Jean Piaget s Morality And Its Many Stages - 1437 Words

In 1950, Lawrence Kohlberg graduated from the University of Chicago planning to go into clinical psychology. However after reading some of the articles that Jean Piaget published on morality in children and adolescents, Kohlberg begins researching morality and its many stages. Over the next 30 years he researches morality and publishes two volumes critical to his work, leaving his legacy in psychology. Lawrence Kohlberg was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Bronxville, NY in 1927. At a young age he was sent to Phillips Academy, a boarding school, in Andover, MA, it was here that he was known more for his mischief than his academics. He threw himself in to the Zionist cause around the time that he â€Å"became the ‘second engineer’ on an old†¦show more content†¦In his dissertation he talks about six stages of moral development, which was in contrast with Piaget’s two stages (Walsh 37). After his dissertation was published, his career as a professor took off. He started as an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University in 1959 (â€Å"Find the Right Therapist†). Kohlberg then went back to the University of Chicago as an assistant professor, however after a few years he was promoted to an associate professor and director of the Child Psychology Training Program (â€Å"Find the Right Therapist†). Through his work with children he believed that they made their own moral decisions (Walsh 37). In his thirties, Kohlberg had received a field of inquiry, making him a hot commodity (Walsh 38). In 1968 till his death in 1987, he came to the Harvard Graduate School of Education, teaching education and social psychology (Walsh 37). While teaching at Harvard Kohlberg did something unusual, he brought his critics to his class to have an intellectual discussion (Walsh 37). Even though he was busy pursuing his career, he still found time for his pursue a personal life. In 1955 he married Lucy Stigberg, which is around the time that he was working on his dissertation and obtaining his PhD. They had two sons and by the time that he got the job at Harvard, he was divorced. He later meets his fiancà ©, Ann Higgins, a former instructor at Harvard. Although he was a very intelligent man and a star to the psychology world, Kohlberg had