No, I'm not going to write some 'sense and sensibility'-based stuff. What I'm interested today is how to instill a sense of morality in a child or, to set it even more plain - how to make a person distinugish between good and evil - without having to resort to a 'carrot and stick' method.
I mean, explaining plainly doesn't work - even on grown-ups. So how do we teach the childern anything without saying: 'you'll get spanked if you do / don't do this or that'? Anyway, are we in our own lives behaving by moral standards or are we just fearing punishment for doing otherwise?
In my country the level crime is not too high, but the problem is that the courts are overbourdened with cases (they were pretty inefficient to start with) so it can take up to 5 years to het a verdict. That's why most of the people have no confidence that they will acomplish anything through courts and the morality of the population is going down - as people know they probably won't get punished for most petty crimes. And it starts with petty crimes...
To me this suggests the problem in upbriniging where the kids were thought to distingusih good and evil by the consequence (punishment and reward) they experienced and not by the overall result of their action in other peoples lives. Is it different or, to put it differently, will it be different in other countries when the juridical system reaches this level of inefficiency - as it surely will (look at the gettos in most of the big cities of Europe and USA - is there justice there? I think even now only a very small amount of population of the world is getting any kind of 'justice').
All of this said, how do I rise my child? Do I teach it morality the way it should be or do I teach it using the 'carrot-and-stick' method? Maybe it's better I teach it some self defense, as it seems the time for morality will soon be gone - any way You look at it.