Care, Forgiveness and Happiness

I always believe that “care” and “forgiveness” are the precious values that contribute to our exploration of happiness. To me, “caring” and “forgiving” mean “giving”. As long as you decided to give and were willing to give, you would feel that you have done something for others unconditionally, and you feel happy about it. To make a stronger stance, I wish to add some more scholastic arguments for the importance of students’ exploration of “care” and “forgiveness” and the need for moral education curriculum to include an effective approach that helps students to explore these values. More scholastic arguments will also be provided to show how important students’ concept of happiness is, how “care” and “forgiveness” are related to happiness, and whether school curriculum today, especially moral education curriculum, promotes happiness.
Gilligan (1982) proposed a concept of care as a complex of six virtues or behavioral dispositions: acquaintance, mindfulness, moral imagining, solidarity, tolerance and self-care. Gregory (2000) described democracy in term of two divergent but compatible sets of practices: social non-interference social co-operation. His behavioral analyses of Gilligan’s concept of care and his concept of democracy led him to conclude that “certain behavioral habits that partially constitute a person’s or a community’s caring also partially constitute that person’s or community’s democracy. Specifically, the caring virtues of acquaintance, mindfulness, moral imagining and self-care also belong to the virtue of democratic co-operation, and the caring virtue of tolerance constitutes the democratic ideal of non-interference.” He continued to argue that since most of the virtues of care are also virtues of democracy, they should be appropriate aims of public education, and that the enculturation of caring and democratic virtues requires that children practise the kind of inquiry in which these ideals are constructed.
The recognition of the importance of “forgiveness” is increasing in psychological and educational fields. The research on the experience of offering forgiveness to others and receiving forgiveness so far suggests positive the outcomes. These effects are explored from psychological, social and moral perspectives. Consider Fitzgibbons (1986) and Hope (1987) had similar observation that forgiveness is powerful in freeing people from their anger and from the guilt which is often a result of unconscious anger. In a carefully controlled experimental design, Huang (1990) found that those with a high level of forgiveness were significantly lower in both blood pressure and levels of negative emotion. Al-Mabuk (1990) showed significant correlations between forgiveness and the following variables: lower levels of psychological depression, lower levels of anxiety, and higher levels of self-esteem. Gentilone & Regidor's (1986) reported that there has even been a demonstration on the group level that forgiveness can benefit communities, not just individuals. However, those in a just and merciful community could explore distinctions between the equality of justice and the equality implied in forgiveness. There are considerable differences between the two. For example, “the point of justice is to restore equality where inequality exists. In forgiveness, the offended person does not restore equality. Instead, in forgiveness the offended, relative to the offender, recognizes that the equality of their commonly shared humanity existed before, during, and after the hurtful event. Thus we do not restore what was never taken away--our humanity, our basic worth. Forgiveness helps us recognize that such equality has existed unconditionally and will continue to exist regardless of one person's behavior towards another.” “It is true that a forgiver may take steps to help self and others and recognize this unfailing equality, but restoration is not implied in such behavior. It is also true that a forgiver's steps in this way may restore a friendship, but the equality of the two (their worth as human beings) would exist whether they reunited or not.” In sum, the equality human beings struggle for in justice concerns how they treat one another, while the equality seen in forgiving others concerns who they are regardless of how others treat them. These distinctions may cause students to seek justice differently and with different motives. Moral education programs may take into consideration the following points. First, it is recommended that short-term moral education programs which are focused on one particular virtue such as care or forgiveness be explored, for these virtues can be supported by short term intervention. Some studies have shown that the practice of a particular virtue may be realized with short term interventions in spite of the fact that some forms of moral education may require substantial time, such as moral stage-re-structuring from a Kohlbergian paradigm. Second, although there would be good presentation of “what forgiveness is and is not” by educators and numerous philosophical arguments for and against forgiveness, giving students chances and allowing them to formulate his or her own position through discussions and argumentations with given rich contexts may help students in the process of choosing to embrace or reject forgiveness.
In addition to the supporting attitudes towards values, students’ concept of happiness is very important, for it affects their attitudes towards community, family, schools, teachers, friends and study. It also determines their behaviors and guides their actions. What constitutes students’ happiness has become the focus of a number of studies in happiness field. Maltby, Day and Barber (2005) believed that caring means giving, including giving forgiveness and found that there is a relationship between forgiveness and happiness. This relationship may vary depending on one’s concept of happiness. Thus, helping students to explore “forgiveness” may be related to helping them to construct their own concept of happiness. The question at this point is whether school curriculum, especially moral education, concerns about this matter. There have been a large number of international debates on the focus of school curricula today. Many conclusions have been made on their narrow aim. Social scientists, researchers, and educationalists claim that school curricula today only focus on preparing students for work or financial success and neglect preparing them for personal life (Noddings, 2003). Therefore, many advanced education systems fail to enable their students to identify their happiness, the most important thing in life. It is time the educationalists should look into the aims of education as its fullest meaning – yielding happiness and improve school curricula, especially moral education curriculum which is believed to aim at helping students to explore and construct life values and forming their life concepts – key components of happiness, in both contents and teaching approaches to make teaching and learning a dialogic, affective and influencing process and learning as ecstatic experience.

What is not right?

I came across this website on which I found the article "Understanding life experiences through a phenomenological approach to research". The main ideas of the articles are as follows.

First, phenomenology is one type of qualitative research that examines human's lived experiences, and phenomenological researchers work to gain understanding of the essential "truths" of the lived experience.

Second, phenomenology has been described as a philosophy, methodology, and method. Seeing phenomenology as a philosophy, "phenomonologists believe that truth and understanding of life can emerge from people's life experiences."

Trotman (2005), Conceicao (2006), and Moustakas (1994) shared the idea that phenomenological research is a description of the givens of immediate experience and a process of sharing experience which contains rich insights into various phenomena to understand experiences. Thus, experience is a valid source of knowledge.

From Trotman, Conceicao, and Moustakas points of view, I would argue that saying truth can emerge from people's life experience is not appropriate. Human beings experience the world with a kind of mediator we call "the tool" or "the artefact" which includes material/technical tools, mental/psychological tools, and conceptual/symbolic tools. Different people experience the same world with different tools, so their report on their own experience will be different. Thus, there will be no universal truth about human experience accordingly.

Phenomenological Research and Its Limitations

Phenomenological research has been adopted by a large number of researchers for its unique qualities. The researchers who adopt this methodology believe that "experience is a valid source of knowledge" and research is a process of sharing experience which contains rich insights into various phenomena to understand experiences. Thus, it "allows readers to begin to understand and empathize with the phonomenon, and in turn, determines the extent to which interpretations make meaning for them." While grounded theory generates theory and other methodologies add substances to the subject matters, phenomenology "facilitates the expansion and development of more adequate theory building". It is "pre-theoretical in nature". It is objective to some extent, for it "provides a clear process for setting aside the researchers' preconceptions about the phenomenon." Also, it offers a deep investigation into "the soft, soulful, subtle, and sensitive areas" in the process of identifying "the rich and authentic educational experience and practice."
However, this methodology has some limitation. At the end of the day, the approach has a high chance to create an "entry into an entire realm of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity" which is, by nature, inspired by dualism. Human nature is seen through human lenses. To understand one's experiences is, in the end, acquiring a state of intersubjective transparency.

Growth in My Personal Epistemology

Before and when I first joined the Contemporary Foundations of Learning, knowledge, to me, is product of reasoning. Every second, we import information through different modes and from various sources such as personal experience or third parties. These inputs of information are cognitively processed and filtered with the reference to pass experience and prior knowledge to become new “justified true beliefs”. Thus, knowledge acquisition is a new-information- producing process which involves three distinct sub-processes: collection of raw information, reasoning, and judgment making. For example, after getting the raw information from an article on the topic of values and happiness which states that value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness, one may start to reason by recalling the feeling one experienced at a moment when one was lying on the beach to enjoy the beauty of nature and at the other moment when one cycled a 40 kilometer-distance everyday to see mom in hospital. One now really feels the happiness of seeing mum lying on the bed, look at him and smile happily. One starts to compare the two kinds of happiness. Then, judgment is made, and the new information is that the statement that “value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness” is true. As long as the new information and the old one coincide, the belief is justified true.
However, since my Contemporary Foundations of Learning classes have been going on with 30-minute time excess every day and endless discussion on every single new topic, my personal epistemology has been more or less changed. Every one may have their own system of beliefs. These beliefs are based on other beliefs and may cause the other beliefs. Different systems of beliefs may share some identical beliefs and have different, unique ones. This indicates that knowledge is not always universally-shared belief, so knowledge cannot only be acquired by transmission. Reasoning is also a human-created concept. It is a name given to a process of human’s mind which is still a secret to its owner. Knowledge is, therefore, an undiscoverable truth, and knowledge acquisition is a knowing- process rather than a fact of knowing-that. For example, the statement that “value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness” may be an undiscoverable truth, but making the inquiry whether or not value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness and pursuing an explanation is the process of knowing.
With this change in my personal epistemology, I now find “teaching values” , “helping students to construct values”, and “facilitating the process of exploring values” are different concepts in moral education. “Teaching values” is imposing moral norms of a social group, a community, or a nation on individuals. There is little cognitive and rational thinking involved in this product-based learning. “Helping students to construct values” may emphasize more on process than product. However, there are two possibilities. One is that students are assisted to construct their own values, while the other is that students are helped to construct pre-determined values. The former promotes moral autonomy and is individual-centric, while the later gives students certain room for cognitive and rational thinking. Thus, “helping students to construct values” is either to foster individual moral valuing or to transmit social codes. I prefer “facilitating the process of exploring values” to “teaching values” and “helping students to construct values”. The two later concepts have much to do with the assumption that “values” are “justified true beliefs” or products of learning, while the former is based on the belief that morality is the outcome of the organic relationship between individuals and social settings. This interaction is a continuous process, so the outcome is also a never-ending process of moral exploration.
From my point of view, facilitating the process of exploring values should be a challenging task. Moral educationalists need to break out of well-established and well-defined constraints to tailor a new conceptual synthesis. The totality of atmospheric forces and multi-dimensional interactions is crucial for the process of moral exploration and development. The child, family, class, school, and community are all active agents in this process. It is important that the child actually participates in moral dialectic process where various moral deliberation activities are involved. Schools and families should cooperate to organize free-time activities, family events, and weekend and holiday programs for students, and these events should be considered to be an important part of the total educational planning of the schools. Also, the dynamics of the class as a social group plays an important role. Teaching and learning should be seen as a dialogue of relationships. Teachers should create a safe environment for students to talk, to communicate, to play roles, to improve their interpersonal skills, and to explore their values. Students should be encouraged to talk about and consider their own value concerns by teachers’ well-designed learning activities. Teachers should inspire their students in expressing their own opinions and ideas about the values and should never control their thoughts. Teachers also should empower students to actively take part in the process of moral reasoning, developing learning materials, inventing classroom activities, and, after all, improving curricula. Formal curricula and extra curricula should be combined harmoniously to promote a total atmosphere for moral exploration. They should provide a system of educational experiences that first inspire students in the activities of their interests and then present them with desired modes of moral reflection. Moral education textbooks should not be totally responsible for students’ moral development. The integrations of different disciplines or school subjects including philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, literature, art, cinema, and educational practice should also be actively involved. The study of philosophy may help students to develop the necessary traits and abilities to engage in the moral reasoning process. Science and history are the two important curricular areas for moral growth, since they are about life of facts, and they enable students to truly confront and understand these facts. Literature works about the experience of different values are believed to promote students’ support for these values. School-based projects can produce a systematic body of teaching and learning materials for moral curriculum. Whole-school approach has great potential for the active participation of school members in the process of moral reasoning and exploration and for affecting moral growth. The role of moral community in the process of moral education is also very crucial. A caring moral community will help to develop moral sense and nurture moral growth.
In conclusion, facilitating moral exploration process means creating a rich and effective environment for the active participation of all moral agents including the child, family, class, school, and community in the social interactions as natural forces that enable the child to grow naturally and morally.