I'm reading a book now by Meredith Small called Kids. It is her second book on children. The first one is called Our babies, Ourselves which is about babies. These books are highly enjoyable reads. That is if you are open to lets say alternative scientific writing.
What Meredith does is approach the raising of children anthropologically. In the modern world we raise our children in certain ways. But not all the people in the world do it this way. An example is the sleeping of children. In our modern times it is completely forbidden to have your child in the bed when sleeping. Alternately the rest of the world lets their children sleep with them until quite late.
What she does is compare our modern traditions with other traditions. And she also explains how we have evolved as human beings. This evolution has caused us to have a childhood period.
In Kids I came along an interesting observation. Namely that tools are part of communication. Without our ability to communicate and observe we could not develop tools. I find this fascinating. Especially because web 2.0 often stays with the technical people who have no idea how te communicate the tool. Interestingly it seems that most of the learning of the use of a tool is done by observing!
What Meredith does is approach the raising of children anthropologically. In the modern world we raise our children in certain ways. But not all the people in the world do it this way. An example is the sleeping of children. In our modern times it is completely forbidden to have your child in the bed when sleeping. Alternately the rest of the world lets their children sleep with them until quite late.
What she does is compare our modern traditions with other traditions. And she also explains how we have evolved as human beings. This evolution has caused us to have a childhood period.
In Kids I came along an interesting observation. Namely that tools are part of communication. Without our ability to communicate and observe we could not develop tools. I find this fascinating. Especially because web 2.0 often stays with the technical people who have no idea how te communicate the tool. Interestingly it seems that most of the learning of the use of a tool is done by observing!
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