d only be used in a situation where he was directly threatened. I informed him that under no circumstances was he to use what I had taught him to vent his anger toward another person. I further explained to him that in the event it were necessary to use what I had shown him he most likely would have to face some serious consequences at school. I assured him that those consequences would be limited to school. I made it clear that he would receive no punishment at home and that I would do everything within my power to reduce the severity of the consequences that the school should decide to impose. It is possible that my actions may have fostered a certain amount of disequilibrium within my son. I hope that the impact of this was minimal given the amount of time that I had devoted to explaining the reasoning behind my actions. I do believe that he was already experiencing quite a lot of disequilibrium due to the stress of the given situation. Values and Developmental Contextualism As mentioned earlier classroom rules and regulations are but one category of moral practice. In the example of my personal experience I showed the possible conflicts that can arise in this particular area. It is possible that this category may provide educators with an easily observable method which can be used to initially assess the character of students. However this initial assessment has the possibility of being misleading as exemplified in my personal experience. Although adherence 1 to selected external controls is considered to be a valuable indicator of good character (Berkowitz and Grych, 1998), the many differences in culture, ethnicity, religious belief, and environment would suggest that the exhibition of certain moral behaviors is not necessarily indicative of a lack of character. Because of this any universal assumptions based on specific behaviors exhibited by the adolescent should not be made. Conclusion The public and educators alike agree that ...
