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Ethics in Early Childhood Development Early childhood development meant may be defined as the critical years of education for toddlers. During these years they become increasingly aware of their surrounds and the behavior. Children will adapt to the behaviors which are visual to them. During these years child absorb more information than the average adult over a 4 year span. This is because their sole purpose is to learn and grow. As parents, we have to be very aware of the surrounds and things we present them with. Behavior learned now will carry out. The question of teaching them moral ethics at this point is a controversial issue.
Moral ethics are those things we know are right. The pillars of these ethics are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. These are the elements of growth which builds character amongst our children. Strong character is very important because it will carry you through life. Teaching moral values is often referred to as “Character Education”. The most important factor in teaching character education is professional development of being able to view the world for the eyes of our children. This visual determines where are focus needs to be whit our children.
Looking at the actions of the majority of our young child we can see, there is a strong need for character education. More and more are we seeing teen violence, teen pregnancy, and malicious acts across the board being engineered by our youth community. Early development and ethics can be the end to this up rising trend of an ethically lost generation. Moral education is becoming an increasingly popular because the signs of the times seek the demand (Nucci, L). We have a moral crisis declared upon our society with statistical numbers of violent juvenile crimes.
Although all these crimes are not directly associated with morals and the nature of a moral environment, there is a visual up- swing in the trend linking the solutions and problems to education of moral and social values. The schools role in education of moral development is the debate of much controversy. All too often debate on this topic is reduced to posturing reflecting personal views rather than informed opinion (Nucci, L). A large part of the controversy surrounding moral or character education has to do with how morality is to be defined. In everyday discourse morality refers simply to the norms of right and wrong conduct.
At issue, however, are what is meant by moral right and wrong, and whose criteria shall be used to judge the wrongness of actions (Nucci, L). This is why we face another problem with our children without an answer in sight, focused on the true need. Our children need to understand what true values and morals are all about. We are the new nation of every parent working to support the needs of our children, yet we forget about the basic needs. Far too often are parents the target their own children who lack the understanding of ethics and values and further lash out at their parents as if it is acceptable.
Corrective measure need to be taken. We need to revert back to the times where simple values were the only solution. Collectively are parents and educators we need to go back to the root by starting at the critical learning stages. With the major of households being dual income it is hard to go back to the days where mother laid down the rules and daddy was the enforcer. Parents and their child care providers now have to work together to make sure the values, which will be crucial to the character of their child, are being factored into their daily regimens.
Parents have to make sure the providers they have chosen, have the same or similar values. These are things were must considered, due to the fact typical working parents actually have less focus time with their children. There may not be on focal point which emulates effective character education, but there are some important key principles. Some of these principles may include the following. 1. Promote core ethical values such as caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility and respect for self and others (Lickona, T). Children follow examples.
By displaying these values to them early on in their development they will develop the characteristics with unspoken words. 2. Defined “Character” at a level of understanding. Good character consists of understanding, caring about, and acting upon core ethical values by to a young child you must learn to simplify to their terms. 3. Give an opportunity to display the development character. It is imperative for these lessons to take place as soon as a child begins to show signs of knowledgeable communications. Let them display their understanding.
The consequences of not implementing ethical and moral values during the early developmental stages of our children lives can be grave. We have child who are never taught any values, therefore our prisons are full and rehabilitation is just a fancy word in the dictionary for them. They truly know not what they do because they have not been taught. We have children who have got a one-sided view of ethical values; therefore we have corporate corruption, political figures with children outside of their marriages. On a less broad scale, we can equate this simply to habit of cheating, lying, or stealing.
These are all small actions on the childhood level; however, the potential of growth in either area leads to a statistic. Judging the current state of our children, I would have to move toward the necessity for ethics to be a part of early childhood development. Whether, it starts with the parents, child care providers or in the schools, it seem irrelevant to me. Catching behaviors in the beginning will leave a variety of ways to focus on corrective measure. Teaching ethics to our child as soon as they are able to communicate will be a vital step to getting our youth back on track.
They are our future; can we jeopardize the state of our existence by failing to teach ethical values? References Riley, Dick (2000). Champions of a cause by. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_qa3666/is_/ai_n8893910 Childs, Eleanor (1995). Speaking out on character education. Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m0STR/is_n1_v105/ai_17448485 Jones, Stephen C. (1999) Community of caring: A character education program designed to integrate values into a school community by. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from NASSP Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 609, 46-51 (1999)DOI: 10. 1177/019263659908360907 Lickona, T. , Schaps, E. & Lewis, C. Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education. Retrieved October 19, 2008, from http://www. cortland. edu/character/articles/prin_iii. htm McCrea, Hannah (2007). Should Ethics be taught in Public Schools? Retrieved October 17, 2008 from http://www. theseminal. com/2007/10/09/should-ethics-be-taught-in-public- schools/ Nucci, L. (1997). Moral Development and Character Formation. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://tigger. cc. uic. edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/articles/nuccimoraldev. html