to work hard on questioning rules they have previously accepted and reconstructing their moral responsibility and the social order in their minds. We can expect students to differ in their readiness for different forms of rules. We can model acceptance and consideration for the less sophisticated, because that will be a necessary skill and discipline throughout life.

And like the kids, we need to keep constantly revisiting this.

References

Facebook.com (2010) Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Revision October 4, 2010. Facebook.com http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Proctor, A (2011) Douglas Co. Students Disciplined Over Facebook Post. My Fox Atlanta. 1 March, http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/douglas-co-students-disciplined-over-facebook-post-030111

Protalinski, E (2011) Students suspended, expelled over Facebook posts. ZDNet, March 4, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/students-suspended-expelled-over-facebook-posts/517