Questioning
I was having dinner with family friends (a whole family) this evening, and had this conversation with their 10yr-old
Me: What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with screaming and running around and playing?
10yr-old (eyes widen): What’s wrong?! Everyone is running all over the place and it’s not the playground
Me: Yes, but why is that wrong?
10yr-old (gives me a *duh* look): You’re supposed to keep quiet and read a book!
Me: But if you don’t like reading? What’s wrong with playing? It’s well & good if you like reading, it’s not wrong to read. But why can’t I play if i want to?
10yr-old (*confused look* pauses to think of an answer): My teacher says we need to keep quiet and not run around
Me: Ah! your teacher says so! How do you know it’s not your teacher who is wrong? What if you’re right and she’s the one who’s wrong?
10yr-old :……
(is in a state of shock as it dawns on him that the teacher might actually be wrong)
Me: Why don’t you go spend the next few months thinking about why it’s wrong, and give me an answer the next time we meet?
.
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The 10yr-old went off pondering. I don’t think he will ever accept authority unquestioningly ever again.
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…………………………………………………………….
Later on our other family members got wind of our little discussion and decided to join in too, while waiting for our family cars to arrive (the 2 dads had gone to drive the cars over).
“So what’s the answer??? why is it wrong??” they asked
Me : I don’t know. Everyone has a different answer, what’s do YOU think?
“The noise will disturb other classes” someone suggested
10yr-old : But it’s 7 30 in the morning, classes haven’t started yet
“There are all the chairs and tables around. You might bum into them and hurt yourself” another person reasoned.
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The cars had arrived. Everyone agreed that seemed like a good reason. Peace and security reigned once again — the teachers are right after all!!
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………………………………………………….
I wanted to ask one more question but didn’t get a chance to.
I think I’ll ask him the next time we meet.
“So why can’t we just move the chairs and tables away? Why must we sit down & not play?”
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I really like this, because the child got the chance to do some critical thinking instead of just listening blindly.
i wonder if AHDH is not a child’s problem, but an adult world problem of making kids listen to boring people
Mathia
Please find the following comments which is most pertinent copied from the comments given by a “Ben” which highlights the defiencies of Yawning Bread quoted studies in Demography, same as your objections to others done by conservative groups and in line with theme of questioning. (still awaiting moderation in YB)
“The problem with this research, and it’s a very serious problem, is that developmental psychology is far too complex a science to boil down to “this does this”. This study, like most others in developmental psychology, is correlational. This means that we cannot infer that lesbians produce better children because
a) The dependent variable was not sufficiently isolated from confounding variables (only two variables were highlighted as controlled in this article, socio-economic background and educational background, but even something as seemingly benign as daycare is a hot topic amongst developmental psychologists with the following all publishing findings showing it increases aggression (Van Ijzendoorn, The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Borges, Pennebaker, Belsky and loads more, but I’d have to dig out my psychology textbooks), with this variable left confounding (and this is just ONE example of the many variables that have been left confounding, maternal sensitivity, for instance, Ainsworthian attachment style, for example, and countless others which significantly impact a child’s development have all just been ignored), we cannot draw any meaningful conclusions)
b) The mechanism is unexplained: the study doesn’t appear to have made any attempt to explain -why- lesbian reared children were faring better. This usually harks of an uncontrolled experiment in which the positive gains are more readily attributable to a confounding variable than the IV, although even giving the study the benefit of the doubt, without any kind of explanation of the causation behind the childrens’ success even posited we have no reason at all to presume that the causal factor is lesbian parents.
c) The sample was unrandomized and unmatched. Admittedly this is more or less inevitable in naturalistic experiments, but it still represents a very serious flaw. We don’t know if sample bias is responsible for the effect; are lesbians who choose insemination qualitatively different to lesbians who adopt? Are married heterosexual couples qualitatively different to cohabiting couples? Were the couples in the study from the same neighbourhood, same parental background, similar genetic background etc.
Furthermore, the only categories assessed were educational performance and aggression, however, there’s long been a vague ambiguity regarding the meaning of ‘aggression’ in developmental psychology. Van Ijzendoorn highlighted ‘externalising problems’ as negative aggression, this is where children ‘act out’ negative emotions, however as he and numerous others have noted, many psychologists lump in assertive behaviour with aggression. This is invalid, assertive behaviour is viewed positively in western individualistic society, it is not viewed as aggression. We also don’t know the other traits of these children, since only two categories were assessed, were these children less likely to be securely attached? Were they less apt at dealing with novel challenges? Were they less apt at masculine tasks, such as spatial competence (mental rotation etc)? Were they more likely to become homosexual (the accusation typically levelled at lesbian parents)? We don’t know, because all these other beneficial traits have been ignored by this study.
“I’m most certainly not arguing against lesbian adoption, I currently have no opinion on the matter and nor shall I until a worthwhile psychological study is published on the matter, rather I seek to highlight the flaws of this study (or the presentation of it here, anyway).”
So what can we conclude? Simply this: a correlation can never prove a causation, it can only disprove it. That’s a far cry from the tabloidesque, sensationalist nonsense that embodies the title of this article. I recently subscribed to SciAm too and it poses a hilarious contrast to NewScientist’s ‘Hello!’ style journalism and highlights NS’s complete lack of scientific integrity (the title draws a causation from correlational evidence … NS should be ashamed).”