Family Values Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Family Values - Essay Example She was caught off guard and humiliated over something small. Although the teacher has rules, to humiliate 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 Preconventional Morality stage and within stage one (Gould, 2009, p. 2). In this stage, she is more afraid of punishment than she is about going back to the 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 t 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. 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 to her parents about the situation.