“Do you have a conscience?”: lecture by Lyudmila Petranovskaya

About how and why the substitution of concepts occurs, what mistakes parents make and what role freedom of choice plays in shaping children’s conscience, Lyudmila Petranovskaya told at the first lecture of the project Family Tree.

Let’s face it: we don’t know how to talk to children, we can’t clearly explain ordinary things to them. Here you, for example, can reasonably answer the child’s question, should he share toys or not? Or is Robin Hood a good character or not? Is he doing the right thing in terms of morality and ethics, or is it the other way around? We, adults, have a very big gap in this topic, and we need to deal with it, otherwise it is simply impossible to talk about the formation of conscience in children.

Ethics (or morality, conscientiousness) is often confused with other concepts.

Ethics and courtesy. Many people believe that the ability to be polite, respect the interests of others, be pleasant in communication, delicate, in some sense convenient, is a sign of ethics. In all this there are components of ethics, but these concepts are not equal.

Ethics and good manners. Some, oversimplifying, equate ethics with good manners. Think about it: do we not do something because it is indecent or because it is ethically unacceptable, wrong? There is definitely a line between good manners and decency.

Ethics and legality. Ethics are often equated with law-abidingness. This does not mean the rule of law, but the laws – what is written in some code.

And we are not necessarily talking about laws at the federal level. There are cases when a violation of school rules is equated with an unethical act. At the same time, no one ever discusses these rules with children and does not help them and does not help them figure out whether these rules are really needed. Perhaps the rules were adopted for immoral reasons. Do you think this is impossible?

And what about the law passed in Nazi Germany, which forbade the Germans at night to “be” with the Jews. Initially, it affected a very specific area of ​​people’s lives. But, as a result, German nurses refused to take care of seriously ill Jews, saying: “We are law-abiding.” This is a classic example of when law-abiding is immoral because the law itself is immoral.

Ethics and conformism. Ethics is often equated with conformity and loyalty. In many cases, this is a trap. Consider, for example, corporate ethics. It is believed that you should be loyal to your company, share its values ​​​​and goals, which in themselves can be both ethical and not very.

The expression “corporate ethics” itself has nothing to do with ethics as such: convenient, and not at all ethical behavior is prescribed in corporate documents. There is nothing wrong with a company demanding loyalty, but why call it that? Maybe to make it harder to argue? It is difficult to object to ethics.

In a broader sense, ethics is often confused with conformity, compliance with the expectations of one’s group: family, class, group of friends.

Not so long ago, there was a whole series of scandals due to the fact that children filmed the unprofessional behavior of teachers on video and posted it on the Internet. The child was later accused of betraying the school. Another example – a teenager went to a rally that had nothing to do with an educational institution, and he was accused of being unethical, immoral, framed the school.

There are a lot of such examples, children are strongly “poisoned” by such behavior and attitude on the part of adults and, as a result, they deny everything related to morality and ethics.

Ethics and kindness (sympathy). Is it possible to call an ethical person who feels sorry for everyone, understands the problems of loved ones, tries to help the weak? Not always. For example, a person can show kindness and empathy, but at the same time participate in a more global and completely unethical process.

Another example in continuation of the theme of Nazism. The man worked in a demonstration orphanage in which several dozen children were demonstratively well kept, and he knew that thousands of other children were suffering and dying at that time. Such an orphanage is only a disguise for cruelty.

Ethics and compliance. Ethics is confused with softness and compliance, everyday altruism, situations when a person does not defend his interests and territory, wants to be good (as if ethical) so much that he never raises questions about salary, his time, boundaries and interests. This can be a kind of manipulation, especially in family life: I will be soft and compliant, and if anything, I will make claims that you ride me and are to blame for everything.

Ethics and morals. Often we confuse ethics with beliefs, stereotypes, with what is currently accepted by a certain community of people.

The topic of morals is especially heavy. Ethical assessments often interfere in the sexual sphere of life. This is how a huge number of “monsters” are born. And if someone counted how many lives were lost in the entire history of mankind due to the interweaving of the concepts of “ethics” and “sexuality” where it is inappropriate, perhaps we would get a figure comparable to the number of victims of some world war.

Ethics is the same for all rational beings, it is universal, and mores can be very different. They have developed due to different circumstances: historical, biological, social, and it is important to understand this and distinguish between two concepts.

The choice is up to the child

What do we mean when we say “be a good boy” or “be a good girl”? In fact, we are making the same substitution as companies talking about corporate ethics. We mean “be obedient, be comfortable, do what I want”.

We dream of our child “choosing the bright side”. It seems to us that if we somehow educate him in a special way, explain him or protect him from everything, we will be able to achieve this. This is an illusion.

Ethics is based on free will. There is no good without the possibility of choosing good. If we could program children so that they have no chance of choosing evil, these children would not be ethical – they would be robots. But it is very difficult for any parent to come to terms with the idea that the child himself will choose whether to be ethical or not. And he will make his choice not once, but every day.

The main problem with our view of the education of conscience in children is that we do not perceive the formation of conscience as a learning process. We do not tolerate mistakes and we want the child to be born “equipped” with a conscience right away. But that’s not how it works. The child seeks, makes mistakes, analyzes mistakes, he has the right to think differently than we do.

In the end, if parents could raise their children, clearly programming them for what they themselves think is right, we would be sitting in caves at best. Children would simply reproduce the behavior of their parents, and we would not move anywhere.

The clarity and confidence of the child in ethical matters is the most important part of his identity, the core that helps the child to live. The emphasis on the result simply ruins the process, because the necessary condition for the process is freedom.

Pedagogy is not about how to shape this or that behavior in a child, but about how to create the conditions for a path to happen. So that the child does not refuse to follow it, does not get stuck on a certain step, not reaching the freedom of ethical choice and the formation of true values.