PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

Giving and service can be taught through role models.

Giving and service can be "taught." Parents, teachers, and youth-serving leaders can serve as exemplary role models. The wider the diversity of teachers in a child's life (that is, parents, youth leaders, religious leaders, school teachers, etc.), the more likely the lesson is to be learned.

Philanthropic behavior leads to moral education.

Giving and serving beyond family as dimensions of philanthropy are behaviors that are nested in, but separate from, the general moral character education of children. As such, they can be addressed directly. To encourage their incidence may well affect moral education in general as opposed to addressing moral education to see if it increases philanthropic behavior.

More research is needed.

The social science literature on altruism, prosocial, and the philanthropic behaviors is expansive and inconclusive. The primary focus is on adults rather than children. Little focus is on the exploration of why individuals fail to give and serve others beyond the family.

Most literature focuses on prosocial, versus altrustic behavior.

Most of the literature focuses on “prosocial” behavior, rather than “altruistic” behavior that is oriented toward benefiting others. Thus, less is known about giving and serving motivated by empathy, sympathy, or internalized moral standards, versus more egoistic or mutually beneficial motivations.

Fourth through eighth-grade students are most inclined to follow leadership in a positive direction.

The research on moral reasoning would suggest that high school age students are most concerned with empathy for others, but that children in 4 th thorough 8 th grades can best be taught by exemplary role models to learn concern for others. The interest in winning approval for certain behaviors is such that this age group will be most inclined to follow leadership in a positive direction.

Learning must be content plus experience.

Learning must be a mixture of content about obligations to others (the rationale for giving and serving) and real, but supervised, experience in some giving or serving capacity.

Recommendations

1. Use exemplary role models and prepare them for the task of teaching giving and serving behaviors to children.
2. Research should focus on which leaders, doing what specific practices in relation to the age group. Are more likely to increase the incidence of giving and serving behaviors.
3. Teaching the rationale for caring and giving, and experimental confirmation of these values. Construct positive video and electronic game experiences for young people.

Bentley, Richard J. and Luana G. Nissan. The Roots of Giving and Serving.

The developmental theories from Maslow and Erickson describe the natural growth of altruistic behavior as people mature. As a teacher, the lessons on philanthropy and expectations of student’s appropriate behavior in the classroom community is linked to their age, maturity, and how their psychological needs have been met.