Human Development, Story Heinz Explain Reasoning Process

¶ … Human Development, story Heinz explain reasoning process underlying decisions made stages Kohlberg's continuum moral development. Based, develop a case study a moral dilemma faced individual stage middle childhood. Jackie is ten years old. She recently discovered that life is not as beautiful as people might think it is when considering the condition of other children in her classroom. She has two friends (Sarah and Tim) in her group who have abusive parents and who are often left to starve by their unsympathetic tutors.

She knows her mother and father are unwilling to allow her to befriend poor children and that it is impossible for her to influence them in intervening and helping her two friends. All that she can do is to try to sneak out small amounts of food out of the house when no one is looking. However, the food that she takes is barely enough to feed one of her friends. As a result, it is up to her to decide which of her friends should be provided with resources.

Considering that it would be best for her to give Sarah the food she took from her home, Jackie ignored Tim and started to give her girl friend food on a daily basis, hoping that the fact that they are both girls is a principal factor determining her decision. Considering Kohlberg stages of moral development, it is only safe to assume that Jackie's conditions can be categorized using the Premoral or Preconventional Stages.

She acknowledges the power of her parents and does not try to sneak more food out of the house because she fears their authority. Also, Jackie acts in accordance with concepts put across by the second stage of Preconventional Morality. She needs to think about what choice would benefit her, especially given that she knows that it is impossible for her to help both Sarah and Tim.

According to Kohlberg, Jackie is not at an age-appropriate stage and this prevents her from fully understanding the complexity of the situation that she comes across. If Jackie were to reach the Postconventional or Principled Morality Stage she would have comprehended that all humans are equal and that she needs to do everything in her power to help both Sarah and Tim. Stage six in Kohlberg's developmental stages set makes it possible for an individual to accept that he or she needs to help others, regardless of consequences.

Jean Piaget's studies in the field of moral development point toward the belief that Jackie was not in a position where she could understand the best solution to Sarah and Tim's problem. In spite of the fact that she had the tendency to help these two individuals, she was in a stage of early moral reasoning and did not have the ability to correctly tackle such situations.

Jackie had just found out that other children in her classroom came from a different world and that she could do something to help them. She was in a Concrete operational stage and she was barely aware of what was happening around her. She had not reached the Formal operational stage, where she would be better prepared to.