Psychology Question - Nursing Essays

Write an essay on what type of an “educator” you see yourself becoming in the future.

Select three topics, issues, and/or theories that stood out for you during the semester. Two of these need to be those you had not discussed in your mid-term essay; one can be a repeat. Make sure to provide detailed and concrete illustrative ideas and examples of these topics, issues, and/or theories from the readings.

Select three learning communities (e.g., your work, family, society, and world at large, etc.) in which you envision yourself making a positive impact on yourself and others to reach their potential. Please note that an “educator” here does not simply mean a classroom teacher or someone with professional training, but more broadly, someone who impacts both oneself and others positively.

Write an essay connecting each of the topics, issues, and/or theories with each of the chosen learning communities

Expectations:

Write clearly

Demonstrate that you understood and can describe the three topics, issues, and/or theories of your choice accurately and critically by (1) providing detailed and concrete ideas and examples from the readings, and (2) relating each one of them logically and meaningfully to your vision of “being an educator.”

The paper should be no less than 4 and more than 4½ double-spaced pages.

References:

“The Cultural Nature of Human Development.” By Barbara Rogoff

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/niu/reader.a…

Topics:

1. Rogoff – Baumrind & other patterns (Rogoff, Ch., 6, pp. 207 – 216

o Consider how teachers and/or adults can influence children’s/students’ behavior through “control” or mutual “cooperation.”

o Consider how John Dewey’s philosophy of “democratic education” envisions the teacher-student relationships

2. Rogoff, Ch. 1, pp., 37 – 50 (Overview of the field of human development)

Schooling (i.e., formal education)

Socialization (i.e., informal education)

Be informed about the interdisciplinary field of ‘human development as a study of ‘education’

‘Ed Psych’ as an ethno- (i.e., folk) psychology – it is not a universal science

3a. Rogoff, Ch. 6 pp., 221 – 226 (‘Moral Development & Relations’)

3b. Rogoff, Ch. 6 pp., 227 – 235 (‘Cooperation and Competition’)

Examine Larry Kohlberg’s theories of the ‘stages’ of moral development.

Discuss how moral reasoning varies across cultures.

Discuss how the patterns of cooperation and control vary across cultures

Journal of Education and Educational Development
Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 2015) 191 – 201
Discussion
John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
Aliya Sikandar
Institute of Business Management
aliya.sikandar@iobm.edu.pk
Abstract
This review paper on John Dewey, the pioneering educationist of
the 20th century, discusses his educational thoughts, and writings,
which gave a new direction to education at the turn of the century.
Dewey’s contributions are immense and overwhelming in the fields
of education, politics, humanism, logic, and aesthetics. This discussion
will focus on Dewey and his philosophy related to educational approaches,
pedagogical issues, and the linkages that he made between education,
democracy, experience, and society. At the heart of his educational
thought is the child. Dewey’s idea on humanism springs from his
democratic bent and his quest for freedom, equity, and the value of
child’s experiences.
Keywords: Dewey,
pedagogical issues
educational
approaches,
humanism,
Introduction
This discussion is based on John Dewey’s (1859-1952)
contribution to education and educational philosophy. He remains
the most influential American philosopher and educationist of the
20th Century, who gave a new direction to educational thought and
processes. With his firm democratic belief in civil societies and
education, Dewey rejected authoritarian structures and subsequently
the traditional teaching methods in schools. He believed in progressive
education and advocated for reforms in pedagogical aspects of
teaching and school curricula; most importantly, Dewey believed
that at the centre of the whole academia was the child, and Dewey’s
educational philosophy and reforms were concerned primarily with
the child. Today, Dewey’s philosophy of education and its relation to
191
Sikandar
John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
experience, democracy, humanism, and pragmatism have largely
affected the modern system of education all over the world.
alone was no solution; learning needs, a structure and order must be
based on a clear theory of experience, not simply the whim of teachers or
students. On the other hand, Rousseau, and later Pestalozzi, Froebel
This discussion will look at three areas of contribution of this
great educationist’s philosophy of education. These aspects are, in
different sections united by a thread of continuity to his great philosophy
of education.
and other educational theorists believed that a child was like a seed
and if they were left to nourish and nurture naturally, they would
naturally bear flowers and fruits.
1.
Dewey’s philosophy of education
2.
3.
Dewey’s philosophy of education and experience
The role of the teacher and the child
In Democracy and Education (1916), Dewey clearly states that the
methodology of teaching leads to the purpose of teaching. As teaching
and learning is pedagogical; therefore, the subject matter should be planned
in effective ways. He clearly states, “The subject matter of the learner
is not … identical with the formulated, the crystallized, and systematized
subject matter of the adult” (p. 190). The subject matter alone is not a
Dewey’s philosophy of education
guarantee of learning and development; rather, the teacher should plan
Dewey’s ideas mirror the affects of new the industrialized
colonized society, fraught with the problems and aftermaths of two
World Wars. Dewey was largely inspired by Marx’s theory of social
struggle and conflict between classes. Marx’s theory of conflict is
and connect the subject matter to the students, keeping in consideration
the needs, desires, interests, and cognitive development of the
students, as he shows in ‘How We Think’.
that the society is stratified and layered with different strata and
there is a competition within these different classes. Marx stresses
Dewey’s main concern was a disparity between the experiences of
child and the kind of concepts imposed upon him. He believed that
that social analysis should focus on class structure and relations.
Dewey had an inspiration from Habermas’s thoughts, which are in
this gap curbs a child’s natural experiences and abilities, forcing him
to follow the dictates of a formal education. Dewey is equally critical
the traditions of Kant, and emphasize the role of education to transform
the world into a more humane, just, and egalitarian society.
of the progressive education which imposes concepts, such as the
right of free expression or free activity as these tenets of education also
impose ideas upon a child. Dewey was deeply inspired by the vision
His writings on democracy and education express his philosophy of
education as a way of social reform. He saw education as a means of
of a liberal free society and realized the pressing need of freedom
and equality, emancipation from social bounds to liberate individual
serving the democratic process through making corrections in the economic
evils and by obtaining political ends that would lead to progression of a
society. Hence, education for Dewey is the culmination of his political
and society from the structures of power.
ideas. The shaping of a society in which the common goods, among
which are the knowledge and social intelligence, are distributed fairly
among all who participate in that society (Berding, 1997).
Establishment of progressive schools in the 18th century was an
effort to liberate traditional schools’ system of education, and mainly
to facilitate the intellectual growth of a child. However, Dewey was
critical about these progressive schools on the premise that freedom
Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 2015)
192
Dewey’s philosophy of education and experience
In Dewey’s philosophy of education, we see a close link between a
child’s life and his experiences as a continuous process, which he regards
as the aim of education. In this way, education has the scope of
equipping a child with social competence. Unless this link is made,
education is useless. Dewey sees a strong correlation between
interaction and continuity of experiences. It is through interaction
that a child brings in experiences from society. Because of such
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John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
continuous interactions, environments are created. These
environments are the fields in which situations and conditions interact
with personal needs and purposes, and create life-long experiences.
pragmatic philosophy-the Pragmatism, and he is of the opinion that
direct experience is the basis of all methods. Any relevant knowledge
or information is in some sense experiential as it relates directly to
These experiences are given value and direction by the teachers;
therefore, there should be order and direction of a child’s experiences,
which will give him a composed and integrated personality. He gives
the lived experience of the individuals concerned (Dewey 1916).
For him, knowledge takes place in concrete and meaningful situations,
through spontaneous activities of children. Dewey’s methods of
teaching were based on the principles of learning by doing activities in
example of the games children play, in which they follow rules of
the game willingly to continue the game. Similarly, students are
connection with life of a child. Such approaches to teaching and learning
follow strategies like project based or problem based method of learning.
involved in class activities in groups and the moving force is to get
the activity done. This learning process allows students the freedom of
thought, judgment, and power to execute decisions. These learning
experiences should have a clear purpose, an understanding of the
Curriculum, Dewey demanded was not imposed upon the students,
rather it had the capacity to allow individual differences among the
students and value their experiences. Dewey’s curriculum theory is
surrounding conditions, knowledge of what occurred before, so
based on anthropological, psychological, and social-philosophical
that it could allow reflection and analysis of issues and experiences.
Such structured interactions turn an impulse into a plan of action.
(political) perspectives that hold a child to be like an organism and
this organism is searching for stimuli in order to grow (Berding,
1992).
This brings forth Dewey’s philosophy of humanism. As a child
discovers by doing, the child is explicitly realized as the main actor
of the entire learning process. The child’s role is no longer vulnerable or
Dewey strongly supported experiential learning, as it offers
students a hands-on, collaborative learning experience, which helps
a subject of imposition. Rather, a child is a free individual with his
aptitude and interests. As he is actively involved in the learning
them to “fully learn new skills and knowledge” (Haynes, Sakai,
Rees, Gilbert, Frith & Passingham, 2007). Eyler and Giles (1999)
process, the child is an active social actor who participates in social
experiences.
asserted that Dewey described service-learning as experiential learning
and that such learning has a “continual spiral of events starting with
direct experience, followed by periods of reflection where hypotheses
An experience for him involves a dual process of understanding
and influencing the world around us, as well as being influenced
are generated about immediate and future meaning, and then tested
through experiences and actions” (p. 184). Toulmin (1984) argues,
and changed by that experience. Therefore, education should be
concerned about the child’s experiences in school and in natural
environments outside the school. Particular experiences should
be assessed to the degree that they contribute to the growth or to
getting more experience. “Growth in Dewey’s context means that the
individual is gaining the ability to understand the relationships and
interconnections between various experiences between one learning
that Dewey in his work was able to dismantle the epistemological
tradition and was able to display farsightedness and originality,
which was at his time could not be recognized. To Dewey (1916),
“Development means transformation,… that reconstruction
or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience,
and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent
experience” (p. 76). Such experiences raise the child’s curiosity and
experience and another” (Gutek, 1997, p.105). According to Dewey
(1934), “Experience occurs continuously, because the interaction of
live creature and environing conditions is involved in the very process
of living” (p. 1). Dewey’s method of teaching was based on his
hope, and gives him a purpose to carry out school activities. This
participation moulds his views and perceptions about the world,
education, and also his attitude about participation in school activities.
Dewey’s philosophy of pragmatism is his premise on education as a
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John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
lived-experience, that is, a person experiences learning with others.
This approach of learning combines theory and experience into mutual
accommodation and adaptation. Dewey used both philosophical and
psychological perspectives to build his theory of education (McDermott,
1981). He saw that education’s purpose is to make students’ imagination
strong and he regarded it an important goal of education (Cunningham,
1994). The role of the teacher is to guide students, especially adolescents
on the verge of adulthood, “To make choices among desirable alternatives,
is vitally important in the building of character” (Cunningham, 1994,
p.12).
However, as one studies Dewey’s educational philosophy, there
appears to be a gap in the operational plan of learning through
experiences. Firstly, in Dewey’s work, we do not find any objectives
or criteria based experiences. We do not get to know how to evaluate the
experiences that help a child grow, so that in accordance, the growth
of child could be geared in measurable terms. Also, how do we know
that the child is getting more knowledgeable, mature or intellectual
through the experiences given by the school? What the learning
objectives are and where the learners are expected to reach at the
end of experiential learning. For this, the teachers would find
themselves without direction. If the learning is heavily dependent
upon experiences, then how many experiences are to be planned in
a term? How would teachers handle various responses, reactions,
feedback on a similar experience? I guess it can very soon lead to
the teacher burnout. We do not find any pilot study of experiential
learning or how are the experiences of a child then incorporated into
the objectives of learning. Next, no guidelines are given on
the processes of application in a structured manner; who are the
agents of change: school management, teachers, parents, curriculum
designers or association of schools? In this whole process of
democratization of education, what would be the role of community
or the society? What would be the role of the parents? Dewey has
not given any clear guidelines for these aspects.
The role of the teacher and the child
Dewey stresses the sensitivity of educationists towards learners’
Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 2015)
196
needs and their individual differences. For Dewey, teachers should
realize that there is no one-for-all concept of teaching and learning.
Learning processes should be planned considering the aptitude, learners’
former experiences, and their present experiences. The
teacher
should observe the interest of the students, observe the directions they
naturally take, and then help them develop problem-solving skills. A
teachers’ primary purpose is to increase freedom of the children to
enable them to explore their environments. He believed in an
interdisciplinary curriculum, or a curriculum that focuses on connecting
multiple subjects, where students are allowed to freely move in and
out of classrooms, as they pursue their interests and construct their
own paths for acquiring and applying knowledge. A teacher is engaged
with the learners through interaction, which is a social process.
Teachers are members of the community of learning, and play a
major role in selecting experiences and to give a proper direction to
these educative experiences.
Dewey argues that the centre of gravity needs to shift whereby he
[the learner] is at the center (Dewey, 1910). Dewey is often referred
to as a child-centered educationist (Bantock, 1963; Darling ,1994;
Entwhistle, 1970; Pring, 2007; Woods & Barrow, 2006). Dewey
(1987) suggests, “Indeed the starting point should be the internal
condition-the child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material
and give the starting point for all education” (p. 44). His conviction was
that the child must not be authoritatively told beforehand what is good
or evil, but should discover these opposite realities for himself.
Dewey was most concerned about the development of the
individuality of child. The child’s voice was nowhere heard, as
curriculum, subject matter, and concepts were imposed on him in
the school. That is why Dewey regarded a child as the most vulnerable
member of the society, who is directly affected by the practices and
attitudes of the members of the academia- those who impose policies
on him, and control him. Dewey was specifically concerned about
the rights of child as an individual, his right to exercise his decisions,
choices in learning and education, and his participation in a democratic
learning process. A child is by nature curious, social, and constructive,
and possesses inherently the raw material to be developed by experienced
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John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
guide and mentor. It is therefore responsibility of the teacher to plan
positive and constructive environment for the students so as to create
positive educative experiences for them. Such environments are built
Dewey’s system of education, the administration is usually found
reluctant to set up such a system, as the physical set up is for passive
learners, traditional teaching, and limited financial resources. Another
in the joint partnership of teachers and students, where together they
try out effective techniques of teaching and learning. The objective is
to make students more self-reliant. In this way, Dewey considered
his school a community where the students become active members.
challenge is the gap in teacher education to make the academia understand
the philosophy, objectives, and methods of offering such educational
systems. Because of this, partners in education such as, the parents,
teachers, administrators, and the child himself usually become critical
of such systems.
Conclusion
Although Dewey’s innumerable works and contributions are in
education, politics, humanism, logic, and aesthetics, given the limited
scope of this paper the focus has been Dewey’s educational
The role of teachers in Pakistan is also perceived in a different light.
A teacher is one who is knowledgeable and authoritative. What
would happen if students in such systems find the teacher asking
questions, or asking them to take lead? Students would naturally try
philosophy related to experience and democracy, for the growth and
to take advantage of such teachers, and least of all, they would take
development of a child. Summing up the salient works and concepts
of John Dewey was a very challenging task. In his long satisfying career
in education, Dewey brought about revolutionary reformations in
educational philosophy, approaches, and pedagogies. Essentially,
teachers less seriously. In Pakistan, students especially of professional
colleges or business schools, are highly geared towards grades and are
marks-oriented. They would be lesser adherent to the process and
would like to find out the end-product. Such system would also put
with the child as the centre of education, Dewey’s philosophical
creed focuses on the development of child who is a valuable member
teachers under a lot of pressure to motivate and involve passive and
shy learners in projects or problem solving discussions.
of society; a society which believes in equity and freedom, practices
democratic qualities and ideals.
There have been pedagogical and practical challenges faced
by the practitioners in applying Dewey’ approach to education. The
most important criticism is his lack of clarity as to how to set up
systems that can see through the inception of ideas to the conclusion
of the experiences, to gauge the growth and development, and to design,
and plan curriculum clearly. However, given all these objections it
cannot be denied that John Dewey remains one of the pioneering
figures of contemporary educationists, who left a rich trail of
researchers and educationists, who continually study the methods
and theories of education presented by him and add invaluably to his body
of knowledge.
Likewise, there are various operational challenges experienced
in a developing country like Pakistan. In the implementation of
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John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education
Sikandar
writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References
Bant ock, G . H . (1 9 6 3 ). E d u c a tio n in an industrial soc ie ty .
Gutek, G.L. (1997) Philosophical and ideological perspectives
in education. MA: Allyn & Bacon.
London: Faber.
Berding, J.W.A. (1992). The curriculum theory of John Dewey:
A paradigm in education? In B. Levering et al. (Eds), Reflec-
Haynes, J. D., Sakai, K., Rees, G., Gilbert, S., Frith, C., &
Passingham, R. E. (2007). Reading hidden intentions in the
human brain. Current Biology, 17(4), 323-328.
tions on pedagogy and method (pp. 17-37). Montfoort, The
Netherlands: Uriah Heep, .
McDermott, J. J. (1981). The philosophy of John Dewey. Volume
Cunningham, C. A. (1994). Unique potential: A metaphor for John
I: The structure of experience. Volume II: The lived experience.
Chicago: The University of Chicago
Dewey’s later conception of the self-educational theory.
Retrieved from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/
Educational-Theory/Contents/44_2_Cunningham.asp
Pring, R. (2007). John Dewey: Continuum library of
educational thought. London: Continuum.
Darling, J. (1994). Child centered education and its critics.
London: Paul Chapman.
Wo o d s , R . G . & B a r r o w, R . ( 2 0 0 6 ) . A n i n t ro d u c t i o n t o t h e
philosophy of education. London: Methuen.
Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. New York: Capricorn Books
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Teddington: Echo Library.
Dewey, J. (1915). Schools of tomorrow. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.
Dewey, J. (1910). How we think. New York: Prometheus Books.
Dewey, J. (1897). The psychology of effort. The Philosophical
Review, 6(1), 43-56.
Entwhistle, H. (1970). Child centered education. London: Methuen.
Eyler, J., & Giles Jr, D. E. (1999). Where’s the learning in
service-learning? Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education
Series. CA: Jossey-Bass.
Gar f or t h , F. W. (1 9 6 6 ). J o h n D e we y se le c te d e duc ational
Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 2015)
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6
Interdependence and Autonomy
Copyright © 2003. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Western concepts of autonomy stress the freedom of the person to pursue
individual goals unencumbered by social obligations . . .
Marquesans view mature adults not as those who give up personal goals . . .
to conform to the group, but rather those who coordinate their own goals with
those of the group.
—Martini, 1994b, pp. 73, 101
Many authors have characterized European American cultural practices as
stressing individualism and independence (Harrison et al., 1990; Harwood
et al., 1995; Kagitçibasi, 1996; Strauss, 2000). And middle-class European
American parents have identiﬁed independence as the most important
long-term goal for their infants (Richman, Miller, & Solomon, 1988).
When asked what is important in raising young children, college-educated European American mothers focused on a concept of independence
involving individuality, self-expression, and freedom from others in action
and thought. In contrast, Chinese mothers who had immigrated to the
United States focused on a different sort of independence—becoming selfreliant and developing the life skills to become successful, contributing
members of the family and society (Chao, 1995).
Adolescence in the United States often has the goal of shedding dependence on parental nurturance to start a separate life, with attempts to
“stand on one’s own two feet” and be self-made (Lebra, 1994). However,
there are vast cultural differences in whether maturity is considered to lead
to independence from the family of origin or to renewed ties and transformed responsibilities to the family of origin. For example, in Japan great
attention is given to continued reciprocity and primary ties with family.
In Hawaii, middle-class Japanese American parents reported that parenting is a long-term process of preparing children for lifetime engagement
with the family. In contrast, middle-class Caucasian American parents treated
194
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Interdependence and Autonomy
parenting as a process of extensive involvement with young children, followed by connecting them with external training institutions, and then
monitoring them as they guide their own development to “leave the nest”
(Martini, 1994a).
In everyday life, and in cultural research, issues of social relations bring
to attention the ways people consider self-interests and collective interests
to operate. In some models, individual and community interests are assumed to be in opposition, such that if one is given prominence the other
is diminished. In other models, they can work in conjunction. In either
case, the topic requires consideration of individual, interpersonal, and cultural-institutional processes.
Some of the most dramatic issues of autonomy and interdependence
have to do with social relations across generations, between adults and children. Through participation in these relationships, and those with peers,
the next generation learns about its community’s models of how individuals and communities relate. In the process, each generation may question
and revise the practices of its predecessors, particularly when distinct practices of different communities are juxtaposed in their lives.
Without juxtaposition of alternative ways, cultural traditions often remain implicit, as simply the unquestioned “common sense” of people in
their own communities. Even if implicit, or perhaps especially so, cultural
traditions and values pervade individuals’ and communities’ informal interactions as well as the proceedings of their formal institutions.
In examining mutual involvement and autonomy, this chapter ﬁrst
considers variations in sleeping arrangements that are presumed to relate to
the development of independence. The chapter then considers how in
communities stressing interdependence, in which people’s mutual involvements are emphasized, individuals’ autonomy in making decisions may also
be prioritized. Next, the chapter examines issues of adult authority and
control of children, teasing and shaming as indirect means of control, and
cultural perspectives on moral relations with others in the community. The
chapter concludes with a discussion of cultural variation in children’s cooperative and competitive approaches with others and the ways that social
relations may be guided by cultural institutions such as schools.
Sleeping “Independently”
U.S. middle-class families often report that it is important for a child’s developing independence and self-reliance to sleep apart, with some stating that
separation at night makes daytime separations easier and helps reduce the
baby’s dependence on them (Morelli et al., 1992). A mother who was born in
Rogoff, Barbara. The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2003.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/niu/detail.action?docID=272865.
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195
196
T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
figure 6.1
Copyright © 2003. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
This 9-month-old middle-class
U.S. infant is placed in a crib to
sleep by himself.
Greece but had lived in the United States for most of her life said that she had
the baby sleep apart from her because “It was time to give him his own room
. . . his own territory. That’s the American way” (p. 604; see ﬁgure 6.1).
However, putting babies to sleep apart from their mother is an unusual
practice when viewed from a worldwide and historical perspective (Super,
1981; Trevathan & McKenna, 1994). In a study of 136 societies, infants slept in
bed with their mother in two-thirds of the communities, and in the other
communities the babies were usually in the same room with their mother
(Whiting, 1964). In a survey of 100 societies, American parents were the only
ones to maintain separate quarters for their babies (Burton & Whiting, 1961).
In interviews, middle-class European American parents reported that
their infant slept separately from them by a few weeks of age, usually in another room (Morelli et al., 1992; Rogoff et al., 1993). Some U.S. parents
who occasionally had their infant in bed with them commented that they
knew it was counter to the way things are supposed to be done; they recognized that they were violating cultural norms (Hanks & Rebelsky, 1977;
Morelli et al., 1992).
Folk wisdom in European American middle-class communities has
portrayed nighttime separation of infants from their parents as essential for
Rogoff, Barbara. The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2003.
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Interdependence and Autonomy
healthy psychological development, to develop a spirit of independence
(Kugelmass, 1959; Trevathan & McKenna, 1994). This belief is reﬂected in
the advice parents have received since the early 1900s from child-rearing experts: “I think it’s a sensible rule not to take a child into the parents’ bed for
any reason” (Dr. Spock, 1945, p. 101).
Middle-class U.S. parents often feel obliged to avoid giving their children comfort during the night (Morelli et al., 1992). One mother reported
putting a pillow over her head to drown out the sounds of her crying baby,
consistent with the advice of some child-rearing specialists (e.g., Ferber,
1986). Infants and parents in this community frequently engage in conﬂicts
over independent nighttime sleeping , in which parents and infants often
act as adversaries in a battle of wills.
Copyright © 2003. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Comfort from Bedtime Routines and Objects
Middle-class U.S. infants are encouraged to depend not on people for comfort and company, but on objects — bottles, paciﬁers, blankets, and other
“lovies.” Bedtime routines involve elaborate grooming and storytelling ,
sometimes taking an hour. Once in bed, however, the children are expected
to fall asleep by themselves, often with the help of a favorite object such as
a blanket (Morelli et al., 1992).
Middle-class U.S. infants and young children were found to spend
about 10% of their time in bedtime activities. In contrast, Kokwet (East
African) children of the same ages were not involved in such activities at all
(Harkness & Super, 1992a). Toddlers in Turkish families that have recently
made a transition from rural roots to the urban middle class usually still
slept in the same room as their parents and seldom had bedtime routines
or attachment objects (Göncü, 1993).
Similarly, Mayan parents reported that there was no bedtime routine
(such as bedtime stories or lullabies) to coax babies to sleep. Toddlers slept
in the same room with their parents (and often siblings as well), usually in
their mother’s bed (Morelli et al., 1992; Rogoff et al., 1993). It was a rare
toddler who used security objects to fall asleep, and babies did not rely on
thumb sucking or paciﬁers. There was generally no need for a bedtime routine to ease a separation because the babies went to sleep with their family,
in the same place, whenever they got sleepy.
Social Relations in Cosleeping
In many communities, the social relations of daytime hours continue
through the night. Children sleep with family members when they fall
asleep, rather than having a separately designated place and time for sleep.
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T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
Communities that practice cosleeping include both highly technological and less technological communities. Japanese urban children have usually slept next to their mother in early childhood and continued to sleep
with another family member after that (Ben-Ari, 1996; Caudill & Plath,
1966; Takahashi, 1990). Space considerations appear to play only a minor
role.
Berry Brazelton noted that “the Japanese think the U.S. culture rather
merciless in pushing small children toward such independence at night”
(1990, p. 7). Indeed, Japanese parents have reported that cosleeping facilitates infants’ transformation from separate individuals to being able to engage in interdependent relationships (Caudill & Weinstein, 1969). This
contrasts with reports that U.S. parents believe that infants are born dependent and need to be socialized to become independent.
A Mayan researcher, Marta Navichoc Cotuc (personal communication,
1986), speculated that if infants are integrated members of the family group,
they may have an easier time identifying with their family’s values than infants who are forced to spend the night alone. Mayan parents responded
with shock, disapproval, and pity on hearing that many middle-class U.S.
toddlers are put to sleep in a separate room. One mother asked, “But there’s
someone else with them there, isn’t there?” When told that they are sometimes alone in the room, she gasped. Another responded with shock and
disbelief, asked whether the babies do not mind, and said that it would be
very painful for her to have to do that. Similarly, “It would be unthinkable
in the East African context for a baby to cry itself to sleep; this U.S. custom
is considered abusive by East Africans” (Harkness & Super, 1992b, p. 453;
see also LeVine et al., 1994). This shock at others’ cultural practices parallels
the disapproval often shown by European American middle-class adults
over the idea of children sleeping with their parents.
A case reported in the San Jose (California) Mercury News highlights the
cultural meaning and social relations involved in sleeping arrangements. In
San Jose, Child Protective Services intervened with a family from the Iu
Mien tribe of Southeast Asia because their 7-year-old child went to school
with some bruises. Adults in the school thought that there was a chance that
the child had been abused. Soon the four children were removed from the
home, with very little explanation to the parents about what was happening
and where the children were being taken. One of the children was a 5-weekold baby, who was placed in a foster home. The baby died there of Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome (see also Fadiman, 1997).
Members of the family’s community were incensed at what happened
for two reasons. First, when families are having trouble (for example, a child
is being beaten by his father), neighbors and other familiar people are the
ones who are supposed to intervene and help. Second, Iu Mien babies stay
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Interdependence and Autonomy
with their parents constantly, sleeping in the same bed. (Recall the speculation that sleeping with others may assist some infants in regulating their
breathing, and that sleeping apart might contribute to Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome.) A spokesman for the Lao Iu Mien Culture Association said:
Parents believe it’s traumatic for families to be separated. A community leader traditionally would intervene with the extended family if
there were trouble. . . . “It’s wrong, morally wrong, to take away a
1-month-old child from parents without knowing the background
and history of the family. Just that action itself hurt both the parents
and the child.” (Feb. 16, 1994, back page)
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Within the United States, families in a number of communities commonly engage in cosleeping. In some African American and Appalachian
settings, infants frequently sleep with or near parents (Abbott, 1992; Lozoff,
Wolf, & Davis, 1984; Ward, 1971). Rosy Chang , a Ph.D. student in California, describes her immigrant family’s interpretation of U.S. sleeping
arrangements from the perspective of their Lao and Chinese heritage:
We had limited sleeping quarters so I would always sleep in the same
room as my grandmother since I was the youngest. . . . Another
reason I shared a room with my grandmother for most of my childhood was so that I wouldn’t become scared. I remember preferring it
that way. I would have too many nightmares without her (when she
stayed elsewhere). When my friends spent the night, we would sleep
in the same room with my grandmother too. I remember thinking
my friends probably think it is strange, because when I spent the
night at my friend’s house, we would sleep in one of the guest rooms.
They actually had rooms that were unoccupied! I thought, how could
they live in such a big, empty house (compared to the amount of
people living there)?
Also, we all liked living together in a tight niche. That’s the tradition my family was used to and it’s more warm and inviting. I remember it would be so rare to have someone not be home. It was fun
living with a big family. We were all close and did activities close to
each other in proximity. Rooms would not be unoccupied and scary.
They were friendly and occupied.
I’m not sure if these sleeping arrangements inﬂuenced me and
my siblings to be less independent, but even if it did, that wouldn’t
be inconsistent with our values. In my culture, parents are supposed
to take care of their children for a long time, perhaps even until age
30, until after they ﬁnish school and even after they ﬁnd stable
work. After they maintain full independence after acquiring a job,
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T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
marriage, and a house, children are expected to take care of their
parents. . . .
I’m the exception because I chose higher education away from
home, but typically children stay home until ready to make a stable
living on their own. They are not thrown out of the house as soon as
they ﬁnish college. I always thought it was so wrong that my best
friend had to begin paying rent as soon as she ﬁnished high school.
The only exception was if she attended college. Then she was thrown
out of the house after college. On the contrary, my brother, who is
older than I am, has ﬁnished college but is still working and living at
home, saving enough money to become independent. Another is still
attending school and living at home. My parents would have it no
other way. They want my brothers to save enough money to put a
down payment on a house or [wait] until they are married to leave
the house. It makes no sense to do what my best friend did and leave
her parents’ home while she is working, because she would not be
able to save money, but would waste money on rent. My mom felt
pity for my best friend for moving out on her own and thinks that
White parents force this on their children because they don’t love
them as much. (personal communication, 1997)
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Independence versus Interdependence with Autonomy
Child-rearing practices in many cultural groups contrast with the training toward separate individuality stressed in the European American middle class.
In many communities, children are socialized to interdependence—responsive coordination with the group—rather than separate individualism.
Children in some communities are encouraged to interact in a multidirectional way with groups of people (see Chapter 4). In environments
with other people constantly present, infants seldom sit alone and play with
objects or engage in one-on-one, face-to-face interaction. Rather, they
spend most of their time oriented to the group and ongoing events (Paradise, 1994). Instead of facing the caregiver, an infant may face the same direction as the caregiver (“outward”) and learn from the caregiver’s activities
and interactions with other people (see ﬁgure 6.2).
In some communities, this social engagement involves close physical
contact, with infants held, sleeping cuddled in arms, and carried on backs
or hips. The term for taking care of a baby in Kipsigis (a Kenyan language)
literally means holding the baby (Harkness & Super, 1992b; see also LeVine
et al., 1994). Skilled working-class African American caregivers know how
to hold a baby as though “he’s a part of you” (Heath, 1983, p. 75). In con-
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Interdependence and Autonomy
201
figure 6.2
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This 11-month-old from the Ituri
Forest of the Democratic
Republic of Congo faces the same
direction as her mother and can
observe what her mother does and
interact with the people her
mother engages with from this
vantage point.
trast, middle-class U.S. infants were held for approximately half the time as
Kenyan Gusii infants (Richman, Miller, & Solomon, 1988).
However, in some communities where interdependence is stressed,
close physical contact is not necessarily a part of being involved with the
group. For example, Marquesan (Polynesian) adults either attend to the
baby or put the baby down, rather than carrying infants in a “blending”
fashion (Martini & Kirkpatrick, 1992).
With or without close physical contact, interdependence involves orienting to the group. However, engagement with the group can simultaneously emphasize individual autonomy. It can be based on voluntary, individual choice, as among the Marquesans:
Marquesans value group participation but reject the idea of persons
submitting to authority. The ideal situation is one in which people
have similar or complementary goals and willingly collaborate in a
mutually beneﬁcial activity without anyone dominating anyone else.
Young children learn that autonomy is valued and then learn when
and how to exercise it while still being group members. (Martini &
Kirkpatrick, 1992, p. 218)
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T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
Individual Freedom of Choice in an Interdependent System
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People can both coordinate with others and act autonomously. The usual
view in psychology associates freedom of choice with independence and
treats coordination among members of a group as lack of autonomy (see
Kagitçibasi, 1996). This dichotomy persists in some cultural approaches
(e.g., Greenﬁeld & Suzuki, 1998; see Strauss, 2000 for a critique). Contradicting the dichotomous opposition of individual choice and interpersonal
coordination, a number of observations suggest that in many communities
interdependence also involves respect for the autonomy of individuals.
To be a part of an interdependent group, people in many communities
have the responsibility to coordinate with the group but the freedom to do
otherwise. For example, individuals’ decisions are respected among the
Kaluli of Papua New Guinea: “One can never compel another to act. One
can appeal and try to move others to act, or assert what one wants” (Schieffelin, 1991, p. 245).
The cultural pattern of interdependence with respect for individuals’
autonomy challenges commonly held assumptions in U.S. research regarding the nature of individuality and independence:
There seems to exist in Western societies an eternal, inescapable tension between autonomy and cooperation—between the individual’s
right to do as he or she pleases, and the need for the individual to
control his or her ego for the common good. For the Navajo, on the
other hand, far from being opposed to cooperation, individual freedom of action is seen as the only sure source of cooperation. . . .
Navajo people place immense value on cooperation . . . while simultaneously holding great respect for individual autonomy. (Chisholm,
1996, p. 178)
“Inviolability of the individual” is a central value widespread among
North and Central American Indians (Ellis & Gauvain, 1992; Lamphere,
1977; Paradise, 1987). At any age, people have the right to make their own
decisions about their own actions; it is inappropriate to force others to do
something against their will (Greenﬁeld, 1996, building on a concept borrowed from Downs).
An example of respect for others’ decisions in a Mayan community was
provided by Lois Paul (personal communication, 1974). A mother whose 3or 4-year-old got a bean stuck up her nose asked Lois Paul to remove it. She
asked the mother to hold the child still, and the mother said, “I can’t; she
doesn’t want to.” Holding the child still would be intruding too much on
the child’s self-determination and will. The respect for personal autonomy
is not breached even for another’s well-being.
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Interdependence and Autonomy
According respect for others’ freedom of choice is a foundation of interdependence in native northern Canadian and Alaskan ways:
Nonintervention or mutual respect for the individuality of others
is an essential element of system stability [of the community].
Without reciprocal nonintervention there would be no larger
system. The potential runaway autonomy of individuals is held in
check by the mutual respect of others which is held in equally high
regard.
We have then the seeming paradox that . . . the autonomy of
the individual can only be achieved to the extent that it is granted to
one by others. Individual autonomy is, in fact, a social product. One
gains autonomy to the extent one grants it. . . . Each person in each
situation is constrained only by his own wish to be granted autonomy. Even in this the autonomy of the individual is preserved. One
respects others as one’s own choice motivated by one’s own wish for
mutual respect. (Scollon & Scollon, 1981, p. 104)
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Learning to Cooperate, with Freedom of Choice
Nonintervention is practiced in some communities even with very young
children, who may not be prevented from actions other than those that
would cause severe physical harm. Minor harm, such as burns from touching a stove, are usually treated as less serious than interfering with a child’s
actions, so native northern Canadian/Alaskan children are rarely told not to
do something (Scollon & Scollon, 1981). Respect for the autonomy of the
individual is also a core value among Aka foragers of Central Africa, where
infants’ actions are not interfered with except if an infant begins to crawl
into a ﬁre or hits another child (Hewlett, 1991).
Individual autonomy is respected with Mayan infants because it is inappropriate to go against other people’s self-determination, even if they
themselves do not understand how to act in a responsible interdependent
way. For example, Mayan mothers were much less likely than middle-class
European American mothers to try to overrule toddlers’ wishes by insisting
on their own way (even though the Mayan toddlers were twice as likely to
refuse or insist on their own way; Rogoff et al., 1993). Middle-class European American mothers more often tried to supersede the children’s will,
trying to force the children to follow the mother’s agenda.
By the standards of the Mayan community, forcing amounts to lack of
respect for the children’s autonomy. Mayan parents often tried to persuade,
but stopped short of forcing a child to comply, as when 18-month-old
Roberto did not want to have his cloth diaper and trousers put on:
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T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
First his mother tried coaxing, then bribing with false promises,
“Let’s put on your diaper. . . . Let’s go to Grandma’s. . . . We’re going
to do an errand.” This did not work, and the mother invited Roberto
to nurse, as she swiftly slipped the diaper on him with the father’s assistance. The father announced, “It’s over!” and as a distraction offered Roberto the ball that we had brought.
The mother continued the offer of the toy, with her voice reﬂecting increasing exasperation that the child was wiggling and not standing to facilitate putting on his pants. Her voice softened as Roberto
became interested in the ball, and she increased the stakes: “Do you
want another toy?” Roberto listened to both parents say, “Then put
on your pants.” They continued to try to talk Roberto into cooperating, and handed him various objects, which Roberto enjoyed. But
still he stubbornly refused to cooperate with dressing. They left him
alone for a while. When his father asked if he was ready, Roberto
pouted “Nono!”
After a bit, the mother told Roberto that she was leaving, and
waved goodbye. “Are you going with me?” Roberto sat quietly with
a worried look. “Then put on your pants, put on your pants to go
up the hill.” Roberto stared into space, seeming to consider the alternatives. His mother started to walk away, “OK then, I’m going.
Goodbye.” Roberto started to cry, and his father persuaded, “Put
on your pants then!” and his mother asked “Are you going with
me?”
Roberto looked down worriedly, one arm outstretched in a half
take-me gesture. “Come on, then,” his mother offered the pants and
Roberto let his father lift him to a stand and cooperated in putting
his legs into the pants and in standing to have them fastened. His
mother did not intend to leave; instead she suggested that Roberto
dance for the audience. Roberto did a baby version of a traditional
dance, looking up slightly poutily at the interviewer. (Rogoff et al.,
1993, pp. 83 – 84)
These Mayan parents’ persuasive and distracting tactics (including promises
and threats that were not carried out) seemed to maintain a boundary of
not forcefully intervening against the child’s will.
Learning to collaborate with the group, with respect for individual selfdeterminination, seems to be accomplished by age 3 to 5 years in this Mayan
community. Siblings at this age voluntarily respected toddlers’ autonomy
without being forced, allowing toddlers to have access to objects they themselves wanted (Mosier & Rogoff, 2002). Usually without prompting , they
gave desired objects to the toddler, whose self-interest was treated as char-
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Interdependence and Autonomy
acteristic of being too young to understand how to be a cooperating member of a group.
The 3- to 5-year-olds cooperated, according to the Mayan view, because
by this age they understood how to be a cooperating member of a group.
Also, they were used to functioning within a consistent system of respect
for individuals’ autonomy. They had not been treated adversarially themselves as babies; they had been treated in a way that gave them a chance to
observe how other people respected their own and others’ autonomy. They
were no longer the one given leeway, but all their lives they had participated
in the system in which responsibility to other people and respect for each
other’s autonomy are inherent in human relations.
In Mazahua families (indigenous to Mexico), respeto for the person also
extends from infancy throughout life, in a general noninterfering approach
that adults take toward children and others (Paradise, 1987). With this continuity of a respectful approach, Mazahua babies’ privileged status transforms into a responsible child status in a few years:
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It is precisely by taking on the various roles of others, and practicing
those roles in interactions with others, that the child learns to organize all of the different and often complementary attitudes he or she
encounters. . . . For instance, the basic values that indicate that a
baby be appreciated and respected, dealt with gently, and that care be
taken that his or her will not be thwarted, are experienced from a
baby’s perspective, and then from another position that corresponds
to a different social status. (pp. 132 – 133)
Paradise connected the children’s early experiential understanding of respeto
with traditional leadership, in which elders protect and guide rather than
giving orders or dominating. Group integration involves each individual
following his or her own path without being “organized” by anyone else, in
a smoothly functioning coordination that is not preplanned or directed by
a boss.
This ethos of respect for individual autonomy contrasts with the treatment of toddlers, common in some middle-class European American families, as willful, independent persons (even adversaries) with whom to negotiate, sometimes in battles of will or tugs-of-war. For example, battles and
negotiations are common in parental efforts to get infants and toddlers to
sleep by themselves, for fear that if they let the baby “win,” they will have
lost parental authority.
Adversarial relations may follow historical antecedents in Puritan childrearing practices of the 1600s. Children were viewed as wicked by nature
and needing parental correction — beginning in infancy — to enforce the
habit of righteousness to facilitate the children’s salvation (Moran & Vi-
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206
T H E C U LT U R A L N AT U R E O F H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T
novskis, 1985; Morgan, 1944). Similarly, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, in the late 1700s exhorted the importance of correcting children:
“Break their wills betimes, begin this work before they can run alone, before
they can speak plain, perhaps before they can speak at all. Whatever pains it
costs, break the will, if you would not damn the child” (in Cleverley, 1971,
p. 15, quoting from Southey, 1925).
Middle-class European American mothers frequently intervened as
judges and negotiators when their children tussled (Mosier & Rogoff,
2002). They helped the children learn to defend their individual rights and
respect the individual rights of others, in accord with their local cultural
values. Mothers often established rules for equal, separate turn-taking
(never suggested in the Mayan families). The older siblings’ negotiation and
use of adversarial roles ﬁt a system in which they themselves have participated since infancy. Their roles with younger siblings may assist the toddlers
in learning to stand up for their own self-interest in an individualistic
model of family relations.
Nonintervention is sometimes misunderstood by people unfamiliar with
this cultural system. For example, the practice of allowing American Indian
children to cooperate by their own will is often not understood by school personnel. In becoming self-reliant and responsible for others in the community,
the children make mature decisions on their own (Chisholm, 1996; Joseph et
al., 1949; Lee, 1976). However, European American teachers and administrators in schools on the Navajo reservation often infer that parents have “no
control” over their children (Deyhle, 1991). For example, if a school counselor
asks a Navajo family about their 14-year-old who has missed school for a
week, his parents may say he is probably staying with his uncles somewhere,
and the school counselor may tell them to make sure he is in school tomorrow. To Navajo families, especially with a child of 14 but probably also with
a younger child, forcing them to do this would intrude on their autonomy.
Training for interdependence with autonomy also appears in accounts
of Japanese child rearing, where autonomy and cooperation are compatible
qualities that both fall under one term, sunao, which may be translated as
“receptive”:
A child who is sunao has not yielded his or her personal autonomy
for the sake of cooperation; cooperation does not suggest giving up
the self as it may in the West; it implies that working with others is
the appropriate way of expressing and enhancing the self. . . . How
one achieves a sunao child . . . seems to be never go against the child.
(White & LeVine, 1986, pp. 58 – 59)
In traditional Japanese belief, young children learn autonomously, and use
of parental controlling behavior such as anger and impatience leads chil-
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Interdependence and Autonomy
dren after age 10 or 11 to resent and disobey authority rather than to cooperate with others (Kojima, 1986). The next section examines issues of cooperation and control in adult-child relations.
Adult-Child Cooperation and Control
Questions of adult control and discipline relate closely to the ideas of interdependence and autonomy. Underlying many discussions of discipline
are questions of control, of who has authority over whom, in adversarial
roles. This is clearly at odds with the approach of communities in which respect for others’ autonomy is a basic premise, as described in the previous
section. However, in U.S. research and middle-class folk beliefs, it is often
assumed that if adults don’t have control, children do, and vice versa.
When child-rearing books became common in the United Stattes, after
1825, most of the concerns expressed in them had to do with issues of authority (Demos & Demos, 1969). The public was concerned that parental
authority was waning, and authors urged parents to establish control early
to combat the willfulness and inherent selﬁsh nature of children. Demos
and Demos provided a telling quote from Burton’s 1863 Helps to Education:
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It must be confessed that an irreverent, unruly spirit has come to be
a prevalent, an outrageous evil among the young people of our land.
. . . Some of the good old people make facetious complaint on this.
. . . “There is as much family government now as there used to be in
our young days,” they say, “only it has changed hands.” (pp. 38 – 39)
During the 20th century, child-rearing advice, educational debate, and
psychological research focused on the issue of authority. Often, the debate
cast adult and child authority as alternatives such that only one “side” could
be in control (Eccles et al., 1991; Giaconia & Hedges, 1982; Greene, 1986;
Stipek, 1993; see ﬁgure 6.3).
An alternative was promoted by John Dewey (1938), who sought educational changes to support the widespread involvement of all Americans in
democratic processes. Dewey claimed that adults have the obligation to
guide children but that this does not imply that adults must control them.
Adults and children do not necessarily need to be on different sides; rather,
they can collaborate, with different roles and responsibilities in the group
(Engeström, 1993; Kohn, 1993; Rogoff, 1994). This view is reﬂected in discussions of collaborative classrooms and family relations in which adults
and children engage in shared endeavors, with varying leadership and responsibility (Brown & Campione, 1990; Kobayashi, 1994; Newman, Grifﬁn, & Cole, 1989; Rogoff et al., 2001; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wells,
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207
figure 6.3
A teacher in charge of a public school class in Clayton, New Mexico, 1914.
Chang, & Maher, 1990). Cooperation and control are central to issues surrounding both parental discipline and teachers’ classroom discipline.
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Parental Discipline
Focusing on parental discipline in the United States, Diana Baumrind
(1971) distinguished three styles: an authoritarian style, in which adults control children; a permissive style, in which children have free rein; and an authoritative style, in which parents guide children as well as consult them,
setting clear standards while encouraging their independence and individuality, with a verbal give-and-take between parents and children. In European American middle-class populations, parents’ authoritative style has
been associated with greater social and academic competence among children than parental authoritarian or permissive styles.
Cultural variations have been observed in the prevalence of authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive treatment of children by parents, as well
as in the relation of these styles to other aspects of parents’ and children’s
lives (Baumrind, 1972). For example, in Kenya, parents with more schooling were likely to negotiate conﬂicts with their children and to allow the
children to question their authority, which contrasts with traditional parent-child relations (Whiting, 1974).
Chinese parents have been judged as using a more authoritarian parenting style than U.S. counterparts. However, several authors suggest that
using the Western concept of authoritarianism with Chinese parents may
be misleading. Authoritarian child rearing stems from a history of several
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Interdependence and Autonomy
centuries of American evangelical religious fervor, which stresses domination and “breaking of the child’s will” (Chao, 1994, p. 1113). “In contrast, in
Chinese parenting, ‘training (guanjiao)’ takes place in the context of a supportive, involved, and physically close mother-child relationship. It involves
caring, devotion, and sacriﬁce as well as strict discipline and control” (Fung,
1995, p. 7; see Stewart, Bond, Zaman, McBride-Chang, Rao, Ho, & Fielding, 1999, for similar ﬁndings in Pakistan). Although prevalence of parental
styles in China differed from those in European American populations,
similar relationships with children’s social and academic competence were
found in one study (Chen, Dong, & Zhou, 1997).
Within U.S. populations, differences have been noted in both the prevalence and patterns of relationship of parental discipline styles and their
children’s social and academic competence. Asian, Black, and Hispanic adolescents from northern California reported their parents as more authoritarian and less authoritative than did White adolescents. Also, the Black
adolescents reported less permissiveness than did White adolescents,
whereas Hispanics and Asians reported more permissiveness than did White
adolescents (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987).
Within the White and Black groups, authoritarian and permissive styles
were associated with low grades, and an authoritative style was associated
with higher grades—but the relations were more variable within the Asian
and Hispanic groups.
Parental control of decision making seems to have distinct meaning
and varying implications for life adjustment in different communities.
Among European American youth, those who reported that their parents
controlled their decisions — curfews and choice of classes and friends —
showed more deviant behavior and poorer academic and psychosocial functioning a year later (Lamborn, Dornbusch, & Steinberg, 1996). In contrast,
there was no relation between reports of parents controlling decisions and
later adjustment for Asian American and Hispanic American youth. Among
African American youth, those who reported that their parents controlled
decisions showed less involvement in deviant behavior and higher academic
performance, regardless of their social class and the afﬂuence of their neighborhood. (In all groups, the adolescents who reported little involvement of
parents in their decisions were more likely to show poor adjustment a year
later than were those who indicated that decisions were joint with their
parents.)
Physical punishment also seems to have different meanings for the children of different communities (Hale-Benson, 1986). European American
mothers’ use of physical punishment of their kindergarten-age children was
associated with the children’s development of more aggression toward peers
and conﬂict with teachers. In contrast, no such relationship existed for
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African American mothers and children (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, &
Pettit, 1996). Perhaps the use of physical punishment in European American but not in African American families indicates “out-of-control” parents.
(Physical abuse, on the other hand, relates to aggressive behavior by children of both ethnic groups.) The greater acceptability of spanking in African
American communities may relate to many African American parents’ concerns regarding anticipated dangers of the children’s neighborhood (such as
racist attacks or police violence; Whaley, 2000).
Youth of different communities vary in their interpretations of parental
strictness. Many North American adolescents associated strict parental control with parental rejection and hostility and felt that it infringed on their
right to be autonomous. However, Korean adolescents viewed parental
strictness as an indication of parental warmth and necessary for the youths’
success (Rohner & Pettengill, 1985). The researchers attributed the Korean
adolescents’ perspective to their cultural system, in which individuals are
viewed as a part of a more signiﬁcant whole — the family. Parents’ role in
protecting the family’s welfare is to ﬁrmly guide their children and participate in any decision affecting them. The researchers reported that children’s
role (even in adulthood) is to defer to their parents’ wisdom and authority
on all matters, including choices of career and spouse.
A follow-up study found that living in a new setting altered judgments
regarding parental control (Kim & Choi, 1994). Whereas Korean adolescents associated parental control with high parental warmth, Korean Canadian and Korean American adolescents related parental strictness to hostility, neglect, and rejection. The Korean immigrant youth were in a societal
context that stressed individualistic values of independence rather than mutual responsibility in a collective, which may reduce the adaptiveness of the
traditional practice in the new setting.
Often, immigrant youth and their families mix and match the approaches of their country of origin and their new country, contributing to
changing adaptations across generations. Children and parents who are in
the midst of such change negotiate solutions to the new circumstances,
sometimes with tension, sometimes with ease. This Asian American college
freshman’s advice to high school seniors applying to college seems to reﬂect
both his ancestral traditions and his current surroundings. Eric Chun, from
San Diego, told an interviewer, “I only applied to two art schools because
I didn’t think my parents would let me come to art school.” The interviewer
asked how he convinced his parents to let him go to the school he wanted.
Eric explained:
I wasn’t too insistent about going, but I didn’t just give up. Something in between. I never said I was going to art school no matter
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what. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t go to the school you
want. Loyalty to parents is more important. (“How We Got into College,” 1998 – 99, p. 29)
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Teachers’ Discipline
In some nations, teachers rap heads or knuckles with rulers; such forms of
physical punishment may be seen as an important teaching method (see ﬁgure 6.4). In the United States, teachers were prohibited from using corporal
punishment several decades ago. (I was in fourth grade when corporal punishment was outlawed in my state, and I recall being relieved, although I
had never seen or heard of such punishment in school.) Questions of how
to “control” classrooms continue to be central in teachers’ training and follow some of the same distinctions seen with parental discipline.
A variety of educational prescriptions urge teachers to depart from
their traditional authority roles to engage in dialogue with students (Sutter
& Grensjo, 1988; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). European research indicates
that in classrooms in which teachers exert control through commands and
questions, children respond tersely. Children are more active and equal participants when teachers instead use noncontrolling talk (such as commentary on their own ideas and demonstration of their own uncertainty) and
increase the amount of time allowed for children to respond (Subbotskii,
1987; Wood, 1986).
One approach that is often recommended is for teachers to soften their
directives or veil their commands to students in the interest of creating a
more egalitarian climate. However, this softening of directives may be confusing to some students. Lisa Delpit pointed out that middle-class veiled
commands may be cast as questions (for example, “Isn’t it time for your
bath?”) but are understood as directives. This contrasts with the more direct
commands often used by working-class mothers (see also Hale-Benson,
1986; Moreno, 1991). Delpit pointed out that such veiled directives may
confuse students who are used to straightforward directives:
A Black mother, in whose house I was recently a guest, said to her
eight-year-old son, “Boy, get your rusty behind in that bathtub.” Now
I happen to know that this woman loves her son as much as any
mother, but she would never have posed the directive to her son to
take a bath in the form of a question. Were she to ask, “Would you
like to take your bath now?” she would not have been issuing a directive but offering a true alternative. . . . Upon entering school the
child from such a family may not understand the indirect statement
of the teacher as a direct command. . . .
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figure 6.4
This 16th-century school scene comes from a Persian manuscript. “The old, bearded
teacher, who holds a stick in his hand to encourage good performance, is instructing one
attentive pupil, and others seem to be concentrating on their manuscripts, but theschoolroom is not very orderly. Two boys play in the courtyard while another pulls a friend’s ear,
and pen boxes and inkpots are scattered about” (Burn & Grossman, 1984, p. 84).
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But those veiled commands are commands nonetheless, representing true power, and with true consequences for disobedience. If
veiled commands are ignored, the child will be labeled a behavior
problem and possibly ofﬁcially classiﬁed as behavior disordered. In
other words, the attempt by the teacher to reduce an exhibition of
power by expressing herself in indirect terms may remove the very
explicitness that the child needs to understand the rules of the new
classroom culture.
A Black elementary school principal in Fairbanks, Alaska, reported to me that she has a lot of difﬁculty with Black children who
are placed in some White teachers’ classrooms. The teachers often
send the children to the ofﬁce for disobeying teacher directives. Their
parents are frequently called in for conferences. The parents’ response
to the teacher is usually the same: “They do what I say; if you just tell
them what to do, they’ll do it. I tell them at home that they have to
listen to what you say.” (1988, p. 289)
Observations by a North American preschool teacher compellingly reveal cultural assumptions regarding effective authority. Cindy Ballenger
(1992; 1999) was interested in understanding how her Haitian-background
colleagues successfully managed classrooms of Haitian preschoolers in Massachusetts, while she herself was having trouble. In a friendly and cheerful
fashion, Ballenger’s class of 4-year-olds consistently followed their own inclinations rather than her directions. In her colleagues’ classrooms, the children did follow directions in an affectionate and cheerful way.
On speaking with Haitian teachers at another center about this problem, Ballenger learned that the teachers were extremely concerned about
behavior problems that they saw with Haitian children. They felt that the
way teachers are taught to deal with children’s behavior was part of the
problem. Haitian parents felt that the schools were tolerating disrespectful
behavior. Haitians often perceive North American children as being fresh
and out of control. In contrast, North Americans often perceive Haitians as
too severe, both verbally and in their use of physical punishment.
Ballenger was helped by an account given by a Haitian woman, Clothilde, who was student teaching in a day care center where she felt that the
North American teachers were not controlling the children well:
One day, as Clothilde arrived at her school, she watched a teacher
telling a little Haitian child that the child needed to go into her classroom, that she could not stay alone in the hall. The child refused and
eventually kicked the teacher. Clothilde had had enough. She asked
the director to bring her all the Haitian kids right away. The director
and Clothilde gathered the children into the large common room. . . .
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clothilde: Does your mother let you bite?
children: No.
clothilde: Does your father let you punch kids?
children: No.
clothilde: Do you kick at home?
children: No.
clothilde: You don’t respect anyone, not the teachers who play with
you or the adults who work upstairs. You need to respect
adults—even people you see on the streets. You are taking good
ways you learn at home and not bringing them to school. You’re
taking the bad things you learn at school and taking them home.
You’re not going to do this anymore. Do you want your parents
to be ashamed of you?
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According to Clothilde, the Haitian children have been well-behaved
ever since. Other Haitian teachers . . . conﬁrmed that that was what
the children needed to hear. (1992, p. 202)
Clothilde pointed out to Ballenger that in her speech to the children,
she did not refer to the children’s emotions. She noted that North American
teachers frequently refer to children’s feelings and interpret them for the
children (e.g., “You must be angry”). North American teachers often talk
about the consequences of misbehavior (e.g., “If you don’t listen to me, you
won’t know what to do”). Haitian teachers rarely do this; they assume that
the children are already aware that the particular behavior is wrong. Instead,
the Haitian teachers focus on the values and responsibilities of group membership and sometimes talk about affection for the children.
Ballenger began to adopt some of the ways that she learned from the
Haitian teachers and parents, and found that the children paid close attention. Sometimes the other children thanked her earnestly for her intervention with a classmate. On one occasion, she was scolding the children for
not waiting for her while crossing a parking lot:
cindy [ballenger]: Did I tell you to go?
children: No.
cindy: Can you cross this parking lot by yourselves?
children: No.
cindy: That’s right. There are cars here. They’re dangerous. I don’t
want you to go alone. Why do I want you to wait for me, do you
know?
“Yes,” says Claudette, “because you like us.”
Although I was following the usual Haitian form, . . . I had been
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expecting a ﬁnal response based on the North American system of
cause and effect, something like, “Because the cars are dangerous.”
Claudette, however, although she understands perfectly well the dangers of cars to small children, does not expect to use that information
in this kind of an interaction. What, then, is she telling me? One
thing that she is saying, which is perhaps what the solemn children
also meant, is that, from her point of view, there is intimacy in this
kind of talk. This is certainly the feeling I get from these experiences.
I feel especially connected to the children in those instances in which
I seem to have gotten it right.
. . . I have learned from working with Haitian children and
teachers that there are situations in which reprimands can be conﬁrming, can strengthen relationships. (1992, pp. 205, 206)
In another cultural system, adult indirectness is especially valued, but
with explicit supports for children in learning how to interact. Visitors to
Japan from North America often are surprised by the extent of freedom
given to very young children, who sometimes seem undisciplined. However, by the time Japanese children are in ﬁrst grade, they are more attentive
than U.S. children and spend less time behaving inappropriately (Abe &
Izard, 1999; Lewis, 1995; Stevenson et al., 1987).
Indeed, Japanese ﬁrst-graders take on responsibility, with no direct
management by an adult, for managing such aspects of school as quieting
the class for lessons to begin, breaking into small groups to carry out and
discuss science experiments, and running class meetings. When a teacher is
absent, the class runs itself, with other teachers or a principal occasionally
checking in. Catherine Lewis (1995) has suggested that the impressive behavior of the Japanese children is due to the freedom and supportive empathy of the early years at home and at school. The feeling of belonging
that is fostered leads to a feeling of responsibility for the welfare of the
group. With muted adult authority, children take strong roles in determining class norms. Teachers encourage children’s own problem solving and reﬂection on the problems that arise, as learning opportunities.
Japanese students’ impressive ability to engage together is also supported by explicit prompts indicating classroom formats, such as classroom
posters that suggest wording for how to organize a discussion. Lewis gave an
example of a 45-minute class meeting run by two 6-year-old class monitors
while the teacher sat quietly for most of the time, occasionally raising her
hand to be called on. The two students referred to a poster that listed six
steps for leading a discussion and announced the ﬁrst part of the meeting
together: “Today’s topic for discussion is choosing our next special activity
for the class.”
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Students’ hands shot up, and suggestions were plentiful: a talent
show, a tug-of-war, a class play, clay projects. The monitors initially
called on children in turn, but soon all children were shouting at
once. The factions for a talent show and a tug-of-war shouted the
most loudly. Ms. Mori did not speak.
After several minutes of shouting, a boy sprang to the front of
the class and shouted, “Let’s take a vote between talent show and tugof-war.” One of the monitors pulled the teacher’s chair over to the
blackboard and stood on it to tally votes on the board. The class quieted to vote. One monitor counted the hands and the other recorded
the tallies. “The talent show wins,” they announced and then led the
class in deciding the date for the show, which groups would perform,
and which would be audience. . . .
Even when there was a short scufﬂe between two boys over
which groups would perform, the teacher did not intervene. The
monitors settled the scufﬂe by asking the two boys to abide by the results of the hand play “scissors-paper-stone.”
Referring again to the poster, the monitors asked, “Do we have
anything else to decide?” With no responses, the monitors summarized what had been decided, and one monitor wrote each decision
on the board: to have a talent show, its date, which groups would perform and which would be audience, and the dates for practice. (1995,
pp. 111 – 112)
Teachers’ comments during such discussions often challenged students
to justify what they had said or to reconcile their comments with those of
other students. In reﬂection questions at the end of the school day, teachers
asked students to think privately about such questions as “Did today’s class
discussions involve all classmates or just a few classmates?” and “Did I volunteer my ideas sometime today?” With an emphasis on social and ethical
development, these Japanese teachers viewed students’ shared participation
and personal commitment to rules as important measures of educational
success. The teachers’ contribution was to guide the children in their collectively developed standards, not to enforce adult-designed rules.
In this setting , as with the others in this section, children’s participation in considering the ways of the community or group play a central role
in classroom functioning. In such classrooms, the teacher can encourage the
children’s attention to the practices developed in the class, school, or community, and the children can develop responsibility to the group. Although
the particulars of the cultural formats vary, along with distinct preferences
for explicitness or indirectness, these classroom examples have in common
a respect for autonomy in interdependence.
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Interdependence and Autonomy
Teasing and Shaming as Indirect Forms of Social Control
In some communities, teasing by adults or peers is a way to inform people
indirectly that their behavior is out of bounds or to indicate the appropriate way to act (Camara, 1975; Edwards & Whiting, 1992; Schieffelin, 1986).
This is a form of social control that does not require forcing people to adapt
to culturally appropriate ways. Instead, it marks transgressions and motivates people to learn the ways that will not single them out for teasing.
Especially in small interrelated communities, people avoid intrusive or
hostile interactions for expressing everyday criticisms or complaints, to avoid
jeopardizing long-term relationships (Eisenberg, 1986; Houser, 1996; Schieffelin, 1986). In such settings, teasing provides an indirect means to express
criticism, carried in discourse that is softened by humor and that does not
call for a serious response:
Effective Lakota [American Indian] teasing is ambiguous; it conveys
affection and humor along with a public message that the individual
being teased has done something which the speaker—and the audience—ﬁnd worthy of amusement and criticism. The victim is expected to take the teasing in good humor. The relationship between
teaser and teased may and should continue, but the teaser has had an
opportunity to express criticisms of conduct. (Houser, 1996, p. 20)
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Paul Tiulanga, a leader of the King Island Eskimo people, explained
how King Islanders controlled people making problems for others. The
local form of social control was systematized in a combination of teasing by
cross-cousins (these are children of a brother and a sister) combined with
support from partner’s cousins (children of same-sex siblings):
Cross-cousins were supposed to tease each other, to make fun of each
other when somebody did something wrong. Partner’s cousins were
supposed to help each other throughout life.
Cross-cousins could make any kind of jokes, try to make each
other feel bad. And if a person lost his temper because of something
a cross-cousin said, he would be called a bad apple. Whenever someone misbehaved or did something foolish, someone would tell his
cross-cousin about it and the cross-cousin would tease, make up jokes
or songs to make the person feel funny. This went on throughout life.
Partner’s cousins would stick together, talk to each other and
work together. If a person got in trouble, a partner’s cousin would
feel badly about it. If one partner’s cousin thought the other one were
causing a problem for someone else, he would not say anything directly. He would not call a partner’s cousin a problem to his face. He
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would tell a cross-cousin about it and the cross-cousin would do all
he or she could to make the problem person feel funny.
People knew, they observed, whether a person were bad or not.
A lot of times they gave a person a second chance, a third chance.
They tried to make some kind of a relationship with a problem
person. They could not just ignore the person because he or she
would become more of a problem. (Senungetuk & Tiulana, 1987,
pp. 30 – 31)
Teasing is also used to help children learn culturally appropriate emotional responses to challenging situations. In a community in which teasing
is common, such as among the Kikuyu (of Kenya) or the Kaluli (of New
Guinea), teasing helps children learn from toddlerhood to discern the difference between what is real or true and what is not, and to deal with symbolic meaning (Edwards & Whiting, 1992; Henze, 1992; Schieffelin, 1986).
Toddlers were encouraged to learn to handle emotional situations and
to determine what is true in a Balinese teasing drama in Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson’s ﬁlm, Sibling Rivalry in Three Cultures. In one incident,
several Balinese mothers pretended to reject their own 1-year-olds in favor
of another infant (borrowed from another mother). The adults supported
the infants in how to handle their angry feelings in a safer situation than
when a mother actually has a new baby. After all, it is just play, and a 1-yearold’s anger is part of the drama. Parents teasing babies by acting out preference (with someone else’s child) may help children learn that teasing is
pretend, as well as that life will not always favor them.
The lessons learned from teasing exchanges are likely to differ across
communities. The kind of teasing practiced in working-class White families in South Baltimore seems to encourage children to assert themselves, to
retaliate, and to speak up in anger—highly valued skills in that community
(Miller & Hoogstra, 1992). South Baltimore caregivers playfully provoke
their children into defending themselves. Mothers threaten, challenge, and
insult their daughters, and encourage even physical aggression against themselves in their daughters’ retaliations. Their own experiences have convinced
them that their girls need such skills to be able to protect themselves in life
(Gaskins, Miller, & Corsaro, 1992). By 30 months, the children were skilled
in communicating anger and aggression and began to show ability to justify
these responses on the basis of another person’s instigation.
Learning how to engage skillfully in teasing repartee appears to serve as
anticipatory training for self-protection in U.S. Black lower-income communities (Slaughter & Dombrowski, 1989). The teasing repartee called signifying is ritualized language play involving the trading of clever insults.
This is seen in playing the dozens (“Your mama is so stupid, when she heard
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Interdependence and Autonomy
90% of all crimes occur around homes, she moved,” and the rapid-ﬁre
comeback that follows: “Your mama . . . ”) or capping (“I went to your
house and wanted to sit down. A roach jumped up and said, ‘Sorry, this seat
is taken.’ ” Response: “So, I went in yo house and stepped on a match and
yo mama said, ‘Who turned off the heat?’” [Lee, 1991, p. 296]).
Among African American adolescents in many social settings, a person
who cannot signify is regarded as inept and having neither status nor style
(Lee, 1991). The audience that is present during the entertaining exchange
admires skilled players for their verbal ﬂuency and quick-wittedness. African
American students in my undergraduate class reported that such teasing
among friends (it does not take place between strangers) helps people face
up to their shortcomings and not be oversensitive about them. They noted
that this prepares members of a minority community to shrug off more serious insults that they can be expected to receive outside their community
(Wales & Mann et al., personal communication, March 1996).
Teasing among other groups may serve as lessons in stoicism. For example, among Athabascans in northern Canada, young children learn to accept teasing without losing their composure. They learn to remove themselves emotionally from such situations (Scollon & Scollon, 1981). Similarly,
among other people of the Arctic area, teasing may help children develop
equanimity in the face of provocations, as caregivers encourage children to
respond to teasing affronts by ignoring them or laughing (Briggs, 1970).
This kind of teasing of young children is regarded as a form of teaching ,
not cruel or vengeful. It instructs them in appropriate behavior and strengthens them to not lose face in front of others (Crago, 1988).
Likewise, beginning in toddlerhood, Marquesan children in Polynesia
learn to control emotional displays through being taunted. Children learn
to withstand the frustrations of social life and to deal with social binds
through social criticism and teasing by peers (Martini, 1994b). They learn
not to give in to the group or withdraw but to respond to attacks by deﬂecting them with humor. Teasing and social criticism build resilient concepts of self in these preschoolers. Children move to leadership roles in the
peer group when they master self-control in response to other children’s
teasing. At times, children frustrate younger children until they cry, and
then show them more appropriate ways to deal with frustration—to stand
up and attend to the group and to make light of an attack.
The everyday social hazing that Marquesan four-year-olds learn to
handle with poise and humor would devastate most American
preschoolers. . . .
The Marquesan children learn not to take these events personally
and not to assume that others’ attacks are aimed directly against their
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persons. They learn to deﬁne their selves as something more stable
than their (frustrated) plans of the moment and as something more
worthy than how they are portrayed by their tormenters.
In this sense, although Marquesan children attend and respond
extensively to the group, they seem less vulnerable to the inevitable
disappointments of social life. In the end they may be less affected
by shame and group opinion than are their American counterparts.
(pp. 100 – 101)
Marquesan parents use shame to teach children proper action and attentiveness to observers’ opinions. Children also use shame to inﬂuence
each other, lecturing or showing disgust at another’s inappropriate actions.
They shame others for endangering themselves or others, making mistakes,
going beyond the limits of acceptable behavior, and for acting too bossy or
self-centered (Martini, 1994b).
In some communities, shame is both a method of helping children
learn moral precepts and a virtue to be developed. Shame has been seen as a
virtue since the time of Confucius in China (Fung , 1995). In modern
China, the parents of 2- to 4-year-olds reported that their favored way of
disciplining the children was to situate the lesson in concrete experience
rather than to preach. They reported that the immediate concrete experience helped the children understand how the rules work and to remember
and to follow the lesson. By preschool age, children already felt shame if
they knew they had disappointed their parents. The parents felt that it was
necessary to make their children feel shameful when they had transgressed,
but only to teach them to know right from wrong. Too much shame might
cause the child to avoid interaction, harming self-esteem and leading the
child to try to escape responsibilities and lose motivation to improve. So
adults and children were expected to maintain well-balanced shaming.
Shaming occurred commonly as part of family life, about ﬁve episodes
per hour, for two young Chinese children who were observed at home over
several years (Fung , 1995). Caregivers often made use of the experience
while it was still fresh, to bring the lesson home. Although shaming involved threats of ostracism and abandonment, all participants handled
most shaming events in a playful manner. By age 4, the children were able
to incorporate a broader variety of roles and to return challenges or shame
other people. Shame was used to teach the children how to be a part of society, to include them and protect them from being set apart by being condemned by people outside the family or by society in general.
Teasing and shaming , like discipline by parents and teachers, involve
cultural variations in ways of compelling, persuading, or guiding children
to behave in accepted ways. Many moral issues, examined in the next sec-
Rogoff, Barbara. The Cultural Nature of Human Development, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2003.
ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/niu/detail.action?docID=272865.
Created from niu on 2023-01-23 23:45:32.
Interdependence and Autonomy
tion, also have to do with cultural conceptions of autonomy, responsibility
to the group, interdependence, and control.
Conceptions of Moral Relations
Notions of fairness and morality are tied to cultural conceptions of how individuals relate to others in their community. In some communities, emphasis may be on negotiating equal treatment and resources for each person; in others, priority is placed on playing a responsible role in relation to
the group (in interdependent autonomy).
The importance of the relation of individual rights and group interests
is clear in many moral issues. For example: Is infanticide or infant neglect
always immoral or can it be moral to allow one individual to die if that person’s survival threatens the survival of the group or of many other people?
What is the relation between expenditure of material resources and the prolongation of a single life (such as organ transplants for individuals not likely
to live long)?
Copyright © 2003. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Moral Reasoning
Research on moral development across communities has often involved
tests of moral reasoning (see Eckensberger & Zimba, 1997). For example, in
Lawrence Kohlberg’s work, individuals were presented with moral dilemmas, such as: If a man’s wife is dying for lack of a costly new drug, should
the man steal it? In this line of research, the respondents’ justiﬁcations for
thei…

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