Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 - January 19, 1987) was born in Bronxville, New York. He served as a professor at the University of Chicago as well as Harvard University. He is famous for his work in moral education, reasoning, development. Being a close follower of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Kohlberg's work reflects and perhaps even extends his predecessor's work. This work is further extended and modified by such scholars like Carol Gilligan.

Life

Lawrence Kohlberg grew up in a wealthy family and attended Phillips Academy, a private and renowned high school. During the Second World War, following his high school education, he decided to join the merchant marines. During his time as a sailor he helped Jews escaping Europe by smuggling them into Palestine.

After his service in the war he applied to the University of Chicago. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology in just one year. Kohlberg stayed in the University of Chicago for his graduate work, becoming facsinated with children's moral reasoning and the earlier works of Jean Piaget and others. He wrote his doctoral dissertation there in 1958, outlining what is now his stages of moral development.

In 1968, being 40 years old and married with two children, he became a professor of education and social psychology at Harvard University. There he met and befriended Carol Gilligan, a colleague and critic of his moral development stage theory.

During a visit to Israel in 1969, Kohlberg journeyed to a kibbutz and was shocked to discover how much more the youths' moral development had progressed compared to those who were not part of kibbutzim. Jarred by what he saw, he decided to rethink his current research and started by beginning a new school within a school, called the Cluster School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Cluster School ran as a "just community" where students and staff had a basic and trustworthy relationship with one another, using democracy to make all the school's decisions. Armed with this model he started similar "just communities" in other schools and even in a prison.

Kohlberg contracted a tropical disease in 1971 while doing cross-cultural work in Belize. As a result, he struggled with depression and physical pain for the following 16 years. On January 19th he took a day's leave from the hospital he was being treated at, drove to the coast, and drowned in the Atlantic Ocean. Rumors persist that he committed suicide. He was 59 years old. To this day Kohlberg's work is continued by his peers, friends, colleagues and students.

Work

Theory of moral development

Kohlberg is most well known for his theory of the development of moral reasoning. Fascinated by Jean Piaget's work on moral development in children and adolescents, for his doctoral dissertation he developed his own interview technique. In what has become the classic method for studying moral reasoning, he presented a "moral dilemma" to 72 white boys aged seven to fifteen. This dilemna was presented in the form of a story about Heinz.

Heinz and the Drug
In Europe a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer.
There was one drug that doctors thought might save her. It was a form
of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.
The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten
times what the drug cost to make. He paid $200 for the radium and
charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband,
Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only
get together about $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the
druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or
let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug
and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and began
to think about breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for
his wife.
Should Heinz steal the drug?

Kohlberg explored the reasoning behind the boys' answers, not just whether they said Heinz should steal the drug or not. In this way he found that younger children based their reasoning on laws given by authority, such as it's bad to steal (Pre-conventional level), older children considered more the social conventions and what is socially acceptable (Conventional level), and finally, the most mature considered the welfare of others (Post-conventional level). Kohlberg's data allowed him to construct six stages, based on having two stages within each of these three levels. His doctoral dissertation, published in 1958, presented the child as a moral philospher, developing his own moral judgments through a fixed sequence of increasingly flexible kinds moral reasoning.

While his theory generated great interest, and continues to be the benchmark of theories of moral development, it was also the source of great controversy. His most famous critic was his colleague at Harvard, Carol Gilligan, whose book In a Different Voice (Gilligan, 1982) argued that since Kohlberg interviewed only boys, his theory was lacking certain components found in women's thinking, particularly the importance of relationships.

Just community schools

Kohlberg was more than a brilliant academic scholar, he was passionate about putting theory into practice. His theory of moral development involved a series of stages, which children pass through in a fixed order. Kohlberg believed that progress from one stage to the next was based on social interaction – opportunities to experience and reflect on situations involving moral decisions. Therefore, participating in moral discussions with others, especially those at a higher level of moral reasoning, should lead to increased maturity in moral judgment. The opportunity to test this hypothesis in a real situation came in 1974, when Kohlberg was invited to join the planning group for the Cluster School, which became his first "just community."

This was in effect a community of practice which, at least in Kohlberg's conception, had a core group of those trusted to define and resolve the disputes between members, and to facilitate the growth of moral development of all involved. The use of community meetings on all decisions, combined with the principle of each person (student or staff) having one vote, were designed to expose students to real situations expected to stimulate their moral reasoning.

In addition to this first school, Kohlberg was instrumental in forming several other just communities in schools, as well as one in a women's prison. The outcomes of these projects have not shown the straightforward increase in maturity of moral reasoning that Kohlberg initially hoped for.

Legacy

Kohlberg's theory, research program, and educational practices expanded our conception of morality. Going beyond moral psychology, Kohlberg addressed the issues of justice, cross-cultural universality of moral judgment, moral education, and the relationship between moral judgment and action.

Kohlberg and Gilligan worked together on the "just community" project. They did not reconcile the different approaches to moral development they took to the project, rather, they played quite different roles in the interventions. Their democratic educational interventions are still the standard against which all work in ethical relationship psychology is measured.

Kohlberg's just community approach to moral education has been implemented by other educators, most notably Fritz Oser, in a variety of schools, and educational programs, both in the United States and other countries.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Garrod, Andrew (ed.). 1993. Approaches to Moral Development: New Research and Emerging Themes. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. ISBN 0807732478
• Gilligan, Carol. 1993. In a Different Voice Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Originally published 1982). ISBN 0674445449
• Schrader, Dawn (ed.). 1990. The Legacy of Lawrence Kohlberg. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc. ISBN 155542824X
• Reconstructing Larry: Assessing the Legacy of Lawrence Kohlberg
• PSYography: Lawrence Kohlberg

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