Moral leadership to navigate the world: Four exercises for your kids at home.
I believe the sooner the healthier to teach your pre-teen kids on moral leadership. First thought about that is it would be hard and full of boredom. But it is not true, because the kids are always active and having many fresh and powerful perspectives. With four following hand-on exercises, you can well establish for your kids some very basic conceptual understanding for moral leadership to better navigate their world.
Exercise 1: What is the color blue? How do you describe the blue color to a color-blind person or a visually impaired person?
Your kids will bring you many definitions. Recognizing that is ok. Scientific definition of primary color will lead to more thoughtful definition of secondary and tertiary colors, and so on. This conversation will also lead to different category definitions. Then it will help the kids can recognize what is science discussion, what is philosophy discussion and what is uncritical discussion in our daily conversations.
Exercise 2: Bike dilemma situation. You have a very expensive bike, running downhill fast and the brake not working, and there is a sudden roadblock on the road, and it comes an unavoidable hit, on the left side of the road, many smaller kids crawling and playing, while on the right side, many very old people moving slow with their walking stick. What will you do, hit to the left, hit to the right or hit the roadblock ahead?
Whatever your kids choose, it is not reflect their insight ethical beings which is always structured and re-structured over time. This exercise gives them reference to your own ethical choice with supporting reasons. Your conversation helps them deepen the awareness of the consequence of every actions.
Exercise 3. About leadership. Think about a leader in your classroom, and then in society, which characteristics have the leaders? Which is the most important characteristics?
The kids will surprise you. Their answer will come variously with brave, intelligence, good speaking, and good listening. But they unanimously in a very unique point, having good behaviors, a typical moral person, the one other can trust, the one who never lie.
Exercise 4: Ethical awareness. Which actions are good? Which actions are evil?
The kids give you a series of good actions and another list of evil actions they perceive. This exercise can establish their understanding of stages in moral development for their navigation their own as being in the world. There are six stages of moral development (Kohlberg model). Stage 1 is Punishment and Obedience orientation, when you do it to avoid punishment. Stage 2 is Instrumental-relativist orientation, when you feel good to do it. Stage 3 is Feel love, when you do it because of love. Stage 4 is Law and order orientation, when you do your duty. Stage 5 is Social contract orientation, when you follow the consensus of thoughtful men. Stage 6 is Universal ethical principles, when you wonder what if everybody do that and you realize the supreme value of human life.
These hand-on exercises, I used to teach my kids with a strongly belief, can help our little ones to navigate well in this fast-changing world. Our current education system based on a one-dimensional thinking mode and brings us a lot of problems and conflicts. Together with multi-dimensional thinking skills, moral leadership is the literacy for our next generations. Let them be well prepared!
