When it comes to strategies for investigating truth, students at least talked
a good game. For younger students, strategies often took the form of simple
information gathering from more reliable sources: Look in a book, check the
internet, ask the person, etc. Older students saw a need to combine informa-
tion from multiple sources, assess the motives and bias of those sources, and
synthesize this information. These students were also more likely to see them-
selves as important judges of truth in some situations: “You need to try it out
for yourself. You should gather your own evidence. You need to look within
yourself.”
This data, informal as it is, suggests that students know a remarkable
amount about issues of truth, when it becomes problematic, what one might
do about it, and when it is worth the bother. Though students had never had
these discussions before, the readiness of their responses showed knowledge
rather close to the surface and readily uncovered.
Students’ Reflections on Issues of Fairness
Students generally showed great familiarity and indeed passion for issues
concerning fairness. All of these discussions were spirited: What is fair and
unfair is of great interest to students. In addition to the usual discussions
about “When is it hard?” “What can you do when it is hard?” and “When is it
worthwhile?” our colleague Bermúdez conducted an extensive analysis of 61
Massachusetts fifth graders’ recognition of instances of unfairness in their
lives and their subsequent assessments of those events. The investigator asked
students to rate the unfairness of the described situations on a continuum
from “highly unfair” to “only a little bit unfair” and to justify those rankings,
revealing how these students reasoned about issues of fairness and what vari-
ables they paid attention to in making their assessment.
The fifth graders demonstrated an understanding of fairness as an issue of
equity or balance among competing claims, interests, values, or opportuni-
ties. The most prevalent type of unfair situation students identified, account-
ing for 37% of the 323 responses generated, involved equity in the distribu-
tion of goods, opportunities, or responsibilities. “My brother ate the bigger
half of the bagel. I got the small half and didn’t get to eat as much as him,”
was an example of unfair goods. “My baseball coach put the older players on
the field more than the younger players. The older kids get to play more than
the younger kids” was an instance of unfair opportunity. “I always have
more homework than my sister” was an example of unfair responsibilities.
Students mentioned several other kinds of situations frequently: consis-
tency (“When my older brother was little he had a later bedtime than my
older sister. But now I have the same bedtime as my younger brother. I think
I should have a later bedtime.”); actions based on false information (“My
brother threw a ball and it hit the lamp and broke, and he said that I did it,
372 PERKINS AND RITCHHART