Abstract
The proposed dilemma is aimed at adults and young people, teachers, and university students in courses in the field of education. It presents a situation in which a primary school teacher is faced with the dilemma of having to choose whether to follow the rules of the institution and tell a student’s father, known to be aggressive with his son, about the child’s misbehavior at school or omit such information to prevent the child from being physically punished. At stake are the value of truth versus that of respect and the integrity of the child.
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Keywords
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Audience: Adults and Youth (University and High School Teachers and Students)
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Field: Education
Valeria is the teacher of a student in her first-grade class named Bruno (6 years old) who has been showing learning difficulties, does not concentrate, and does not participate in activities, hence not evolving like the other children in learning aspects. Bruno has also been constantly getting involved in interpersonal conflicts with classmates and teachers because he is agitated and inflexible. The teacher has made several interventions with the child but has not been successful. The school where Valeria works proposes, in such situations, to involve the child’s family in resolving the issue, prompting conversations in order to understand the family context, seek solutions together, and, if necessary, make referrals for external professional evaluations. Bruno lives only with his father and has no other family members in the city. Valeria decided to send a note inviting the father to a meeting.
When Bruno arrived for the meeting, still not knowing the reason for the conversation, his father expressed himself in an authoritarian and aggressive way, saying that he is a very correct person, that he was raised by very strict parents, and that he doesn’t allow his son to behave inappropriately or disrespect the teacher. He also said that he usually “educates” Bruno with severe corporal punishment so that he learns and no longer incurs in what he considers to be misbehavior. The teacher knows that the father is the only person in the family she could talk to about Bruno’s behavior to help him, but she also knows that if she tells the father about his conduct he will probably be spanked. What should the teacher decide?
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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
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Alves, S.S.C. (2024). A Teacher Facing an Authoritarian and Violent Family. In: Bataglia, P.U.R., Alves, C.P., Parente, E.M.P.P.R. (eds) Studies on Moral Competence. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52139-3_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52139-3_30
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-52138-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-52139-3
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