What is good and what is evil? Second lecture of the IUB Children’s University

On Wednesday, March 9, the second Children’s University lecture took place in the fully booked Conrad Naber Lecture Hall. 170 “children students” between 8–13 years followed the lecture with great interest.

[ Mar 10, 2005]  Dr. Klaus Boehnke, Professor of Social Science Methodology, addressed the children in English “This is the language on campus! Did you understand that?” This was met with a loud “JA!” from the audience. Nevertheless the lecture continued in German.

What is good and what is evil? Dr. Chris Welzel, Professor of Political Science, first asked the children: “If you clean up your friend's mess, is that good or evil?” Though there were some voices that claimed this would be really evil the overall consent was “good”. Professor Welzel pointed out that we agree on this because we share values. We have a clear idea what is beneficial and what is harmful to our society – and most of the time we act accordingly.

Other factors that rule our behaviour are that we try to avoid punishment and don’t want to feel guilty. An aspect that cannot be found in the behaviour of animals. They behave according to their instincts instead of the dictates of their conscience. That children became aware that being a human means being responsible for your deeds as well as having the freedom to decide what to do.

Due to limited space in the lecture hall, all parents are “sourced out”. In a room next door they followed the lecture by a video stream. The lectures are part of the first Bremen children’s university a joint project of IUB and University of Bremen.

The next Children’s University lectures take place in April, 6 and 20. Questions are:

Why do we speak different languages? Franzi, 8 years
Why don’t we have a king in Germany? Ruth, 8 years

Children's University at IUB More about the lectures more info »