The development and life of a famous New Jersey senator Cory Booker manifests various elements of Laurence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Cory Booker has risen gradually through his stages of life, demonstrating success at every stage (Gillespie, 2012). Currently, he is a renowned US senator with more aspirations and ambitions to accomplish. His life can clearly be understood in the mirror of Laurence Kohlberg and his stages of moral development .This paper therefore focuses on the life of Cory Booker and how he has developed and matured across the stages of his life, relates his life to Laurence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and finally makes a conclusion on the relevance of moral development theory in understanding the development and life of an individual in general.
Background of Cory Booker
Cory Booker was born in 1969 to the affluent civil rights activists and attended prestigious elementary and secondary schools. He participated actively in football, which he still plays to date. Booker later on attended Stanford University where he did political science and later on joined Yale Law School. His education and area of specialization have greatly contributed to his achievement in politics. Booker advanced his studies by pursuing Masters in Sociology. During his school life, Booker took up several leadership positions. For instance, he served as a senior class president and also headed a student-run crisis hotline. Despite his family prestige and security, Booker was never comfortable with crime rates in his city, which he vowed to reduce to the barest minimum as he treaded his way into politics. Booker was naturally a social person and even as he was elected a mayor of Newark, he continued to engage actively with individuals of all calibers, especially on Twitter which ranked him as the second most social mayor in the entire US (Gillespie, 2012). In 2013 elections, he contested for a second seat in the US senate and won election as the mayor of New Jersey. This was after a loss in the mayoral seat in 2002 after which he had resorted to forming and leading non-profit organizations that advocated for the betterment of the entire community. He believed that he could change the lives of all by advocating for equality and end of impunity. His fighting and achievement spirit spread quickly to all parts of the country leading to his recognition in the media as a dedicated leader who uses unorthodox methods to advocate for equality to all. In April, The Week news magazine published him as the America’s most overachieving mayor while Toronto Sun earned him the nickname “super-mayor”. He has made several appearances in The Oprah Winfrey Show (Brown, 2016). While still a mayor, Booker is remembered for having rescued an old woman from a burning house. These, among many other achievements of Cory booker can be explained using the theory of moral development by Laurence Kohlberg.
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Learning of Cory Booker
Cory Booker has gone through his education in a smooth and uninterrupted manner. His learning is based on the use of his power to speak and address issues surrounding him. He is a multiple intellectual. From the analysis of Gardner’s eight types of intelligence, Booker can be said to have a unique ability to use multiple channels for learning (URGUP & Aslan, 2015). Booker’s background reveals that he is a verbal-linguistic, logical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and naturalistic learner. He also has an existential and moral intelligence. He has been a leader throughout his schooling and training years, which manifests that he learns through verbal or linguistic methods since he is good at convincing and persuading large crowds. Booker also learns through logical means. This is evident from the manner in which he critically analyses challenges facing his community and logically looks for viable solutions. For instance, when he lost in 2002 elections, he decided to come up with non-profit organizations meant to fight for the rights of ordinary people (Brown, 2016). His powerful interaction skills and active participation in the school football team manifests Booker as an interpersonal and bodily-kinesthetic learner respectively. Therefore, Booker is an all-round learner.
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
Laurence Kohlberg developed a topographical model of moral development to explain stages that individuals pass through in pursuit to understand the doctrine of what is “right” or “wrong”. Kohlberg is a psychologist whose work was greatly influenced by Jean Piaget’s ideologies. His work therefore came as a response and development to Jean Piaget’s theory of moral development which he had categorized into two main stages namely: Morality of realism and morality of corporation. Kohlberg came up with three broad levels to explain morality and each level has two stages. These levels and stages are explained below:
Pre-Conventional Level of Moral Reasoning
Individuals at this stage understand morality to mean either to obey authority and avoid punishment or to serve one’s own interests. Children at this level of moral reasoning if asked why they always tell the truth, the answer will be “to avoid punishment” (Ethridge, 2017).The two stages at this level are:
To obey authority and avoid punishment
To serve one’s own interests
Conventional level of Moral Reasoning
This level is where most adults and adolescents operate. By “conventional”, Kohlberg meant complying with and upholding society rules and expectations. An Individual reasons that one should uphold these rules because they are in the society’s best interests. The person at this stage wants to be a good citizen and maintain law and order (Ethridge, 2017). Stages of this level include:
To protect shared feelings, agreements and expectations.
To maintain the social order.
Post Conventional Level of Moral Reasoning
This level is considered to involve a minority of individuals, especially adults. Moral behavior is based on personal formulation of commitment to the principles upon which social rules are based. The person believes that that the laws can be changed with mutual consent of the people. What an individual is looking for at this stage is justice, respect for human dignity, equality for all and elimination of discrimination. The person at this stage should therefore act according to his or her conscience to avoid self-condemnation. The two major stages at this level include:
Mutually agreed-upon standards that provide the greatest benefit to all.
Self-chosen consistent principles that all humans should follow.
Bookers Motivation
From the background of Cory Booker, it is evident that his leadership in the college was the major turning point in his life. He was an ordinary participant in the school football team and very little was known about his leadership abilities until he became the senior class president and later on the leader of student-run crisis hotline. This is an indicator that Booker’s leadership was motivated both by his personality and his environment. Born in a family that took an active role in civil rights activism, it can be concluded that Booker inherited his personality from his parents. This is probably what motivated his ambition to pursue a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in sociology, fields that greatly contributed to his interest in politics. Generally, Bookers motivation was both intrinsic and extrinsic (Brown, 2016).
Booker’s Decision-Making
Decision-making involves a series of steps that require the input of information at different stages as well as feedback. Decision can only be good as the data or input that informed it (Baker, et al., 2002). From the analysis of Bookers life, he is likely to have adopted a rational decision-making procedure to achieve his current position in the country. This process, as manifested by his background, followed the steps of defining the problem to be addressed, determining the requirements that the solution of the problem must meet, establishment of goals of solving the problem, identification of alternatives that would effectively solve the problem, development of evaluation criteria based on the goals, selection of decision-making tools, application of the tools to come up with a preferred alternative and checking of the best chosen solution to ensure it solves the problem effectively. Booker began his journey to success by clearly identifying the problem that required a solution. Perhaps, that is why he was always concerned about the society welfare from an early stage. He eventually came to achieve his ambition of leading and serving the society.
Booker’s Learning of Morality
From the background of Booker, it is evident that he passed through all the stages successfully and achieved the last one. As a child, Booker did everything possible serve his own self interests. This is the reason he was able to achieve in his academics at elementary schooling level.
During adolescence and in his youthful years, Booker was able to participate actively in the school football team as he took up basic leadership positions in school. As he did this, he worked hard in academics. His aim was to protect shared feelings, agreements and expectations. He aspired to please himself, his parents and the society at large. The fact that he was trusted for various leadership positions at an early age demonstrates that Cory Booker aspired to maintain social order. At this level, Booker was operating at the conventional moral reasoning level.
Only a few extra-ordinary individuals manage to attain the Post-conventional moral reasoning level in life (Ethridge, 2017). This is the ideal level for the pursuit of enduring truth, critique to various situations and sound decision-making based on what is right in one’s own judgment as well as the need to achieve one’s desires as well as other people’s desires. The life of Cory Booker manifests all these virtues. Right from his childhood, his life manifested an overwhelming desire for achievement which made him to make a decision to pursue a course in political science and later on sociology with an aim of serving the society. He did all there was to protect and uphold mutually agreed-upon standards that provide the greatest benefit to all. He also pursued self-consistent principles which he deemed important to all humans. Eventually, he became a leader whose principles and goals were not just limited to the conventional rules but chose to act extra-ordinarily. These are major characteristics of a post-conventional stage of moral reasoning.
Conclusion
Cory Booker’s life is generally a reflection of an ideal person who has gone successfully through the stages of moral development by Laurence Kohlberg. Having been born in a well-off family background and educated in prestigious schools, both environmental and personal factors necessitated his success. Most of his achievements are clearly depicted in the above discussed theory of moral development. Booker is therefore one of the few individuals who manage to achieve the post-conventional moral reasoning level.
References
Brown, S. (2016). Senator Cory Booker Wants To Take Social News Publishing to the Next Level With# WayWire.
Gillespie, A. (2012). The new black politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and post-racial America . NYU Press.
URGUP, S., & Aslan, S. (2015). Investigation of students multiple intelligence domains in three different departments of the school of physical education and sports. Educational Research and Reviews , 10 (15), 2068-2075.
Baker, D., Bridges, D., Hunter, R., Johnson, G., Krupa, J., Murphy, J., & Sorenson, K. (2002). Guidebook to decision-making methods. Department of Energy, USA .
Ethridge, P. (2017). How to Apply Kohlberg's Theory in the Classroom. Retrieved from Classroom: http://classroom.synonym.com/apply-kohlbergs-theory-classroom-7964934.html
