Teaching Children About Australia Day: An Ethical Dilemma Essay.

The Australia Day holiday is approaching and you walk out into the foyer to hear some of the staff and parents talking to the children about how Australia Day is a celebration of the day Australia was discovered. There are many Aboriginal families using the centre. You are concerned about the misleading messages this statement gives about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their culture and you want to introduce the Australia Day celebration into the children's curriculum in a more culturally respectful way. Some of the staff think you are making a fuss about nothing and they are worried you will create friction with the non-Aboriginal parents.

Working through the Ethical Response Cycle: The headings below should be covered in the order decided upon by the group. If any headings/phases in the cycle are not applicable or you feel the group has covered them, then explain why/where. You should show how you have considered the perspectives of each party under the following headings from the cycle: 

• Recognition of the dilemma
• Legal aspects
• Professional consideration
• Ethical principles
• Ethical theories
• Informed inclination
• Negotiation
• Judgement
• Action/Possible resolution

For this assessment task each student must write an essay that builds on the research and thinking undertaken for the group discussion.

Essay Topic:

The ‘best interests of the child’ (article 3.1 UNCRC) is not always easy to identify particularly in situations that present us with an ethical dilemma. Discuss your chosen dilemma in relation to the children’s rights (as defined by UNCRC) and the determination of children’s best interests. Provide a rationale for the resolution that your group reached and explain the ethical, rights-based, legal and professional considerations that led to the resolution.

In your essay make sure that you:

• Commence your essay identifying the dilemma you are addressing.
• Explain the characteristics of an ethical What are the ethical dimensions of the situation you are discussing?
• Summarise the resolution the group reached. 
• Explain the rationale for the resolution. What did you draw on to ensure that children’s ‘best interests’ were a primary consideration (for example, relevant  insights from group discussion; the  phases of the ethical response cycle; key documents - e.g., the UNCRC, ECA Code of Ethics, the NQS and EYLF- and readings from the modules?
• Briefly reflect upon the process of working through the ethical dilemma. In this reflection consider what you have learnt in regard to areas such as: your teaching practice; advocating and enacting children's rights; and reconceptualising the child as an informed participant in issues that affect them.
• Follow the conventions of writing an essay (i.e. introduction, body, conclusion). 

Recognition of the Dilemma

In their day to day encounters, human beings encounter ethical dilemmas every day in their profession. In the teaching profession sometimes it is hard to explain things that may create a wrong impression in a child’s mind. It then becomes very difficult to try and explain such a concept to a child and one ends up giving the child the wrong information so as not to interfere with their moral grounds of judgment. In the health profession, ethical dilemmas sometimes appear when a health profession is confronted with a situation that requires moral courage. A good example may be production of cheaper drugs that may not suite health requirements of patients in order to maximize profits.  This paper explores an ethical dilemma as it tries to educate children on the real reason Australia day is celebrated.

The dilemma in question refers to a member of staff in a teaching profession who overhears members of staff and parents telling children that the Australia day celebrations were started in order to celebrate the day that Australia was discovered. There are however both aboriginal and non aboriginal families in the setting and one feels that it is actually wrong to give the children misleading information especially with someone who is entrusted to chart the future of the education of the children.

As a matter of fact, if the children were taught the real meaning of the holiday, they would at a very tender age learn to appreciate cultural and ethnic diversity. However there is a big dilemma since the children may not understand cultural diversity and telling them such real incidences may cause divisions among themselves. The bigger dilemma exists with the members of staff who actually don’t feel the need of teaching children about the holiday. It requires a lot of conviction to try making them to at least understand that it is important to teach children about Australia day celebrations.

Bauman, A., & Chau, J. (2015) the legal aspects of the dilemma may actually be explained regarding the universal and local laws in the constitutions and statutes. According to the international journal of the rights of children, it is recognized that a dilemma really exists in balancing the child’s best interests and safeguarding their views. This encourages one to not only tell a child what is right but what is also morally accepted in order to avoid corrupting the views and morals of the child.

Kwan, E. (2015) the real reason why the Australia day is celebrated being the day when Europeans first set foot on Australia and the initial reason being to recognize non aboriginal people of Australia, one may feel that children are being misled. This is practically because instead of learning that it was the day that Australia was discovered, it should actually help them to learn more knowledge about their country and the people they live with.

The United Nations convections on the rights of children state it clearly that it is of grave importance to tell children what is right. However, it should be consistent with the child’s maturity, level of thinking, age and how well the child can comprehend and disseminate the information being accorded to them. The best interest of the child with all other factors constant in whatever circumstances remains the primary goal (Fozdar, F., Spittles, B., & Hartley, L. K. 2015).

Legal Aspects

There are various ethical principles that stand out in instruction and information given to children. These are mostly influenced by the community’s standards, beliefs, values and norms. Ethical principles can best be determined according to how well a child seems accustomed to the societal values, beliefs and according to how much a child knows. Different parents treat their children differently. There are those parents and caregivers who adopt the authoritative styles of parenting and there are those who are always uninvolved. This may create a clear distinction between the two children where they would not operate at the same level at whatever given time.

It is ethical to teach and instruct a child in the right way and with the best interests of the child. This constitutes telling the child the truth about their world as it enhances their interest in learning, research and it also boosts their confidence. Ethical principles also take into consideration the picture or the impression that may be formed in a child’s mind. This has made the society to make norms and laws regarded as taboos which may not necessarily be true but are made to inflict fear in a child in order to avoid behaving in a particular way and in a bid to make the child suit the best interests of the community.

Some of the very major ethical theories that reflect and regard to the matters of the children include the Kohlberg’s three stages theory about morality, the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the psychosocial development theory of Eric Erickson. In a closer look at Kohlberg’s theory of morality, it is important to note that a child should only be considered an adult once they have been able to go through all the stages. The theory clearly explains that a child’s morality is molded in three stages namely; pre-conventional morality, conventional morality and post conventional morality.

In the initial stage, to a child morality refers to doing what is right to avoid punishment, in the next stage, morality refers to doing what is right according to what the society demands and in the last stage morality refers to doing what is right in order to fulfill the discernment of the heart and the conscience of the individual. It is therefore important to put these theoretical views in place before giving any information to a child.

The development theories of Sigmund Freud and Erick Erickson on the other hand define the role of caregivers, parents and teachers in molding the developments of a child. Other theories that may also be important may be the behavioral theories such as classical conditioning and the operant conditioning in order to mould behavior and character of the child.

Rickard, J. (2015) the informed inclination may also influence the amount of information and the relevance of information that one gives to the child. There may be parents and teachers who actually see it as unfitting to celebrate the holiday. This may create divisions with those who feel it important to celebrate and actually embrace the cultural and ethnic diversity in the Australia. Both sides have a count since the setting foot of Europeans in Australia came along with colonization. It could have caused some family genealogies so much bitterness that they may feel as not being important to be passed on to the children and descendants.

Professional Consideration

Such inclinations may actually affect the kind of information that a parent tells to a child. However, a teacher has no excuse since the moral obligation is to instruct and train the child on the best way to follow. The amount of information may also matter. Some people may lack information to answer all the questions about the holiday to the children and may thus tell them a convincing argument to satisfy their curiosity. Community traditions may also determine the information passed on to the children. Some people may choose to tell children certain things since they were also told the same when they were young.

In considering the legal aspects, the ethical principles and the ethical theories, it is important that one develops some ground of reasoning that is free from bias, prejudice and base assumptions in regarding the information being given to the children and all other aspects of child upbringing. Teachers, parents and primary caregivers should involve the government and other relevant bodies in trying to teach children in order to develop sound teachings to the children.

In the present dilemma, it is important that parents and teachers question the impacts that the truth may create in their children once they start recognizing their ethnic differences. It is also important to question the immediate impression it creates in the minds of the children about the parents and teachers in later stages of life. Would it probably make the child think the parents and teachers are always fooling them or would it probably make them think that such a holiday is bad.

Another very important consideration especially for the teachers and instructors is to really question whether the information they give is consistent with the United Nations convection of the rights of children that actually asks of parents and children to give children the information that may appeal to the best interests of the children and their views.

Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2016) in regard to the theories of development, Sigmund Freud and Erick Erickson actually suggest that there are fixations that occur when children are not given the right thing at the right time. It is therefore necessary for parents and teachers to make sure that parent and caregivers give children the right information in order to prevent fixations from occurring at a later age. In this respect, children should be taught to appreciate cultural and ethnic diversity even when they are young to prevent problems of ethnicity in their future.

It would be wrong according to the theories of morality to give all children of all ages in a school the same misleading information since they all do not fall in the same morality levels. in as much as age is not really a factor in determining morality, it would be important to use age as a basis of determining morality and giving relevant information to children. This will help to inculcate the right spirit and attitude in the children. It helps the children to coexist better in the environment appreciating one another.

Ethical Principles

The best course of action following the judgment would to form a staff meeting that would address these issues and form a common voice among the teachers and other members of staff. They should come forward with a rationale or a criterion of actually passing the information to children. A good example may be to recognize the non aboriginal families as visitors to Australia and actually appreciate them. The word should then be passed on to the parents and good conviction based on the judgment. This would then make the information to be easily passed on to the children.

Regarding the inclusion of the holiday in the curriculum, the school heads should hold forums with the government and other relevant bodies and they should raise issues that need to be included in the curriculum to suit the best interests of the children. This would then favor the positive growth of the children by ensuring that they grow up in the right way and are able to acknowledge the importance of the holiday and also to appreciate cultural and ethnic diversity.

Zwart, Landeweerd,  & van Rooij, (2014) the United Nations convection on the rights of children explains that any information given to children should try to balance the child’s views and the child’s best interests. This should be consistent with age, maturity, the level of knowledge and the thinking capacity of the child. It is however not always a n easy task to actually tell the best interests of the child. Ethical dilemmas are then encountered daily in trying to identify these interests and to cause least possible harm. This paper explores the face of ethical dilemmas taking in the example of determining the best interests of the child in explaining the Australia day that may trigger negative feelings and divisions in the children.

The dilemma is observed when the Australia day is approaching and parents are telling their children about Australia day as being the day that Australia was discovered. This information is wrong in the sense that Australia day is actually a holiday that has been set aside dating back to the day when Europeans first set foot in Australia. It is a day that has been set aside in order to recognize the non aboriginal people of Australia.

According to Corey, G. (2015) it feels bad that there are both aboriginal and non aboriginal families represented. This changes the focus of the holiday that should instead address these issues of the non aboriginal families living in Australia. However the dilemma presents itself in that if the history of colonialism, imperialism and oppression is taught to the children, it might actually cause divisions amongst them about it would also ruin their mental images of their counterparts and they may fail to coexist peacefully again.

However, there is still need for the children to be taught to embrace the cultural and ethnic diversity in order to prevent social evils such as tribalism, ethnicity, nepotism and other social vices commonly expressed in the society. As a matter of fact, celebrating the holiday because of what it is will help resolve bias and discrimination even among the parents and staff who were maybe wrongly socialized.

Ethical Theories

The above dilemma may be classified as an ethical dilemma since it meets the characteristics of ethical dilemmas which include; availability of various courses of action about a particular situation, it takes into account value judgments about the results and impacts. An ethical dilemma also has various sources such as ethics, laws and religion offering solutions to the dilemma. Pollock, J. M. (2014) an ethical dilemma may also be a choice between two negative outcomes, the outcomes have also far reaching impacts on the society and the community and the dilemmas can be solved or either way fails to be solved. Lastly, ethical dilemmas has no right or wrong solutions and the results that ought to be allocated are insufficient,

The dilemma in question may not be comprehensive enough to fit in all the characteristics of an ethical dilemma but it at least has some of the characteristics that are clearly visible such as the availability of solutions from different sources. In this case there are solutions from the theories, from the legal requirements and also from the community moral standards. The dilemma in question is also a choice between two probable negative outcomes. This can be best explained in terms of telling children the truth might cause divisions among themselves and failing to tell them might lead to discrimination and other social vices in later life.

Blais, K. (2015) the outcome of the ethical dilemma in question can also be noted as to have far reahing consequences on the society. a good example is if it leads to discrimination it may end up eating up the whole fabric that brings people together and it may cause divisions among different people. Similarly, children might learn to embrace ethnic diversity and this might result in a better society in the later life there there would be very minimal cases of ethnic differences and racial prejudice and discrimination.

The resolution reached by the group can e summed up in several words that actually conclude that if you teach a child the right way to follow, they will never do wrong. It is therefore unnecessary to substitute the truth with a lie irrespective of the consequences the truth might bring. This has been confirmed by theorists such as Ivan Pavlov and skinner. These two are well known for behavioral theories. Ivan Pavlov explains that all behavior is conditioned and the children being better learners can be taught how to behave and treat others through simple classical conditioning.

In a bid to then implement this resolution, a staff meeting to address the issues needs to be organized where the issues should be clearly discussed and a good systematic way of telling the children the truth about the holiday is put forward. A good example as discussed would be to tell the children that the holiday is all about visitors who came to Australia. Depending on their level of morality, one may then choose what to tell and what not to tell the children in order to make the children fully understand and submit to the reasoning that is best fit for the community.

Informed Inclination

From the proceedings of the meeting, parents should then be taught on how to respect uphold and instruct the children in matters regarding the holiday. This should be done with well discussed and arrived at reasons in order to solve any doubts. With this, it would then be very simply to translate the same to the children. for the inculcation f the holiday in the school’s curriculum, the resolution sought to address this by arguing that meetings and forums with the government and involved parties need to be conducted in order to fully discuss and ensure the importance is realized. They should however follow to ensure that the proceedings are incorporated in the school’s curriculum and the importance taught to all staff members.

The fundamental reasons of this resolution were clearly arrived at following the several conventions and laws put in place, the community morals and the theoretical perspectives put in place. Some of the community and societal values put in place are the factors of cultivating moral values. It is argued that children should be trained in the good things when they are still young and allowed to follow them into the future. teaching children to embrace such values as giving, kindness, welcoming strangers and the like will teach them to value togetherness, unity of  purpose and diversity of the many multilingual and multiethnic societies living in the world today (Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. 2015).

The rationale was also based on the work of theorists such as Kohlberg who actually stresses that morality of a child develops in three distinct stages which include the pre conventional morality, conventional and post conventional. In the three stages, Kohlberg explains how morality is defined by the child. In the earlier stages, children do good to avoid punishment while in the later stages, children do good because it is good to do good and bad to do evil.

This follows that one should always be conscious on what to tell a child at what stage. In a school setting, despite the fact that age is not always an important consideration in determining morality, it would still form some significance in trying to assess what each child needs to know about the holiday. The very junior children should be taught to celebrate just because it is good to celebrate one another but those who are a bit mature should actually be taught the values of embracing cultural diversity and the concrete facts and integral parts of a society. The importance of  burying imperialism and focusing on oneness and building a multiracial society that exists peacefully.

Christianson, S. A. (2014) explains that the legal considerations were also put in place such as the rights of children and most importantly the united nation convections on human rights. These summed up the same thing with the theories and the community ethics and values and focused on cultivation discrimination free society however unconsciously by guaranteeing that children have rights of access to quality education by law.

The ethical response disclosure as developed by Newman and Pollnitz is a professional model of instruction for the early childhood development teachers and instructors in order to handle some of the concrete problems, challenges and dilemmas that they face in their operation. This professional kit was specifically designed mostly for ethical dilemmas that meets specific characteristics such as lack of well stipulated rules and policies to initiate decision making process, conflict of set rules and guidelines with professional values and standards and in instances where clear rules exist but the course of action is not clearly stipulated (Locke, T., Alcorn, N., & O’Neill, J. 2013).

Negotiation

With the dilemma at hand where there is not a clear stipulated and spelled out procedure and where the existing rules may conflict with the moral, ethical and professional guidelines, it is important to employ the ethical responsive cycle in order to bring out a clear and concise decision.

The problem in this case is the dilemma on what to tell children about the Australia day and on what to do when parents and teachers tell children that it is the day that Australia was discovered. Having identified the problem it then follows in the model that legal aspects need to be considered. The legal aspects considered includes all the laws and convections that regulate the rights of children. Conclusions based on these ethical considerations are then important in proceeding to the next stage.

The professional consideration which involves all of the ethics, code of conduct, behavior and all other aspects were identified and used to shape the judgment. Ethical principles and ethical theories being the last to be considered aided in summing up the response and a clear sound judgment. It is therefore clear that children need to be educated on both the good and bad things about the holiday and taught to embrace the good things about the holiday.

In conclusion, it is important to highly emphasize on the importance of the process of working through ethical dilemmas in order to solve such a problem in the future as employed in this discussion. Some of the strategies such as the “I believe it” strategy is one of the best in the key stages of solving ethical dilemmas and making a sound judgment.

Reference:

Bauman, A., & Chau, J. (2015). Monitoring population trends through physical activity surveillance-a chequered history in Australia. Australasian Epidemiologist, 22(1), 5.

Blais, K. (2015). Professional nursing practice: Concepts and perspectives. Pearson.

Bredenoord, A. L., Clevers, H., & Knoblich, J. A. (2017). Human tissues in a dish: The research and ethical implications of organoid technology. Science, 355(6322), eaaf9414.

Carroll, A., & Buchholtz, A. (2014). Business and society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Nelson Education.

Christians, C. G., Fackler, M., Richardson, K., Kreshel, P., & Woods, R. H. (2015). Media ethics: Cases and moral reasoning. Routledge.

Christianson, S. A. (2014). The handbook of emotion and memory: Research and theory. Psychology Press.

Corey, G. (2015). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy. Nelson Education.

Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.

Fozdar, F., Spittles, B., & Hartley, L. K. (2015). Australia Day, flags on cars and Australian nationalism. Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 317-336.

Kwan, E. (2015). Celebrating Australia: A history of Australia Day, National Australia Day Council.

Locke, T., Alcorn, N., & O’Neill, J. (2013). Ethical issues in collaborative action research. Educational Action Research, 21(1), 107-123.

Macnamara, J., & Crawford, R. (2013). The construction of Australia Day: A study of public relations as ‘new cultural intermediaries’. Continuum, 27(2), 294-310.

Nathan, L. P., Thieme, A., Tatar, D., & Branham, S. (2017). Disruptions, Dilemmas and Paradoxes: Ethical Matter (s) in Design Research. Interacting with Computers, 29(1), 1-9.

Pollock, J. M. (2014). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice. Nelson Education.

Rickard, J. (2015). Writing Music into Australian History. Musicology Australia, 37(2), 269-279.

Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2016). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas. Routledge.

Zeng, S. X., Ma, H. Y., Lin, H., Zeng, R. C., & Tam, V. W. (2015). Social responsibility of major infrastructure projects in China. International Journal of Project Management, 33(3), 537-548.

Zwart, H., Landeweerd, L., & van Rooij, A. (2014). Adapt or perish? Assessing the recent shift in the European research funding arena from ‘ELSA’to ‘RRI’. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 10(1), 11.