Leprechauns

Ahnimus

hippiemom wrote:

I hate to think of all the fantastic literature, plays, ballets, movies, music that the world would have been deprived of if everyone thought this way.

I'd encourage you, if and when you have kids, to accept them as they are and nurture their talents, whatever they might be.

They will be whatever I make them to be. Tabula Rasa.

hippiemom

Ahnimus wrote:

They will be whatever I make them to be. Tabula Rasa.

Please don't reproduce.

Ahnimus

hippiemom wrote:

Please don't reproduce.

I could say the same about you. Just because I have a difference of opinion. But I won't.

Ahnimus

You know what hippiemom...

Children are not born with a set of talents, a personality or anything like that. They are a blank slate and they become whatever you subject them to.

hippiemom

Ahnimus wrote:

You know what hippiemom...

Children are not born with a set of talents, a personality or anything like that. They are a blank slate and they become whatever you subject them to.

That is the most perfectly ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[quote-Ahnimus]I could say the same about you. Just because I have a difference of opinion. But I won't.[/quote]
I didn't say it because we have a difference of opinion, or because I don't like you (I think you know that I DO like you). It was said out of compassion for children, who oftentimes have their own ideas about what they might enjoy doing.

Ahnimus

hippiemom wrote:

That is the most perfectly ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

I didn't say it because we have a difference of opinion, or because I don't like you (I think you know that I DO like you). It was said out of compassion for children, who oftentimes have their own ideas about what they might enjoy doing.

Well, it's the leading view in Developmental Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

Yea, so anyway, the brain doesn't work like you think.

Ahnimus

Here is something else interesting about children and what people tend to assume in western culture.

When Margaret Mead described her research to her students at Columbia University, she put succinctly what her objectives and her conclusions were. A first-hand account by an anthropologist who studied with Mead in the 60s and 70s provides the following information:

1. Mead tells of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. "She explained that nobody knew the degree to which temperament is biologically determined by sex. So she hoped to see whether there were cultural or social factors that affected temperament. Were men inevitably aggressive? Were women inevitably "homebodies"? It turned out that the three cultures she lived with in New Guinea were almost a perfect laboratory — for each had the variables that we associate with masculine and feminine in an arrangement different from ours. She said this surprised her, and wasn't what she was trying to find. It was just there.

"Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.

"Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.

"And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones — the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."

2. Mead tells of Growing Up in New Guinea. "Margaret Mead told us how she came to the research problem on which she based her Growing Up in New Guinea. She reasoned as follows: If primitive adults think in an animistic way, as Piaget says our children do, how do primitive children think?

"In her research on Manus Island of New Guinea, she discovered that 'primitive' children think in a very practical way and begin to think in terms of spirits etc. as they get older.

Ahnimus

These fairies, demons, spirits, Santa, God. They are not a child's thoughts, they are implanted into the children by society, television and their parents.

hippiemom

Ahnimus wrote:

Well, it's the leading view in Developmental Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

Yea, so anyway, the brain doesn't work like you think.

Haha ... ok Ahnimus, if you say so :rolleyes:

I could cut and paste various psych theories too, but I don't see what that would accomplish.

Ahnimus

During the 1970s and 1980s, Piaget’s works also inspired the transformation of European and American education, including both theory and practice, leading to a more ‘child-centred’ approach. In Conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists," (Bringuier, 1980, p.132).

Ahnimus

hippiemom wrote:

Haha ... ok Ahnimus, if you say so :rolleyes:

I could cut and paste various psych theories too, but I don't see what that would accomplish.

Probably nothing, but I'm talking about Developmental Psychology. I've studied how the brain develops and so on. So when I say Tabula Rasa or Blank Slate and you say it's the most ridiculous theory, it shows how much you actually know about development.

I don't care if you were a parent and I wasn't, both Margaret Mead and Jean Piaget were parents too, hell Sigmund Freud probably had kids. Being a parent doesn't make you an authority on development.

chopitdown

Ahnimus wrote:

Well, it's the leading view in Developmental Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa

Yea, so anyway, the brain doesn't work like you think.

Apparently the brain isn't as cut and dried as you make it out to be either...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_psychology

A significant question in developmental psychology is the relation between innateness and environmental influence in regard to any particular aspect of development. This is often referred to as "nature versus nurture" or nativism versus empiricism. A nativist account of development would argue that the processes in question are innate, that is, they are specified by the organism's genes. An empiricist perspective would argue that those processes are acquired in interaction with the environment. Today developmental psychologists rarely take such extreme positions with regard to most aspects of development; rather they investigate, among many other things, the relationship between innate and environmental influences....

There is a great deal of evidence for components of both the nativist and empiricist position, and this is a hotly debated research topic in developmental psychology.

So even the experts can't really agree it's one or the other

Ahnimus

chopitdown wrote:

Apparently the brain isn't as cut and dried as you make it out to be either...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_psychology

A significant question in developmental psychology is the relation between innateness and environmental influence in regard to any particular aspect of development. This is often referred to as "nature versus nurture" or nativism versus empiricism. A nativist account of development would argue that the processes in question are innate, that is, they are specified by the organism's genes. An empiricist perspective would argue that those processes are acquired in interaction with the environment. Today developmental psychologists rarely take such extreme positions with regard to most aspects of development; rather they investigate, among many other things, the relationship between innate and environmental influences....

There is a great deal of evidence for components of both the nativist and empiricist position, and this is a hotly debated research topic in developmental psychology.

So even the experts can't really agree it's one or the other

Let me explain something. "Nature vs. Nurture" both are physical determinents which leaves no free-choice to the individual. The child's "nature" or genetics may determine things like leptin or PPAR-Delta or insulin productions or sensitivities. Wether the child is an endomorph, mesomorph or exomorph. Some intelligence is based on genetics, but most of it is learned. When they talk about "nature" they are talking about such things as autism, Spina Bifida, etc...

You won't find many developmental psychologists arguing for Original Sin or Innate Purity anymore, though I bet you could find one or two if you really tried. The majority, and rightfully so, go with Tabula Rasa. This is to say that Michael Jordan wasn't born a great basketball player, he put in the time and effort to develop his skills.

redrock

Ahnimus wrote:

I'd rather my kids imagine things that might be real.

Never!!!!

Reality doesn't need to be imagined.. it's there for everyone to see.

Let the kids see what they want to see, spirits, angels, fairies, etc.... Let them see the world (and other worlds?) through their own, wonderful eyes.....

Ahnimus

redrock wrote:

Never!!!!

Reality doesn't need to be imagined.. it's there for everyone to see.

Let the kids see what they want to see, spirits, angels, fairies, etc.... Let them see the world (and other worlds?) through their own, wonderful eyes.....

Yea, but reality is, if left to their own devices kids will not imagine spirits, angels, fairies, etc.. those are ideas that are implanted into their brains. If left to their own devices, children concern themselves with what is real.

hippiemom

Ahnimus wrote:

Yea, but reality is, if left to their own devices kids will not imagine spirits, angels, fairies, etc.. those are ideas that are implanted into their brains. If left to their own devices, children concern themselves with what is real.

Where did they come from? Didn't someone have to dream up the first imagined fairy pretty much from scratch?

chopitdown

Ahnimus wrote:

Let me explain something. "Nature vs. Nurture" both are physical determinents which leaves no free-choice to the individual. The child's "nature" or genetics may determine things like leptin or PPAR-Delta or insulin productions or sensitivities. Wether the child is an endomorph, mesomorph or exomorph. Some intelligence is based on genetics, but most of it is learned. When they talk about "nature" they are talking about such things as autism, Spina Bifida, etc...

You won't find many developmental psychologists arguing for Original Sin or Innate Purity anymore, though I bet you could find one or two if you really tried. The majority, and rightfully so, go with Tabula Rasa. This is to say that Michael Jordan wasn't born a great basketball player, he put in the time and effort to develop his skills.

and without some sort of genetic foundation all the hard work wouldn't have amounted to what it did.

Ahnimus

hippiemom wrote:

Where did they come from? Didn't someone have to dream up the first imagined fairy pretty much from scratch?

Probably, just like someone dreamed up Santa Clause

Ahnimus

chopitdown wrote:

and without some sort of genetic foundation all the hard work wouldn't have amounted to what it did.

Certainly if Michael Jordon wasn't a mesomorph he would have had more difficulty acheiving what he did, but you see more exomorphs in basketball anyway. Endomorphs don't have much of a chance, that's why we work technical jobs

Point is Jordon could have been a football player, a golfer, baseball player, he could have been anything, but if you hand him a golf club, he sucks. He practiced basketball and became good at it. It's not an innate talent.

chopitdown

Ahnimus wrote:

Certainly if Michael Jordon wasn't a mesomorph he would have had more difficulty acheiving what he did, but you see more exomorphs in basketball anyway. Endomorphs don't have much of a chance, that's why we work technical jobs

Point is Jordon could have been a football player, a golfer, baseball player, he could have been anything, but if you hand him a golf club, he sucks. He practiced basketball and became good at it. It's not an innate talent.

It is through hard work that he was able to develop his innate talent. At some point, genetics play into athletic ability and genetics plays in to intelligence. I'm not saying that hard work can't make up for what natural ability fails to provide but at some point you need more than hard work. Hard work is great and will only accentuate good natural ability. Which goes back to development. There is some natural component to everything but there is also an interplay with environement etc... Oh, and Jordan isn't actually that bad at golf.