The Link Between Friendship and Moral Development Essay -- Teaching Ed

The Link Between Friendship and Moral DevelopmentThe study of honorableity is molded by an elaborately linked set of tangential issues each of which has a unique effect on moral cultivation. Friendship and peer groups in particular play an incontestable role in helping to shape the path of moral checkment in children and adolescents. In evaluating various philosophical and psychological perspectives on morality, two top dog arguments emerge concerning the link between friendship and moral development in the first argument, friendships act as a positive force in elevation moral development, as they provide a background upon which children can formulate their own moral rules and values. In direct contradiction, the second argument espouses friendship and morality as inherently antithetical, relying heavily on the idea that friendship encourages subjectiveness and impartiality. The potential negative influence of peer influence on moral development is perhaps most clearly manifes ted in the prevalence of aggression and violence in the lives of many children and adolescents. In studying the link between friendship and moral development, then, it is crucial to consider both the positive and negative consequences that peer relations can have on a childs struggle to develop his own individual sense of morality.The Definition of Friendship and its Relationship to Moral DevelopmentIn exploring the effects of friendship on moral development, particularly in children and adolescents, it is necessary first to establish the ways in which these phenomena are related. Traditionally, friendship and morality have been viewed as separate entities independent of one another consequently, on that point is little research pertaining to the specif... ... York Cambridge University Press, 1996.Cairns, Robert and Beverley. Lifelines and Risks Pathways of Youth in our Time.Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1994.Eron, L., Gentry, J., & Schlegel, P. Reason to Hope A Psycholoso cial Perspective on Violence and Youth. Washington, D.C. American Psychological Association, 1994.Friedman, Marilyn. What Are Friends For? London Cornell University Press, 1993.Garbarino, James. mixed-up Boys. New York The Free Press, 1999.Henry, David B. Peer Groups, Families, and School Failure Among Urban Children Elements of Risk and Successful Interventions. Preventing School Failure, 443, 97-105.Piaget, Jean. The Moral Judgment of the Child. London Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932.Pinderhughes, Howard. Race in the Hood Conflict and Violence Among UrbanYouth. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1997.