Noddings: To know what matters to you, observe your actions

[moimeme]

This lady is an educational philosopher, but certainly her ideas can be translated to all of one's life.

 

Noddings: To know what matters to you, observe your actions

 

BY KATHLEEN O'TOOLE

 

If we excel at deception and rationalization, as Jean-Paul Sartre said, how can we come to know our own quest? Not, as parents tend to say, through "high ideals and whipping ourselves into shape," but by "observing our own actions."

 

That was the parting advice that Nel Noddings, the well-known philosopher of education and feminist ethics, gave to the Stanford community during her recent talk for the lecture series, "What Matters to Me and Why."

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/1998/february4/noddings.html

 

For a discussion of more of her ideas:

http://www.personal.kent.edu/~jwattles/noddings.htm

[Arabess]

I can't even understand what the hell she is trying to convey. I couldn't even find a paragraph to hold onto and catch a point.

 

Nel Noddings, a former high school mathematics teacher, now in the School of Education at Stanford University, draws on her experiences as a wife and mother. Caring as a parent and as a teacher are her paradigms.

 

Not surprising....I never did well in math either. HAHA! I guess you'll have to break it down for me Merry.

[moimeme]

She's saying that morality ought to arise from the principle of caring.

[Arabess]

I think MOST people are too self serving to base their morals on the 'caring for others'. I actually have a very tender heart....but if I were to be 'honest'.....I DO NOT make moral decisions based on the feelings of other people. It would be more 'honest' for me to say I may do the right thing so I don't feel guilty for doing the wrong thing....but I hardly think I did it for the sole purpose of not wanting to hurt another person. I just simply made a decision based on not wanting to feel bad about myself.

 

Interesting thread. I wonder how everyone else views themselves in this particular spotlight.