Moral Reasoning Taps is a movie about a private military high school, where the school is facing closure. To prevent this the adolescents attending the campus take over the school; in terms of adolescent moral reasoning, the boys involved impulsively react instead of thinking things through. They arm themselves, feeling like they are taking initiative and working together as a team to accomplish a common goal. They react just as they are taught, to be a team and to foster group dependence and unity.

The conflict involves actor Timothy Hutton, a sort of commandant of the cadets, who wanted to barricade the school long enough to talk to their leader to stop them from closing to school. He wanted to wait until his leader could tell them or order them to stand down. Tom Cruises character was an aggressor, and opened fire on the national guard and ended up being shot. The bulk of the film focuses on the premise of the main cadets arguing about the proper course of action. One wanted to keep the situation as is an not do anything rash; One wanted to take aggressive action, was impetuous and impulsive. This is natural adolescent moral reasoning. Yet a third main character wanted to wait and see like the...

Studies suggest that girls may have reacted differently to the above situation than the boys did (Diver-Stamnes & Thomas, 1993). In a study conducted of males and females, females more often advocated caring and compassionate responses in cases where wrongdoing was evidenced, whereas the male participants were more likely to advocate an "eye for an eye" type thinking (Diver-Stamnes & Thomas, 1993).
Research conducted in the area of moral reasoning among adolescents shows that generally adolescents "formulate dilemmas" of their own that are very different in some circumstances from reality or the situation at hand (Binfet, 1995; from Pehkonen & Tirri, 2002). Frequently adolescents focus on themes related to interpersonal relations (Pehkonen & Tirri, 2002), as evidenced by the movie Taps where the youths involved are struggling to form interpersonal relationships and act on a united front. Other dilemma themes common to adolescents include issues of ownership and public welfare (Pehkonen & Tirri, 2002). Adolescent girls are more likely to demonstrate "emotional and spiritual sensitivity" in their reflection of moral dilemmas, and more able to use "elegant mathematical reasoning" than boys are (Pehkonen & Tirri, 2002). Adolescent boys are more likely to reflect on their own expertise and experience as…