Noah faced his earliest ethical dilemma in the first grade. Most of the time he felt quite happy at school; he liked his teacher and had a lot of friends from different groups. But there was one thing he really didn’t like at all. Every day he saw the same boy in his class tease and bully the same girl during recess. The boy never bothered Noah, but was very careful to tease the girl where teachers couldn’t see it happen, or during times adult supervision was scarce. It was the same thing every day: the boy would approach the girl, call her names, and follow her until she was just on the verge of crying. Then he would laugh and walk away saying, “ I was just kidding!”
What was hardest for Noah to deal with was the fact that no one ever said anything to the teachers. Sometimes he or someone else would try to stick up for the girl, but that only stopped the teasing that day. It would just begin again the next. And every day Noah struggled with the same thorny question of whether or not to tell on the bully.
Noah feared that if he went to a teacher it would get out that he was the one who tattled, and he didn’t want the boy to start bullying him instead. He also knew how most of the kids in his class felt about tattletales. There was a very strong code of silence around teasing and bullying. Yet, he hated to watch this poor girl brace herself every day when the recess bell rang.
So, the dilemma in Noah's first grade mind was, should he tattle, or should he ignore it?
- What would you do if you were in Noah’s shoes? Have you ever been there? Do you regret or are you proud of your decision now?
- Have you ever been told on by someone because you were doing something wrong? What was your immediate reaction? What do you remember about how you felt about your behavior at the time?
- How does the idea of “intention” play into whether or not to tell on someone?
- Have you ever told on someone just to watch them get into trouble, or to add to the drama? What did it feel like? How is that choice different from telling on someone in order to put a halt to something you think is bad?
- Do you think the code of silence around telling on someone changes as one gets older? Is it the same in first grade as it is in middle school? High school?