Family Values Theories - Essay Example

She was caught off guard and humiliated over something small. Although the teacher has rules, humiliating a child in front of the entire class was not the best idea that was available. Because of the way that Emily handled this situation, she is clearly in Kohlberg's conventional Morality stage and within stage one (Gould, 2009, p. 2). In this stage, she is more afraid of punishment than she is of going back to class. In this situation, she was following the rules and the teacher created a situation that made her leave the class rather than face the embarrassment of going back. She avoids punishment by not going back to class and not telling her parents what happened.

The teacher could have called Emily to his desk or asked her to speak to him after class. If he had done so, this would have given Emily a chance to explain to him what had happened instead of being humiliated in front of the class. Emily could have talked to her parents about the situation immediately so that it did not move into more fear. Unfortunately, from the case study, it did not seem that she was able to talk to her parents about it perhaps because of fear of punishment. Her parents do not seem to be involved very much with Emily because they were not suspicious of her wanting to stay out of school, although this was out of the ordinary for her.

Emily's parents can talk with her and help her expand her ideas of moral development so that she will have a better idea of what to do if a similar situation should happen again.

In the classroom situation, Emily has been classically conditioned to do what she is told and follow the rules. She may also have to follow rules at home without question. Because of this, she seems to have a high level of anxiety when she has to confront a situation as she did in Mr. Robinson's class. According to Richards and Blanchette (2004), classical conditioning can be used to understand how to work with people who have challenges with emotions. In this situation, it would have been beneficial for Emily to talk to her friend or her parents about the situation. They may have been able to lower her anxiety so that she could have gone back to her classroom on her own.

Emily could talk to her parents and they could arrange for her to see a counselor to help her understand what happened and why she had such a reaction to it. Richards and Blanchette suggest a Stroop task in addition to classical conditioning for people with anxiety. They used words that were color coded to help the individual de-escalate the behavior of anxiety. This could be a good idea for Emily if she were open to it because it has been used with anxiety cases. The teacher would not be a person to use classical conditioning with Emily because she is too afraid of him at this time.

Mr. Robinson seems to be more of a tyrant in terms of his instruction than he is a teacher who cares about his students. He has assigned seats and he has certain rules that his students must follow. It is not known from the case study if passing notes has a particular punishment, but humiliating a student in class does not seem to be a healthy way to help students learn. Mr. Robinson seems to have his classroom under control because his students do not challenge his authority. However, having them under control in a negative way is not healthy for the student.

Since "whiteness" was developed to help a teacher understand what was going on in their classroom (McDaniel, Jackson, and Gaudet, 2009, p. 172), it would seem that it would be a good technique for Mr. Robinson to use to help his students learn without so many stringent rules. In using this technique, he would have been aware of the fact that a note was being passed and he could have intercepted it without embarrassment. He would have been able to use overlapping to pick up the note while he continued with his class. He could also use this technique to develop smoothness in his presentation so that he would not disrupt the class by being rude to one of his students.