Caring of Moral Education - Essay Example

? CARING- NEL NODDINGS CARING- NEL NODDINGS Moral education is becoming a hot topic in the field of education. Individuals believe that caring is as easy as feeling empathy or sympathizing with another person. One’s innate self is thought to develop caring. Moral education starts at an early age but proceeds at different speeds according to the environment of the child. Later on in life, things evolve around the individual that are extremely valuable such as family, education, or religion, take this example should ypu fail to, give you child the correct direction most likely, the environment will construct him Either positively or negatively. These positive and negative things will have an impact on the child will become the intended person or not. Therefore, people want to “form beliefs and abilities required to continue going on with close relations and the desire to do so (Noddings, 2005, p. 21-22).” using Noddings’ four components including modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation in order to facilitate caring. The meaning of caring that emerges from the ethics include proficient standards, individual value, comprehending humankind continuance, understanding the meaning of norms, decisions, moral decisions, integrity, worth, people and colleagues in treatment. The extent of care is also pronounced in some good characters than others. In the case of decency or fairness, for example, that affection may not be readily apparent. With care, more than without any good values, its appreciation with passion is evident. When people care about each other, attending to each other’s needs, as a mother looks after a new baby, physicist cares for a patient or an instructor cares for a struggling apprentice, the link between love and ethics is supposed. Care is an attribute that is interchangeable with love. The lack of care, more than anything else brings out man to be insensitive. To care is to how humanity, to show love. Not to love is to create a boundary between oneself and one’s own heart, on the same not, being humane to both those next to you and far away from you not only improve your relationship, it can also prolong your life, this is according to research conducted by a group of researchers at the university of Purdue. The absence of care is destruction of personality. Care may seem to be weighty, but on the contrary is the force that gives life its balance, its booming nature and its validity. Caring is taking excellent care of all things that matter to us. It involve being a compassionate witness, and listening keenly to another and not jumping to conclusions. One shows that one cares with appropriate acts and kind words. When we do a job, we do it with our best effort. We are not insensitive to things that matter. We care deeply about the ethics we trust in. Caring can be said to be a sign of love. Should we care for others, then we are able to notice how they feel and attend to their needs. When we care about ourselves, we have nothing to offer others. Caring can as well be a gift from the heart. Caring for ideas and objects is different from caring for people and other living things. One cannot establish a bond with physics or a food processor. The cared- for cannot feel anything for us there is no significance in the second party. People instead describe a responsiveness for ideas and objects. We must consider the deepest sense of care as human beings. We care what will happen to us. We wonder whether there exists life just after death,or whether there is God who cares about us, whether those we love, love us back, whether we belong somewhere. We wonder what we will be in future, who we are right now, how much control we have over our fate. For an adolescent, these are among the most pressing issues: who am I? How do others see me? Who love me? How do others perceive me? though schools spend most of time doing mathematics and physics than in trying to answer these questions take an example of yourself most likely you are wondering what will I be tomorrow . An ethic of care- a necessity and response-based ethic- challenges many premises of traditional ethics and moral education. An ethic of caring puts significant emphasis on consequences in the sense that it always asks what happens to the relation; it’s not a form of utilitarianism; it does not assert greatest right to be optimized, nor does it separate means from ends. Finally, it is not properly labeled an ethic of virtue. Although it requires people to be care-givers, it does not consider caring just as an individual attribute. It recognizes the role played by the cared-for. It is an ethic of correspondence. In moral education, an ethic of care puts significant emphasis on motivation and challenges the primacy of moral reasoning. One can concentrate on developing the beliefs and reasoning required to keep going on in caring relations and the desire to do so. The presumption here is that moral knowledge is sufficient for ethical behavior. From this perspective, wrong doing is always equated with ignorance. Moral education from the perspective of caring has four main parts: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation. Modeling is required in most schemes of moral education, but it is essential in caring. We have to explain how to care in our own relations with those who are cared for. For example, professors and school principals cannot be negative and oppressive with the instructors in the hope that pressure will make them care for students. Of course, the expected outcome is that teachers will then protectively care for themselves rather than lovingly to their students. Therefore, showing the students how to love by creating caring relations with them is better than telling them; always learn to teach by practicing. The ability to take care is based on satisfactory experience in being cared for Even for a while, a child is too young to be a care-giver, he, or she can learn how to be a flexible cared-for. Thus, our role as a care-giver is more beneficial than our role as a model, but we feel both simultaneously. The function of modeling gets serious consideration when we try to justify our actions in moral education. The primary reason for responding as care-givers to our student’s needs is that we are called to such response by our moral attitude. Dialogue is the second key element of moral education. It’s not just talk or conversation- certainly not an oral presentation of case in which the second group is only allowed to raise an occasional question. Dialogue is undetermined; that is in a genuine dialogue; neither party knows the beginning nor the end. Parents and teachers cannot enter into dialogue with children when they know the decision has already been made. Dialogue is a general quest for understanding, empathy, or appreciation. Dialogue serves another purpose in moral education. It brings us together and helps to maintain caring relations. It gives us with the awareness about each other and forms a basis for response in caring. Caring requires knowledge and skills as well as habitual beliefs. We respond most effectively as care-givers when we know what the other person needs and the relevance of this need. Dialogue is implied in the criterion of engrossment. Continuing dialogue builds up a considerable knowledge of one another that serves to guide our responses. A third part of moral education is practice. The training provided must be with people who have the ability to show that they care. We don’t want children to learn the humble skills of care-giving without the characteristic attitude of caring. The experiences of care-giving should initiate or contribute to the desired attitude, but the conditions have to be right, and people are crucial to the setting. Practice in caring should change and transform institutions and ultimately, the community in which we live. If the procedure is assimilated to the present structures of schooling, it may lose its ability to transform. If we were to give grades for care-giving, for example, students might well begin to compete for honors in caring. Clearly, then, their purpose could be diverted from dependents to themselves. So long as our schools are recognized hierarchically with emphasis on rewards and penalties, it will be extremely difficult to maintain the experience envisioned. The fourth part of moral education from the outlook for caring is confirmation. Martin Buber (1965) described confirmation as an act of asserting and enlivening the best in others. When we support someone, we recognize something admirable in them and encourage its development. Confirmation requires recognition of the best possible causes with reality. When someone commits a heinous act, we ask ourselves what might have instigated such a move. Usually it’s not hard to identify a range of possible motives ranging from coarse and grimy to some that are welcome or even worthwhile. This array is not constructed in theory. We build it from knowledge of this and that and by listening attentively to their contributions. The motive we attribute has to be real, an authentic possibility. Then we can open our discussion by simply trying to teach him or her good faith. It will be clear that we condemn this act. It is worth to note that authentication cannot be done by formula. A relation of faith must ground it; continuity is required because the care-giver in acting to approve he must know the cared-for well enough to be able to identify motives consonant with reality. Confirmation cannot be described in terms of strategies; it is a loving act based upon on a relation of some relevance when we turn to changes that should happen in teaching in order to meet the challenge to care. Not all caring relations require continuity, but teaching does require. Confirmation contrasts sharply with the standard practice of religious moral education. There we usually get a set of accusation, confession, repentance and forgiveness. The whole way of looking at ethics and moral education challenges forms parts of the religious tradition and also the ideas of Freud and other like-minded theorists. Freud believed that our sense of morality develops out of fear. For instance, sons fear castration by the father if they disobey or compete with him. The father has internalized his authority in them. As such men then develop a desire to lay out their ideas when compared to women who feel morally inferior, Eli Sagan (1985) somehow supports this idea, but not in its entirety. Eli suggests that morality develops more from fear of losing a parent’s love or upsetting them rather than from internalization of authority. This is a significant challenge to the masculine part of society. Caring is the sheer backbone of all successful education efforts and the contemporary training can be revitalized in the light. One relationship that is fascinating is one of asymmetric dependence where one who is less vulnerable cares for others. Sometimes demands are shaped by the fact that one party is more dependent on another. The examples of disadvantaged groups are remarkably small children, physically-unfit individuals and the old people. These groups are thought of as more vulnerable than a normal, independent and stable person because of the temporary or permanent absence of an ability or competence. They can include cases where a person is, through misfortune, either temporarily or permanently unable to exercise some typically human capacity in a way that makes them dependent on a care-giver. The care-giver acts for the dependent sake in a way that shows a caring and understanding attitude made up of an effective sensitivity to the needs and desires of the vulnerable. Paternalism caters for the well-being of the vulnerable party in a method that overrides her view of her own well-being; if, on the other hand, the care-giver takes it to the extreme then the dependent ends up undermining oneself. Care carefully tries to avoid either of these two extremes. This vulnerability from Aristotle’s point of view is as depicted above in an asymmetric bond of caring between the more and the less vulnerable. As a rule, not everyone can be asymmetrically dependent on everyone else at the time. The prevalent issue, then, has to be that cases that address our nature as contingent beings are particularly esteemed for this very premise; they bring attention to a part of our virtuous nature that we ought not to forget, namely, our shared human vulnerability. Those cases also highlight something else that our shared vulnerability places at the core of our moral background, namely, direct altruism. Direct altruism is that which Schopenhauer called our ability to be moved directly by the "weal and woe" of a particularized other, to use the quaint language of the English translation of On the Basis of Morality. However, I will argue that this idea of absolute altruism directed to certain other than erne is not an idea that is the proprietary ownership of ethics of care even if it explains a lot of the appeal of that view. According to Aristotle’s view on the ideal man, a man of extraordinary vitality conducted himself with care and style. Such a person ends up taking care of others effectively since he respects himself as well as others. Therefore, he ends up being a conscientious care-giver than a dissolute and absorbed woman who lacks humility. Another addition is taking an employee’s position. An unpaid employee feels uncared for and starts losing interest in the work. Though gradual, it leads to the eventual downfall of a business since a human being is known to repeat different behaviors all again. Caring on the part of the business involves paying his employees fairly and on time, taking action in case an employee is sick and addressing his employees’ grievances. Unfortunately, most employers put themselves high up in an unreachable level and thus end up undermining those who are dependent on them. By not paying them, he shows lack of awareness and appreciation of his employees; two extremely valuable qualities that tend to inspire any living thing, so as an employer to get the best out of your worker produce learn to allocate nothing but the best, that is when they get encouraged, and produce their best. A sense of care is found in animal nature and thus is not postulated solely to direct human behavior and human emotion. The instinctive essence of care can be observed during early ages in the humananity. A child shows the capacity for love, tenderness, feeling and reciprocation of the love received “long before the capacity for sustained reasoning develops.” Noddings postulates that the child is responding to a natural inclination, and in some instances this response could even be construed as benevolence. The instinctive quality of care is an observable animal behavior and Noddings argue that defining care this way is not simply anthropomorphic. It is true that humans add both the emotional content and the value component to naturalistic caring. This content added care is an expanded notion of caring which is applicable to human relations. However, basic, instinctive caring is shared with the animals and is part of the human animal, in the real life you will realize that there are people who treasure pets more than even their own kids, in the year 2010, an India lady was reported to share her kid’s breast milk with the family’s dog. The depth of the instinctive aspect of care is captured in comments made by Jack Miles, regarding Noddings’s notion of caring, in that her “deeply original book shows us how to think afresh about this most primeval of human relationships.” The primeval nature of care is a vital component in Noddings’s work. She ties the activities associated with the internal states of caring in a human, to human, animal-nature, through a connection to the behavior observed in animals. In this sense, she argues that care may be (Noddings, Caring, a feminine approach to ethics and moral education, 120. Ibid, cover) construed as inherent and instinctive. An animal will care for, nurture and protect its offspring. The same caring instinct, which is exhibited toward an offspring, can be observed in caring for oneself in the desire for survival. The instinctive care for survival can be seen in an infant fighting an illness at birth or an adult having an instantaneous reaction to life threatening danger. While Noddings construes the primeval, instinctive description of care to be a deeply rooted part of human nature, she is aware of the problems associated with considering the human response of caring as instinctive. However, she argues that this concern is misguided and is a linguistic problem inherent in using the term instinct in relation to the broader, more complex notion of human, relational caring. Her claim is “the impulse to act on behalf of the present other is itself innate.” She describes natural caring as something which “lies latent in each of us, awaiting gradual development in a succession of caring relationships.” The main element of Noddings’ concept of care is built around this relational aspect of care. Noddings are primarily focused on relational care and her main notion of caring starts with the connection to others. Therefore, she does not spend much time discussing the instinctive notion of care or exploring how it appears implicit in the human desire to survive. However, she does briefly discuss how caring for oneself emerges from relationships and caring for others. She goes on to point out that, without the initial caring for oneself, the realities of others “as possibilities for my own reality would mean nothing to me.” In her account of care, she states that an individual’s ability to care first requires some measure of self-knowledge in that “knowledge of what gives me pain and pleasure precedes my caring for others.” For example, at one point Aristotle states “virtues are concerned with actions and feelings, but every feeling and action implies pleasure or pain; hence, for this reason too, virtue is about pleasures and pains” (1104b14-16). However, Noddings is careful to try to distance parts of her work from Aristotle’s notions of virtue. In the first printing of her text, Noddings specifically states that she does not want to contextualize care as a virtue. She wants to stress that the relationship between the care-giver (one-caring) and the recipient of care (cared-for) is ontologically basic. She believed that focusing on the virtues in individual places too much importance on the person. The emphasis in their work is on the caring relation, so “caring is a relationship that contains another” and that “one-caring & another cared-for are equally dependent.” Her emphasis on the relationship is so strong that in order to emphasize she states that if “the recipients of our care” believe that nobody cares then “caring relations do not exist.” Nodding’s notion of relational care requires a direct caring relationship between two people who know each other, interact with each other, and become united in their caring relationship. The two individuals involved need to know they are in a caring relationship. She also states that she builds her notion of relational caring from two sentiments. Noddings want to stress the relationship between the care-giver and the cared-for. She takes on a different perspective from Aristotle. She emphasizes that the care-giver and the cared-for are dependent on each other to the extent that she states that if the target does not believe that anyone cares, then caring relations do not exist, for example you and your child you mutually depend on one another the same applies to your relationship to your with spouse . Her relationship type requires that people have a direct relation, mingle with others and become united. By so doing, the individuals demonstrate that they are in a caring relationship. Her notion is built from two sentiments namely; natural caring and longing to enhance those special moments. The first sentiment is the sympathy we have for one another while the second tends to try to prolong the feeling of the first. An ethical ideal is created which claims that one should balance their care for others against care for themselves. Whether caring is a virtue or a relation, depends on the interpretation. It has two sides and like a mirror shows things according to your perspective. A dog is an excellent example of a caring being. It loves its owner and will gladly give lay down its life for its owner. A being whose intellect is considered to be lower than a human being’s ends up showing more care than his intellectual counterpart, just like the presidential body Gourds, being that they are very intelligent, to some extend they might decline to perform their duties as compared to animals like Dog or the beast of burden unless these creatures turn wild. A story is told of a dog which loved its owner so much that after he had died, it spent time beside his graveside waiting for him and protecting “him” from the world. That story’s authenticity cannot be verified, but still we are willing to believe it without question. Then as a human being, we need to exercise such care towards our loved ones, friends and the community in general. We end up practicing caring as a relation which can be perceived as a virtue by society. Caring in a relation also involves putting in as much as one expects to get out. For instance, planting maize or any other crop for that matter needs a lot of care and attention from the word go. The farmer has to ensure the maize is well looked after, watered and protected from pests. Similarly on a human to human relationship, one needs to put as much love into a relationship as one expects to get out. Michael Slote stated that he did not agree with Virginia Held and Noddings that the value of caring relationships is ethically prior to that of caring motivation. In “Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics” (2003) Rata Halwani argues that the concept of caring, as developed by Noddings, should be given the status of a virtue and should hold a prominent place in virtue ethics. She thinks this can be accomplished by expanding on Noddings’s definition of care. Halwani argues that it is possible to define care as a virtue and then locate a place for care within a virtue ethics theory. She believes that it may not be possible for care to “be the sole foundation” of an ethical theory. This conclusion is due in part to her concern with the fact that she also believes “the status of care ethics (CE) as a moral theory is still unresolved.” While care ethics may not develop into a standalone theory, Halwani wants to see that the ethical concept of care continues to be developed. Her challenge is to find “a theoretical framework within which CE can be housed appropriately.” I believe care can be the primary foundation of a virtue ethics theory. However, I concur with her position that care cannot be the sole foundation of an ethical theory because, just as is the case with charity, care needs prudence as part of the foundation of the theory. Prudence must maintain its role because at the heart of ethics is the fact “in the last resort every act must be the product of the individual judgment of each individual.” An ethical theory must not only give every person instructions regarding the right thing to do (and in some theories the right intention to have), but it must provide every person with a way to take action. In virtue ethics action occurs though the use of practical wisdom. Prudence and care can work together as the central virtues in CVE theory. Halwani addresses Noddings concern that care shouldn’t be construed as a virtue because then we pay too much attention to our own characters, rather than focusing on relationships. Noddings has a very narrow focus on caring relations, which she argues, exists solely between individuals who have a direct relationship. Noddings’s focus is on the direct connection and thus she rejects the notion that a person can care for everyone, at least not in the sense she intends it. Nodding’s notion requires the acknowledgement or appreciation of the caring by the cared-for. Thus as, Noddings construes care, someone cannot care for a person they will never meet or with whom they will never directly interact. She also argues that an individual cannot care for non-human things such as animals or plants, which are incapable of returning the sentiment. Halwani argues that Noddings’s notion of care can be expanded to a much broader concept. Care can be a broad based virtue, which can account for caring about anyone, caring for a variety of ethical issues or caring about situations, which an individual, might encounter. Halwani starts by identifying a virtuous person as someone who is not simply concerned with relations, but “one who is concerned with her character and her life: she is someone who cares that she maintains an ethical character and that her dealings with others are moral.” Halwani describes caring as a virtue in a more Aristotelian sense as a disposition to care not only specifically about someone, but about a variety of things. While Noddings describes care as an emotional reaction to another person, the broader emotional area Halwani describes is related to human emotions such as concern, feelings of interest or liking. The disposition of care deals with an emotional arena or a sphere of action, in a fashion similar to how courage deals with fear. She argues that Nodding’s narrow relationship-based caring meets all the criteria of an Aristotelian virtue. Caring is obviously a state which “would dispose the agent to act given the right circumstances.” Care also involves choice, and it is “ultimately up to the agent to decide” whether or not to care in any given situation. Caring also admits of a mean or Aristotelian excellence which, as Halwani indicates, was initially developed in Carol Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice, (1992). A key part of Gilligan’s thesis is that a morally mature person must have the right balance of caring in her life. A person develops her moral maturity in three steps. In the beginning, she cares only for herself. At the next level, she cares excessively for others to her own detriment. Finally, she reaches the highest level of maturity. At this highest level, she finds the appropriate balance of caring for herself and caring for others. We have to remember those mothers and fathers who helicopter-parent their children. Caring to extent is acceptable, but if it goes over the edge, it turns out to be a bother. It stops being a virtue since the disadvantaged party is unable to grow and become self-dependent. It’s just like helping a caterpillar get out of its cocoon; it dies eventually since it didn’t get out by itself. In the end, when a child grows up, he, or she mostly becomes what he has been modeled to be since he, or she was a child. In a few cases, some go wayward, but with the right guidance and care they can also become capable adults. According to Gilligan, once a person reaches moral maturity, she develops a concept of goodness that incorporates the demands placed on her by others and that also accounts for her own self-worth. She finds the mean or excellence in care in her actions. In this mean, of care “the disparity between selfishness and responsibility dissolves.” Gilligan’s account is an explanation of moral maturity, rather than of an Aristotelian notion of virtue. However, her account does demonstrate a form of harmony in the individual with a proper caring disposition. She also describes a continuum on which an individual can find the mean of the virtue of care. A deficiency of care on one end of the continuum could be described as total apathy, which would entail a feeling of absolutely no interest or concern. It could be no care for the wellfare of anyone else or apathy for an almost any moral situation with which a person is faced. A person might not even be concerned with his own happiness, well being or general survival. On the other end of the continuum, the excess might be an obsessive disposition. It might be an overly controlling person who cares about every detail in his life, the lives of others around him or every moral dilemma which arises. He may obsessively care, worry and be concerned with everything, in an emotional state which encroaches on some form of paranoia or neurosis. The extremes of the continuum are very negative, unethical dispositions. One may be called excessive apathy and the other extreme neurosis. The vice in an action would be too much care, or to little care, for a situation, in the direction of either extreme. For example under the normal circumstances failure to take care of you children is considered, as irresponsibility or rather laziness, un tolerated by the society by any rational society. Finally, the questions we need to ask ourselves include which perspective we are taking and what will be the result of our choices? As stated above, different perspectives result in caring being a virtue or a relation. At the end of the day, caring in a relationship is viewed as a relation while the act of practicing caring can be termed as a virtue if it is proper care. References Nel, Noddings (2012). the ethics of care and education. Retrieved 26 November, 2012 from http://www.infed.org/thinkers/noddings.htm Alan, Thomas (2010). Virtue ethics and ethics of care. Retrieved 26 November 2012 from http://www.scielo.net.co/scielo.php?pid=S1692-88572011000100006&script=sci_arttext Fredrick J. Bennet (2011). The Virtuoso Human: A Virtue Ethics Model Based on Care. Retrieved from. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3007/ Sara, O. (2010). Caring too much (or not enough)? The virtue and vices of caring. Retrieved 26 November 2012 from http://trouble.room34.com/archives/3383 Read More