Harvard Lecturer Speaks on Conflict of Ethics in Children

Millions of American children have come to see dishonesty and cheating as part of the highest political offices in the United States, a Harvard professor told a group of about 150 at Northeastern University's Alumni Auditorium last night.

Dr. M. Robert Coles '50, lecturer on General Education and a winner of the Pulitzer prize, said when children are told about the greatness of the American political system, and then see the lying, cheating and dishonesty that goes on within it, they face conflicting codes of ethics.

In the period of development when children begin to sense what is socially expected and required of them, they also begin to sense what is going on in political society, he said.

American children grow up, Coles said, with conflicting ideals, and it is this conflict that often causes drug abuse, delinquency and alcoholism.

As an example of his point, Coles pointed to a situation where a child from a relatively affluent part of Florida went off to play with a child whose parents were migrant workers. The rich child's parents reprimanded him when they found out.

The child had been taught in church to love poor people, and try to help them, and found himself caught between conflicting ethical codes, Coles said.

In summation, Coles asked the audience whether they thought children should live up to the ideals they hear in church and see engraved in documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, or whether they should believe in getting ahead, which is what society considers really important.

"It is not education will solve this problem," Coles said, "What's needed is an ethical re-examination."

"We have to decide what we really want, what we really believe in, and ultimately we have to decide what we want our children to become," he added.