Whats appropriate

I am unsure of why I am so hung up on the term appropriate as it is used in the reading for this week, but for some reason I find it bothersome. Perhaps it is because I am erroneoulsy equating the word appropriate for correct, meaning an appropriate response to a concept in a literary work would be the correct or right response. The example I used in class I think still works here, besides the graphic detail of how children suffer, if I do not feel a particular empathy or sorrow at the notion of children dying, did I respond appropriately? It goes without saying that we would prefer people to react with horror and disgust at such a notion, but unfortunately that may not be the response of all readers. I am not trying to justify the act, but if we believe that a teacher is only guiding a student to be able to draw conclusions on their own, then we may have students who come to the conclusion that it is not as immoral as dictated in the text. But again we find that the correct/appropriate response would be the moral obversation that children suffering is wrong, so again it seems that there is one objective response in which we are supposed to have to particular concepts we encounter in literary texts.