Robert Coles is a world-renowned child psychologist, professor, and author of more than fifty books. His greatest acclaim has come from his research of children’s lives and the subsequent books that search through their moral, political and spiritual lives. In his book the Moral Life of Children Robert Coles poses many questions. He puts forth many possibilities, however, he gives very few answers. In this book he gives his subjects an opportunity to speak to the world through him. Rather than giving his opinions on what they had to say and what they went through he tries to have the reader see through their eyes and then understand the morals that they have, believing that their stories could stand on their own. Though this makes for an incredibly interesting book it also makes it very difficult to draw out one main point. Instead of giving reasons for children having a specific moral outlook or set of beliefs he shows us a trend that appears to exist with children in certain kinds of situations. He uses the stories to circle around certain points and themes but does not have a single jumping off point from which all his other insights and ideas progress. He shows us that the race and socio-economic position of a child and its family is incredibly important in determining the moral outlook that the child will have. However he still poses the question of why certain children in a difficult situations turn out to be incredibly moral people always working for the benefit of the people around them, with their own happiness as an after thought. This is an unanswered, and probably unanswerable, question. Though throughout the book we see that parents have a great affect on the child and the way it will turn out it is important to know that they too are shaped by their circumstances and position. He spends most of the book concentrating on children who are in very difficult circumstances like Ruby, a little girl in New Orleans who was the first black student to go to a white school, or Eduardo, a poor boy who lives in a favela in Rio de Janeiro and must find someway to help himself and his family. He shows us that the ideas and beliefs that these children have are instilled not only by their parents but also by every sight, sound, moment or event that has occurred in their life or around them. Coles sees that little children can have all these incredible moral qualities that seem to be born out of almost nowhere like an acute moral sensitivity, a moral notice that is often not shared by adults and a sense of moral purpose.

Early in the Moral Life of Children Coles addresses the issue moral development within children. In order to illustrate this idea he uses several very different examples. The first is Ruby, a six-year-old black girl from New Orleans. She was the girl that initiated school desegregation in New Orleans. For many terrible months this poor little girl had to endure the threats and slurs of mobs of white people, who heckled her every day on her way to and from school. Due to these hordes of racist people she had to be brought back and forth from school by Federal Marshals. If this wasn’t bad enough she attended school in solitude for a large portion of the year because all the white parents took their children out of the school. However she was unswerving in her dedication to what she was doing, she never appeared to doubt the cause or resent her tormentors she just bore her responsibility with a smile. This intrigued Robert Coles as it did many of the teachers they were curious how this very young child could endure such pain and difficulty. He was interested in the fact that rather than hating or resenting the hateful people that heckled her everyday, she actually prayed for them every night before she went to bed. When he questioned her on it he saw that she was told to pray for bad people by her minister, and that’s exactly what she did. Rather than questioning her circumstances she simply looked to god saying that he would protect her and her family. Coles came to the conclusion that she was being psychologically imitative. She was taking phrases, statements, and portions of sermons and using them as a justification for what was going on. He says that rather than making truly moral decisions Ruby all her smiles and prayers were more gestures than the responses of a truly moral and reflective person. He believes this is true because according to Lawrence Kohlberg “moral development is therefore a result of an increasing ability to perceive social reality or to organize and integrate social experience. One necessary-but not sufficient- condition for principled morality is the ability to reason logically.” He goes on to say, “the main determinants of moral development seem to be the amount and variety of social experiences, the opportunity to take in a number of roles and to encounter other perspectives.” In Ruby’s case her age as well as her race and socio-economic position as the daughter of poor black parents of rural background would limit the amount of social variety that she would have access to. Thus according to Coles she was a “premoral” girl more gesturing than making decisions based on her own set of derived beliefs.

However this idea of moral development doesn’t seem to hold true when we look at other examples like the example of a 14-year-old white boy in Atlanta. This happens to be a boy from a poor family that for all practical purposes would be labeled as “rednecks”. A boy who by these standards would not have the variety of social experience to make truly moral decisions, but who made a truly incredible moral decisions with great personal sacrifice. He was the first white boy to speak with a black student in his newly desegregated school. Though this boy was staunchly opposed to desegregation and at their initial entrance into the school had the same feelings towards black students as all his brethren in a short time he began to feel for the black students. In his own words this young man said “I’d be as I was, I guess, but for bring in school that year and seeing that kid- seeing him behave himself, no matter what we called him, and seeing him being insulted so bad, so real bad. Something in me just drew the line, and something in me began to change, I think.” When this young white boy began to defense a black student from the mobs of white students he made a moral decision. He saw the injustice of the situation and chose to do something about it. Though with the previous definition of moral development that we get it would appear that he should not have been able to make such a moral decision, he did and it changed his life forever. This makes it necessary to reevaluate Ruby and possibly the definition of moral development. When we look at Ruby at nine years old there is one comment that seems especially important she says looking back that “ we inched a little closer to God, and because we did we became a little better ourselves.” This comment makes Cols and the reader realize that the task that she undertook in desegregating schools was not one which she was simply given and complied with obediently, but a task that she stuck with because at least on some level she understood the importance of what she was doing.

However these difficult situations don’t always breed a moral character like the one that we found in Ruby or the young Atlanta boy. A great example to illustrate this is that of Hank, a poor young white boy from New Orleans. He grew up with a heavy drinking, bigoted, carpenter for a father and a sympathetic, overworked, and kind-hearted mother. In his early years Hank seemed like a very nice boy taking much more after his mother than his father. When asked about Ruby he felt bad for her and he sympathized. He was curious how she endured such horrible conditions. However as he got older his father’s beliefs began to creep in to his moral awareness. His father who always believed he was and presented himself as a victim, except for when he was beating his wife and children. The linkages for his fathers feelings are fairly apparent according to Cols they result from “poverty, occupational insecurity, limited possibilities for personal and economic advancement, the vulnerability…all these becoming connected to a sense that others, also vulnerable, like blacks, are getting out of hand, getting ahead, hence they present yet another danger in a world already fearful, threatening, even rapacious.” This clearly shows why someone in Hank’s father’s position would take these views but it is important to see how these ideas creep into Hank’s moral awareness. How one child in Atlanta faced with poverty and racial prejudice finds a way to make a moral leap, going against the grain, while one in New Orleans follows in the footsteps of his less than noble father. This question appears to be unanswerable as evinced by Cols’ comment that “I have witnessed their courage and tried to comprehend it- with little luck, as far as psychiatric characterization goes.

Another important aspect of children’s moral life is their moral notice. Coles sees that children have a different moral notice than adults do. The issues that they find morally compelling or important are much different than those that stimulate adults. This is seen in two examples how children relate to movies and how children related to the nuclear arms race at its height. In discussing films Coles shows several things one that “the diversity of stimulation that emerges from several characters embedded in a complex plot, and the considerable latitude of awareness and moral concern in an audience,” imbues the viewer with a certain moral energy that arises from having their moral outlook stimulated. Also as suggested in the words of an anything but ordinary young child, by the name of Ruby, was the idea that “fictional characters have a collective voice that occasionally intrudes upon the other voices within us, and exerts an influence on how we behave.” In her exact words she said, in reference to A Raisin in the Sun, “if all the white people on the street [who were heckling her mercilessly] saw that movie, they might stop coming out to bother us… because the people in the movies would work on them, and maybe they’d listen.” At a tender young age she saw that these characters and images that we view could enter our moral awareness and have considerable effects. The point that was most compelling to Coles was the fact that what he believed the children would view as important, or what he viewed as the most important moral issues, was not what the children picked up on. This made him realize that children have a very different moral notice than adults do. In seeing A Raisin in the Sun rather than focusing on the racial issues of the movie Ruby found the most interest in a scene having to do with the interaction of the mother and the daughter. Another example was the film To Kill a Mockingbird. When children viewed this Coles found that many rather than focusing on Atticus Finch or the racial issues took more interest in the subplot between Boo Radley, the next door neighbor of Atticus Finch and his daughter Scout, and Scout and her two friends. The children in the film are rather curious about their recluse of a neighbor. In the end it turns out that he is kind and caring man who has been keeping his eye on the children all summer. This becomes completely clear when he saves them from an attacker by killing him. Its interesting that these children focused on the relationship between Boo and the children, and his evolution as a character from a recluse that everyone feared to what he really was a kind and gentle man that was simply misunderstood. These kinds of examples show that children put moral value in things that are much different then what adults believe they should but more often than not these are things that have a greater relationship to their everyday lives. He sees that children put emphasis on what is concrete and readily understandable rather than on complex abstract ideas that adults may deem important.

Another, more direct, example of this moral notice is the way children saw the nuclear arms race. Growing up with the constant thought of nuclear bombs raining down upon your head could be stressing for any child. However Coles noticed that the kids he was interviewing were hardly interested or informed on this important world issue. Once again he saw that things that are linked to their everyday lives compel children. They find interest in issues that they can relate to themselves. In his own words “children know and favor the concrete, an abstract moral issue is hard for them to comprehend as thoroughly as real and pressing.” In speaking to poor children living in the rural south at the time of the nuclear arms race he discovered that they had no real knowledge or understanding of the nuclear threat that existed. The more pressing problems that come along with poverty, like hunger discrimination, and injustice, appeared to be the ones that stuck out in their minds. This is interesting however not at all surprising. In middle class families Coles found that children were much more informed and interested on issues having to do with the nuclear arms race. This probably derives form the fact that when kids don’t have to worry about the day-to-day struggle to survive they have time to concern themselves with larger less imminent issues. These were the issues that stimulated their moral awareness as shown by a young black girl who said “if the Ku Klux Klan ever got that bomb, it would be real bad for us.”

The point that I found most compelling in this entire book was the idea of moral purpose. George Orwell wrote, “The truth is that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or difficulty.” This idea that the qualities that we find truly admirable only come through in the adversity is echoed in Robert Coles’ research. Many of the children that he has interviewed seem to have formed some sort of purpose, a moral purpose, which pushes them on despite their difficult circumstances. This purpose always seems to be to endure. Whether it is to endure through the heckling mobs of racist white people or through the hunger pangs and disease that come along with poverty. Coles himself says “moral purpose comes down to an often professed desire to stay alive, to stay free, and to stay worthy of adults whom he has had occasion to respect, no matter how flawed, limited, inadequate they may be.”

We look at Ruby and we wonder how she persevered. We wonder how she managed to stay stable through that constant heckling and how through all this turmoil she never cracked. Ruby never thought about leaving school and escaping her problems. Throughout her entire ordeal she maintained clarity of thought and knowledge of her purpose and the role that she was playing not only in New Orleans but also in the entire nation. She endured because she had moral purpose, which would not be bent or broken by the circumstances that she was in. Ruby as Orwell said displayed the qualities that we find admirable, namely courage, faith and selflessness, when she forced into a situation wrought with pain and difficulty. Though all this occurred she stood by her beliefs. Ruby stuck to her belief in god and to the belief that what she was doing was right. Ruby kept faith in the fact that god would protect her.

Another case is that of Eduardo, a poor boy living on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Eduardo is a ten-year-old child who is doing his best to provide for him and fairly large family. In the difficult streets of Rio he is somewhat of an entrepreneur he begs, sells things, does odd jobs, and scrounges for every cent he can get. Though he undertakes all these tasks partly for himself he has a larger goal behind it, to keep his family alive. In his own words “I’d better bring home some money, or the baby won’t eat too many more meals.” It is this sense of purpose, this fight to survive, that characterizes Eduardo’s life. However with all the odds stacked against him Eduardo still refused without hesitation to take more lucrative jobs working for criminals. He would rather scrounge and battle on the street than take jobs running errands for gamblers or selling narcotics. This refusal to commit crime in the face of incredible odds shows that behind his main purpose of survival is a deeper morality that guides it.

Throughout his work Robert Coles shows us these children in adverse situations, some thrive under the pressure and show the true strength of their character while others succumb to their circumstances, becoming evil and immoral. He never gives the reader an answer for why some children turn out like the heroic Ruby while others, like Hank, follow the less moral route. What Coles does explain to us is that the moral outlook that children have is born out of their racial and economic position. He shows that a poor white person in the south at the time of segregation would often turn out to be racist due to his or her own position in society. The weakness and vulnerability that these poor people feel because of their economic position would cause them to perceive any group that is improving itself as a threat to them. He explains that even if a child takes on the beliefs of its parents the child is still, in essence, being molded by the group within which it exists because that same group molded the child’s parents. Even though a parents beliefs have a great influence on the development of a child and its moral faculties, when we realize that parents are molded by the group that they are born into we can see that it is less the parent than the race or class. Let us take for instance Ruby she was incredibly religious and drew much of her strength and courage from a belief in god. Her parents instilled this belief in her, which was instilled in them by theirs. This devout faith however was not an exception to the rule; this devout faith in god was the rule in the rural black community of the south. Coles himself noticed that with all the black children he spoke with god was a primary issue, something that was very different with many other groups. Another important point is that the moral notice he discussed is not something that is simply different for children but for people in different economic classes. When you are struggling to eek out a living and to feed your family it is very difficult to take notice of world affairs, it is only when you have time and a bit of security that you can truly contemplate things outside of your immediate predicament. This idea was clear when Coles noticed that many more children from middle class families knew and were concerned about what was going on in the nuclear arms race as compared to poorer children. He saw that the concerns of the poor from one nation to another were often more closely linked than those of the poor and the middle class from the same nation. Though Coles’ makes a very strong argument for why economic position and race mold the moral consciousness of a child he doesn’t explain all the phenomenal children that he finds. If we all simply gained the moral outlook of our group then all or almost all the members of any group would turn out the same. If a group were corrupt then all its members would be corrupt. If a group were courageous its members would be courageous. However we all know that that is not the way it works. In our society we have the morally upright and the morally corrupt in every race and economic class. So we must ask the same question that Coles’ does when talking to Eduardo “Why is it that some people who bear awful pain turn out to be so very nice, whereas others turn out not so nice at all, or worse?” Coles’ himself could not come up with an answer but in my estimation an uneducated ten-year-old boy named Eduardo did. On that day with almost no hesitation he responded “A throw of the dice.” That’s what are lives are in the end where we’re born, to whom we’re born, how we’re raised its all just a throw of the dice, a shot in the dark. Coles’ learned this from a group of uneducated yet incredibly moral children, like Ruby and Eduardo, and we can all learn a little more about what it is to be moral through his telling of their stories.