Practical applications : fashioning a program of moral education
If Kohlberg ’s theory is correct, what should be the form of moral education? Before applying our foregoing discussion to answering this question, we need to consider one more concept that Kohlberg adopted from piaget’s theory of cognitive development, that of equilibration or of seeking equilibrium. In piaget’s system, children continue to be satisfied with simplistic, unsophisticated answers to questions of relationships among things until 1. They reach a particular age of internal maturation and 2. Have engaged in enough activities related to the question. At this point they begin to feel dissatisfied and a bit disordered, for they feel an incongruence between their existing schemes and a newly perceived reality. This dissonance throws them out of cognitive equilibrium and serves as a motive to “ change their mind” or to accommodate in order to set things right-in order to attain equilibrium once more.