I’ve spent the spare moments of the last week reading Robert Coles’ eloquent offering on 'The Moral Intelligence of Children'. Although he is a psychiatrist, his language is the language of moral philosophy. In the book he examines what it means to be a good person. How do parents and teachers raise children who reveal a basic goodness, a care and concern for others, in their daily interactions? What does it take to raise children with a sense of what is right and what is wrong? In short, what must we do to help children develop empathy for others and a conscience that provides inner guidance? How do we teach children to behave in ways that are morally defensible? His focus is clearly on moral behaviour, on what Buddhist’s call right action.

My day job (as creative wannabes are inclined to call the activity that keeps body and soul together) is as a consulting psychologist to a group home for teenagers with behavioural and emotional problems. Hence, my interest in Robert Coles’ work. It helps me in my work which is advising youth care workers who must struggle daily with teenagers who have failed to learn even the most basic concern for others. These teens have’ learned what they lived’ as they have been exposed to various forms of abuse, physical, emotional and sexual. How can a child possibly learn to be a good person, to have a sense of what is right and what is wrong if the significant adults in their lives treated them with such a lack of care and concern? The spirit rebels at such atrocities and so called emotional and behavioural problems arise.

So the children come into care, often before they are one year of age. But we adhere to the philosophy of ‘keep the family together at all cost’ and so the yo-yo years start. Back to the family until things degenerate and then into care again. Perhaps a chance for the parents to shape up, then back to the family again. Or maybe to a member of the extended family. Or maybe into a foster home. Maybe uncle or grandpa sexually abuses the child or the foster family gets worried about the sexual acting out of the five year old so the child gets moved again, and again, and again — 10, 20, 30 or 40 times.

Such children often get diagnosed ‘attachment disordered’ as if it’s something like chicken pox, which you catch rather than being the result of not staying anywhere long enough to form a bond with another human being. As they get older, and start to challenge the various authority figures in their lives (principally caregivers and teachers), Oppositional Defiant Disorder becomes popular. When they start to defy societal authority (as in breaking laws), the youth are often labeled Conduct Disordered. Enough bad behaviour, coupled with a lack of conscience, nets a diagnosis of anti-social personality traits, which becomes anti-social personality disorder after the age of eighteen.

Robert Coles’ would have simpler terms, less psychological and more moral. He would say such youth have failed to learn how to be good people. They haven’t learned how to care for others. They haven’t learned the Golden Rule. But how could they? They haven’t been raised in circumstances that gave them an opportunity to learn these things. In fact, their circumstances taught them not to trust adults, because some of them do really bad things to kids. And there will be another move soon - to other adults with different standards and different rules about behaviour.

So you see, Robert Coles’ book had a lot to offer me in the work I do, or rather did. On Friday October 20 the operator of the group home where I consult had her contract to run the home terminated (without cause) by the Family and Children’s Services department of the Government of the Yukon. For the last year, we had been talking with senior bureaucrats and social workers about the increase in the severity of problems of the teenagers referred to the home. We talked about the number of placements, especially during the very early years when a child is supposed to be forming a bond with a primary caregiver and the impact this would have on their emotional development and their behaviour. We talked about the increase in the number of girls referred, the incidences of sexual abuse they had suffered, and their sexually promiscuous behaviour. We talked about the vague aches and pains suffered by the girls, psychosomatic ailments, the body’s response to stress. We talked about the number of youth being diagnosed with personality disorders and other psychiatric diagnoses. We talked about the need for separate homes for teenage girls and teenage boys for what are very obvious reasons. We talked about the fact that most of the kids were not attending school and the lack of relevant programming for such seriously maladjusted youth. We talked about the need to pay the youth care workers a salary commensurate with that received by workers in government run group homes in our town.

They listened, sort of. But there was no real response. No dialogue about the nature of the problem and how we might set about addressing the issues we’d identified. My colleague and I thought we were acting responsibly in bringing these issues to their attention. We thought they’d want to address them. We were looking to engage them in problem solving. It surprised me that they got mad. I mean mad, with finger wagging and chastising words. Then nasty. Vague and not so veiled threats. I guess I’m still pretty naïve in the ways of the world or should I say government bureaucracy.

So now I’m using Robert Coles’ words of wisdom to help me with my moral dilemma. The book had a lot to offer me in my own struggle with a moral issue that has plagued me during the last year. When you see something that you think is wrong, and I mean morally wrong, what should you do about it? Should you just close your eyes and quietly go about your business? Or should moral reasoning lead to moral action? And are you obligated to act even if the consequences are painful?

If you are reading this you’ve probably figured out that I chose action. But I am left wondering if being a good person, if knowing the difference between right and wrong, if empathy and care and concern are enough. And can I and the other 20 odd people thrown out of work by this decision take comfort in goodness being its own reward? And what about the government bureaucrats? What kind of people are they? Did they fail to learn to be good people? Have they not developed a sense of right and wrong? Are their consciences in deep freeze? Did they not develop empathy or did they lose it on the job as a messy extra? Where is their moral intelligence? And when can we expect moral action regarding the children in their care?

My colleague and I see a crisis in the care of children who are wards of the Yukon government. We believe that a public inquiry is needed to prevent the kind of tragedy that happened recently in BC. Does the Yukon need the death of a child to thaw consciences and prompt action? I hope not because that’s too high a price to pay.

Janet B. Webster has a doctorate in Educational Psychology. She is a researcher and a consultant in the Yukon. She’d like to be a creative writer. She thinking about trying her hand at something Orwellian based on her recent experiences.