The Philosophy of Childhood 9780674664807, 0674664809, 9780674664814, 0674664817

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The Philosophy of Childhood Gareth B. Matthews

H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS

Cambridge, M assacbusetts London, England i 994

Copyright © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials have been chosen for strength and durability. Library o j Concjress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Matthews, Gareth B., 1 9 2 9 The philosophy of childhood / Gareth B. Matthews. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-66480-9 (acid-free paper) 1. Children and philosophy. 2. Child psychology— Philosophy. B105.C45M 38 1994 108'.3— dc20 94-16178 CIP

I. Title.

F o r S a ra h , B e c c a , a n d J o h n

í

Contents

In tro d u c tio n : G e t t in g th e Id ea

1

A P h ilo s o p h e r's V ie w o f C h ild h o o d

ÍO

T h e o r ie s a n d M o d e ls o f C h ild h o o d

19

P ia g e t an d P h ilo s o p h y

30

P ia g e t an d C o n s e r v a tio n

41

M o r a l D e v e lo p m e n t

54

C h ild re n 's R ig h ts

68

C h ild h o o d A m n e sia

81

C h ild h o o d a n d D e a th

89

L ite ra tu re fo r C h ild re n

102

C h ild A rt

111

N o te s

127

A c k n o w le d g m e n ts

133

In d e x

135

Introduction: Getting the Idea

i t was 1963 w hen l first co n n ected philosophy w ith childhood. O u r fam ily cat, Fluffy, had co n tracted fleas. I announced th at I w ould have to take Fluffy into th e basem ent to fumígate her. O ur old er daughter, Sarah, then four years oíd, asked if she could w atch. R elu ctantly I agreed — w ith the proviso th at Sarah should stand high on th e stairs, so that she would not herself breathe in th e anti-flea dust I was about to adm inister to th e cat. From h er perch at th e head o f the stairs, Sarah w atched this prim itive ritual w ith great interest. "D addy," she asked after a w hile, "how did Fluffy g et fleas?" "O h ," I replied nonchalantly, "she must have been playing with a n o th er cat; fleas must have jum ped o ff the o th er cat o n to Fluffy." Sarah reflected. "H ow did that cat g et fleas?" she asked. "O h , it must have been playing w ith y et another cat," I answered jauntily,- "they must have jum ped o ff th at cat o n to the one Fluffy later played w ith." Sarah paused. "But D addy," she said earnestly, "it can't go on and on like th at forever,- th e only thing th at goes on and on like th at forever is numbers!" A t th e tim e o f this incid ent I was teach in g philosophy at the U n iversity of M innesota. O n e of the standard topics in several of th e courses I taught th ere was the C osm ological Argum ent for the ex isten ce o f G od. T h a t argum ent depends upon ruling out an infi­

Introduction

2

nite regress of causes, so as to prove th e existeh ce o f th e First Cause, w hich, St. Thom as Aquinas assures us w ith surprising aplom b, we all cali "G od." I can rem em ber thinking, "H ere I am teachin g my university students the argum ent for a First Cause, and my four-year-old daughter com es up, on h er own, w ith an argument for the First Flea!" A t that tim e I knew very little about developm ental psych ology. O h , I knew som ething about Jean Piaget. I had even heard him lecture (in French! w hich was a challenge for m e) w hen I was a gradúate student in philosophy at Harvard. I certain ly knew som ething about Piaget's famous conservation experim ents. But I did not understand th at Piaget's theory made no allow ance w hatsoever for the philosophical thin king o f m y daughter, w ho, accord ing to Piagetian theory, still lingered in th e an tech am b er of "pre-operational thought." I can rem em ber tellin g th e story of Sarah and th e fleas from tim e to tim e, at parties, usually. But I had no inkling th at I m ight one day try to make a case for th e naturalness w ith w hich, like Sarah, m any young children do philosophy on th eir own initiative. C ertainly I did n o t appreciate th e m any co n n ectio n s b etw een philosophy and ch ild h o o d th at I hope to bring out in this bo o k. Som e six years after th e flea incident, m y fam ily and I m oved east, w here I to o k up a position at the U niversity o f M assachusetts. O ur arrival in M assachusetts co in cid ed w ith th e local on set of w hat was then called, rather patronizingly, I th ou gh t, "student unrest." A t m y new campus there w ere strikes, bom b scares, and countless dem onstrations. I was m yself quite opposed to th e V ietnam war. So, although already ten years away from b ein g a student, I jo in e d in at least som e of this "student unrest." M o re than o n ce I w ent w ith busloads o f protesters, m ostly students, to W ashin g ton to register my own dissent. At this tim e I n oticed a phenom enon in m y p h ilosoph y classroom that slow ly began to trouble me. Som e o f m y b est stu­ dents— certainly n ot all of them , but som e o f th e m ost appealing

Introduction

3

o n es— expressed to m e the suspicion th at philosophy was a plot b y "the Establishm ent" to distract the attention of co llege students, esp ecially male students, from the issues of life and death raised b y th e V ietn am war. H ow cou ld anyone possibly think th at my beloved philosophy was an Establishm ent plot? I was hurt. I didn't know how to respond. H ow does one deal w ith a suspicion like that? T h an k s esp ecially to the pioneering w ork of M atthew Lipman and his associates at the Institute for the A dvancem ent of P h ilos­ op h y for C hild ren in M on tclair, New Jersey, philosophy is today gradually m aking its appearance throughout the school cu rric­ ulum, kindergarten through tw elfth grade. But two decades ago, at th e tim e o f this V ietnam "unrest," philosophy was alm ost the on ly prom inent co lleg e su bject th at a student would probably not have en cou n tered in any curricular form before college. A nyone even slightly paranoid about "the Establishm ent" m ight well find this striking fact suspicious. As 1, in fact, believed, som e parts of philosophy m ight actually help a student think m ore deeply and m ore clearly about the issues o f war and peace. But m ost parts would n ot do that, or at least n o t do so directly. I did n o t w ant to hold my discussions of, say, D escartes's "I think, therefore I am," or Aquinas's C osm ological A rgum ent, h ostage to som e dubious co n n ectio n betw een them and issues in, say, Ju st W a r T h e o ry , or questions about the limits o f m orality. O n e night, w hile I was reading a bedtim e story to my son, Joh n , then about th ree years oíd, it occurred to me that the story I was reading raised a philosophical issue th at I planned to discuss with m y university students th e n ext day. So I to o k the story along to class on the follow ing day. I began my lecture by reading the story I had brou ght from hom e. (I can no longer rem em ber for sure w hat th e story was, but it may have been Jam es Thurber's M an y Moons, a favorite of all my children. T h a t story deais whimsically w ith perceptual illusions, and especially with the apparent

Introduction

4

size of th e m oon.) "C an you rem em ber thin kin g about this problem w hen you were little?" I asked m y students after I had read them the story. "If you can," I continued, "the class tod ay will give you a ch an ce to return to familiar territory." M y aim w as— and is, for 1 som etim es follow this p ractice even tod ay — to convince my students th at p h ilosoph y is a natural activity, quite as natural as m aking music and playing gam es. T o be sure, the study of philosophy has certain practical uses. It is good preparation for certain vocations, like th e law, th a t reward clear thinking and strong reasoning. But, like poetry, p h ilosoph y is also its own reward. I'm n ot sure how successful I was in w inning over m y V ietnam era cynics. But I certainly did sharpen m y own realization o f th e fact th at there is an im portant strand o f children's literature th at is genuinely philosophical. I am fond o f tellin g anyone w ho will listen that, for exam ple, A rnold Lobel's Frocj and T oad Totfether, w hich is so simple in its vocabulary as to cou n t as an "I can read b ook," is also a philosophical classic (see C h ap ter 9). It was a natural next step in my slow aw akening to th e co n n ections betw een philosophy and children to w rite a paper on p h i­ losophy and children's literature. A t th e urging o f a friend I subm itted th e paper to the program co m m ittee o f th e A m erican Philosophical A ssociation, Pacific D ivisión, and, w hen it was accepted, read it to

b

gathering o f philosophers in San Francisco.

I found, som ew hat to my surprise, th at n o t ju st elem entary sch o o l teachers but even o th er professional philosophers w ere in terested in th e co n n ectio n s I could dem ónstrate betw een p h ilosoph y and children's literature. I then becam e interested in explorin g th e philosophical thinking in children to w hich the authors o f p h il­ osophical children's stories w ere appealing. T h a t brou gh t m e b ack to Sarah and the fleas. Eventually I w rote Philosophy and the Youncj Child (H arvard, 1 9 8 0 ), w hich has as its main thesis th at som e children naturally raise questions, make com m ents, and even engage in reasoning th at

.

Introduction

5

professional philosophers can reco gn ize as philosophical. W h en , at th e very beg in n in g o f that book, T im , age six, asks, "Papa, how can we b e sure th at everything is not a dream?" he raises one of th e old est and m ost persistently baffling questions in philosophy. A nd w hen T im later seeks to reassure his father w ith th e reasoning, "If it was a dream, we w ouldn't go around asking if it was a dream,'' he offers a solution to this problem th at can b e usefully com pared w ith th e responses o f Plato and D escartes. M y inform al research suggests th at such spontaneous excursions in to p hilosophy are n o t at all unusual for children betw een th e ages o f three and seven,- in som ew hat older children, though, even eigh t- and nine-year-olds, th ey beco m e rare, or at least rarely reported. M y h yp othesis is that, o n ce children beco m e well settled into sch o o l, th ey learn th at only "useful" questioning is ex p ected o f them . P hilosophy then eith er goes underground, to b e pursued privately, perhaps, and n o t shared w ith others, or else b eco m es to tally dorm ant. T o establish for m yself th at som ew hat older children can, if d eliberately provoked, still respond im aginatively and resourcefully to philosophical questions, I developed the technique of w riting story-beginnings in w hich th e characters, m ostly children, stum ble, unaided by adults, on som e philosophical issue or problem . Freddie, say, goes aboard an oíd ship, w hich, he learns, has had 85 p ercen t of h er boards replaced. D uring th e shipboard tour Freddie feels proud to be able to walk the decks o f "the oldest square-rigger afloat." But his older sister, w hen she hears o f the p iece-b y -p ie ce replacem ent o f m ost of the original boards, ridicules Freddie's boast. "W ith 85 p ercent o f the boards brand new, th a t ship cou ld hardly b e an oíd one, never mind the oldest squarerigger afloat," she sneers. A t this expression o f skepticism my story -b eg in n in g com es to an end. W ith a story -beg in n in g like this in hand I visited classroom s, w here I asked th e children how the story ought to go on. W ith o u t h esitatio n th ey launched into spirited discussions of th e vexing

Introduction

6

questions of identity through tim e th at th e story raises. T h e y co m ­ pared ships to bicy cles or cars, w hose original parts are gradually replaced over tim e. T h e y som etim es even discussed th e gradual displacem ent of cells in th eir own bodies. A nd th ey soon to o k up recogn izable positions on the requirem ents for a ship, or a b icy cle , or a human bod y to persist through tim e. O n e child m ight say th at there is a new ship w hen m ore than half the tim bers have been replaced. A n o th er m ight allow th a t th e oíd ship still sails the seas as lo n g as at least one(l) o f th e original boards remains. Still another m ight suggest th a t th ere is a new ship as soon as the very first board is replaced. So m eon e w ould single out one particular part of the vessel as essential for th e persistence of the oíd ship— th e keel, perhaps, or th e m ast, or th e w heel. Som eone else m ight b e satisfied th at th e oíd ship still sails the seas as long as the replacem ent of boards is gradual and th e ship continúes to sail her familiar routes. I have used this story-beginning tech niqu e in various schools in this country and abroad. M y b o o k Dialogues with Children (H a r­ vard, 1984) is an accou n t o f m y successes w ith it in a small class of eight-to-eleven-year-old s in a music sch o o l in Scotlan d . T h e b o o k is also an introduction to philosophy throu gh th e v oices (and minds!) of children. So far I have talked about children as philosophers. H o w m ight one get from th at to p ic to the idea th at th ere cou ld b e such a su b ject as the philosophy of childhood? M y own jo u rn ey began w ith reflections on w hy it seem s surprising th at young children, m any o f them , are naturally p h ilo ­ sophical. W h a t ideas about children and th e nature o f ch ild h o o d had I previously accep ted, I asked m yself, th at m ade it so surprising to me th at children would naturally take to philosophy? Perhaps the very n otion o f a ch ild was elusive or p roblem atic in a way that I had n ot appreciated, had n o t even stopp ed to co n sider. Four years before th e publication of m y Dialogues with Children,

Introduction

7

M atth ew Lipm an had in fact suggested in a symposium at the annual m eetings o f th e Am erican Philosophical A ssociation that we m ight think of th e philosophy o f child h o o d in analogy tó the p h ilosophy o f religión, the philosophy o f Science, th e philosophy o f art, th e philosophy of history, and the m any other, already familiar, "philosophy o f x" su bjects currently recognized in co llege curricula. Ju st as peop le say all sorts of philosophically p roblem atic things about G o d , about quantum physics, about w hat counts as a work of art, or the cause o f som e historical event, so th ey also say p h ilosop hically problem atic things about child hood . So M at's suggestion was, in effect, th at we philosophers m ight well turn our atten tion to questions like these: W h a t is it to be a child? H o w do children's ways of thinking differ from "ours"? D o yo u n g children have th e cap acity to be really altruistic? M ig h t it be th at children have th e right to "divorce" their parents? M igh t som e works of child art be artistically o r aesthetically as good as "stick figures” o r b lotches of paint b y som e famous m odern artist? D oes literature th at is w ritten by adults for children have to be, for th at very reason, inauthentic?

1 can rem em ber resisting M at's suggestion at first, but I soon carne to accep t it. In 1985, and again in 1988, I d irected an N EH Sum m er Sem inar for C o lleg e T each ers under the title "Issues in th e P h ilosophy o f C hild h o o d ." I ch o se th e title carefully. W ish in g to avoid th e task o f proving to the N ational Endow m ent for the H um anities that th e philosophy of child h o o d is, indeed, a leg ití­ m ate su bject for academ ic enquiry analogous to th e philosophy o f mind, th e p hilosophy o f m athem atics, and th e rest, I made as if I w ere sim ply selectin g issues for discussion from an already a ccep ted field o f enquiry. N o n e o f th e tw elve participants in each o f those tw o seminars seem ed to have any difficulty in accep tin g th e idea th at th e phi-

Introduction

8

losophy o f ch ild h o o d should b e reco gn ized as a legitím ate field o f inquiry. W e began our tim e to g eth er by th in kin g about our co n cep t o f child hood , a co n cep t w hich turns out to b e h isto rically and culturally, as well as philosophically, problem atic. O ur co n cep t of child h o o d is h istorically p roblem atic in th a t th e notion we have o f child h o o d may b e a m odern in v en tio n .1 In earlier periods children seem to have been reco g n izéd as "little people," w ho, o f course eat less and can do less w ork than "big people," but w ho may not b e th ou gh t to differ in th e kinds o f tasks th ey can b e assigned or in th e ivays th ey think or behave. T h e co n cep t of child h o o d is culturally p roblem atic in th at it is n ot shared fully by all o th er cultures. M argaret M ead tells about a Pacific Island culture in w hich stories are th o u gh t to b e for adults, but n o t for children. Far from b ein g a w orld o f fantasy and im agination, child hood, in this culture, is a tim e o f realistic and prosaic th o u gh t.2 Finally, the co n cep t of ch ild h o o d is p h ilosoph ically p ro b lem ­ atic in that genuinely philosophical difficulties stand in th e way of saying ju st w hat kind o f difference the difference betw een c h il­ dren and adult human beings is. W e m oved on in th ose tw o N E H Sem inars to take up som e o f the topics th at will occupy th e succeeding chapters o f this bo o k. W e talked about th e ways th at are available for understanding w hat it is to be a child, including th e th eo ry th at th e d evelopm ent o f each human bein g recapitulates the h istory o f th e developm ent o f th e human species (see C hap ter 2). W e discussed th eo ries of cognitive developm ent in children, esp ecially th e developm ental th eory o f Jean Piaget (see C hapters 3 and 4 ). A nd we consid ered theories of moral developm ent (see C hap ter 5). W e discussed art b y children (C h ap ter 10) and literature fo r children (C h a p ter 9). And, o f course, we debated children's rights (C h ap ter 6). In fact, o f th e topics to be taken up in th e follow ing chap ters, it is only C hild h o o d Amnesia (C h ap ter 7) th at was n o t an exp licit part of our agenda. But even th at su bject slipped in o ccasio n ally

Introduction

9

w ith som e rem ark to th e effect th at part o f w hat m akes early ch ild h o o d so m ysterious and so intriguing is th at none o f us can rem em ber having been a very you ng child. S o I have been w on over to M atthew Lipman's suggestion. It now seem s to m e quite clear that ch ild hood, including th e ideas and th eories th at people have about it, are, indeed, w orthy of ph ilosoph ical exam ination and critique. A nd I have taught my first course, at M o u n t H o ly o k e C o lleg e, under th e title "T h e P h ilos­ op h y o f C hild h o o d ." In this b o o k I do n o t try to give a full accou nt o f w hat m ight b e included in this new su bject, th e philosophy of childhood. Instead, I present a personal response to som e o f th e issues that b elo n g to it. But in presenting a philosophy of child h ood , indeed, som eth in g o f my own philosophy o f ch ild hood , I hope to help secure a place in th e p hilosophy curriculum of the future for the p h ilosophy o f ch ild h o o d as a genuine area o f academ ic research, w riting, and teachin g.

1 A Philosophers View of Childhood

D o you think there could b e any such th in g as th e b eg in n in g of time?" I asked th e dozen third and fourth graders in m y p h i­ losophy discussion group in N ew ton, M assachusetts. (W e had been trying to w rite a story about tim e travel.) "N o," several of th e kids replied. T h e n N ick spoke up. "T h e universe is everyth in g and everyw here," he announced, and then paused. "But then if th ere was a big bang or som ething, w hat was the b ig bang in?" N ick's question had lo n g puzzled me, to o . In m y own case, hearing lectures on the "big bang" th eo ry of th e origin o f th e universe given by learned astrophysicists and cosm og onists had never quelled the conceptual w orry th at N ick articulated so sim ply and directly. A t th e tim e of this discussion N ick had ju st turned nine years oíd. T h e others in th e group w ere anyw here from nine to ten and a half. N o t only did N ick have a genuine puzzle about how th e u ni­ verse could have begun, he also had a m etaphysical principie th at required beginnings for everything, th e universe included. E very­ thing th ere is, he said, has a beginning. As h e realized, th a t prin­ cipie reintroduces the problem about th e universe. "H ow did th e universe start?" h e kept asking.

A Philosophers View o j Childhood

11

"T h e universe," said Sam , "is w hat everything appeared on. Its n o t really anything. It's w hat o th er things started on." "So th ere always has to be a universe?" I asked. "Y eah," agreed Sam , "there always has to be a universe." "So if there was always a universe," I w ent on, "there was no first tim e, either." "T h e re was a first tim e for certain things," explained Sam, "but n o t for th e universe. T h e re was a first tim e for the earth, there was a first tim e for the stars, there was a first tim e for th e sun. But th ere was no first tim e for th e universe." "C an you co n v in ce N ick th at th e universe has to always be there?" I asked Sam. Sam replied w ith a rhetorical question. "W h at would th e uni­ verse have appeared on?" he asked simply. "Th at's w hat I don't understand," adm itted N ick. Sam 's co n cep tio n o f th e universe (w hat everything else appears "on") is rem in iscent o f P la to s idea o f th e "receptacle" in his dia­ logue Timaeus-. ". . . th e m other and recep tacle of all created and visible and in any way sensible things is n o t to be term ed earth or air or fire o r w ater, or any of th eir com pounds, or any of the elem ents from w hich these are derived, but is an invisible and form less b ein g w hich receives all things . . ." (Timaeus 51 A). O n this view th e universe itself never carne to b e ; it is w hat oth er things co m e to b e in, or "on." If, as Ross, another ch ild in the sam e group, put th e p oint later in our discussion, things "started out on vast blackness, then that's ju st the universe then,- the u ni­ verse is vast blackness." I have said th at Sam's co n cep tio n is rem iniscent o f P latos. But th ere is a resp ect in w hich Sam's idea may be superior to P latos. T h e idea o f a recep tacle is th e idea o f a container. A con tain er walls som e things in and o th e r things out. T o wall things in and out it must have walls. Sam's idea o f w hat o th er things appear "on" p ro jects three-d im ensional reality o nto tw o dim ensions, but it

A Philosophers View o f Childhood

12

allows us to think o f th e "ground o f being" as having indefinite borders. W h e th e r the universe is finite or infinite can b e left indeterm inate. By contrast, P la to s recep tacle must b e finite. M oreover, we must w onder w hat th e.n atu re o f th e recep tacle's walls could be, though there is no answer to this question in Plato. In our discussion N ick never gave up his principie th a t every­ thing there is has a beginning. But h e rem ained puzzled about how this principie cou ld b e applied to the universe itself. Every tim e he was asked w hat th e universe cou ld have first appeared on, he replied w ith engaging candor, 'T h a t's the part I don't get." O f course it was he w ho first raised this problem w ith his principie th at everything there is has a beginning. M any people are familiar w ith Saúl Steinberg's New Yorker co ver depicting th e N ew Y orker's view of the country. M an h attan Island dom inates th e scene,- th e o th er boroughs o f N ew Y o rk C ity are prom inent, though sm aller than M anhattan. San F rancisco is to be seen in the distance at the o th e r coast. A nd th ere is n o t m uch in betw een. A p h ilosop h ers view o f ch ild h o o d is likely to b e ju st as distorted. O n the p h ilo so p h ers view, children sit around co n d u ctin g virtuoso discussions o f m ind-bending questions like 'D id th e u n i­ verse itself have a beginning, and if so, w hat did it beg in on?' A lthough I have tried to d ocum ent in m y w ritings th e claim th at some children sometimes do this, even I would have to adm it th at this sort o f activity is n o t the m ost obvious feature o f ch ild h ood . Still, it is w orth p ointing out that discussions such as th e on e 1 have ju st record ed can, and som etim es do, occur. T h e re are at least tw o reasons w hy it is im portant to p oin t this out. First, p h il­ osophical thinking in children has been left out o f th e acco u n t o f ch ild h o o d that developm ental psychologists have given us. Even if philosophical thinking is far from the m ost prom inent feature o f ch ild hood , its presence should b e duly noted. For on e thing, leaving it out encourages undeserved con d escen sio n tow ard ch il-

A Philosophers View o f Childhood

13

dren. If th e m ost daunting intellectual challenges th at Sam and N ick face are to learn th e tw elve-tim es table and th e passive form o f th e verb "to be," cond escen sion tow ard these children as thinkers has som e w arrant in fact. But if Sam and N ick can raise for us in vivid and com p elling form th e puzzles of how th e uni­ verse cou ld have begun, then there are at least som e co n texts in w h ich th ey should b e consid ered our partners in a jo in t effort to understand it all. T h e re is a seco n d reason w hy it is im portant to take due account o f ph ilosoph ical thin king in young children. D o in g so helps us understand philosophy. M u ch o f p hilosophy involves giving up adult pretensions to know . T h e p h ilosop h er asks, "W h at is tim e, anyway?" w hen o th er adults assume, no doubt unthinkingly, th at th ey are well b eyond th e p oint o f need ing to ask th at question. T h e y may w ant to know w h eth er th ey have enough tim e to do th e week's shopping, or to pick up a newspaper. T h e y m ay w ant to know w hat tim e it is, but it doesn't o ccu r to them to ask, "W h at is time?" St. Augustine put th e p oin t well: "W h at, then, is tim e? Provided th at no one asks m e, I know . But if I w ant to explain it to a questioner, I am baffled" (Confessions 1 1 .1 4 ). A m ong th e annoying questions th at children ask are som e th at are genuinely baffling. In im portant part, ph i­ losop h y is an adult attem p t to deal w ith the genuinely baffling questions o f child h ood . I can 't rem em ber asking m yself, as a child, w hat tim e is. But I did puzzle over th e beg in n in g o f the world. M y puzzlem ent as a ch ild o f five or six to o k the form of the follow ing question: 'Supposing th at G o d created th e w orld at som e particular tim e, how is it th at th e w orld looks as though it had been going on forever?' I know now th at my problem in cosm og ony was a b it like that o f St. T h o m as Aquinas. Like m e, Aquinas accep ted th e C hristian d octrin e th at G o d created th e w orld, indeed, created it, Aquinas supposed, out o f n othing. (I don't know now w hether th e ex nihilo part b elo n g ed to m y th eo lo g y as a six-year-old .) But Aquinas was

A Pbilosopber's View o f Childhood

14

also very respectful o f Aristotle's arguments for th e etern ity o f th e world. H e had, then, som ehow , to reco n cile th e appearance of beginninglessness, as captured in Aristotle's rather im pressive rea­ soning, w ith the revealed dpctrine o f creation, w hich, he thought, was an absolute beginning. For m yself— th at ch ild h o o d self— I carne up w ith an analogy. H aving posed my question to my m oth er and received no helpful response, I returned later to reassure her. "D on 't w orry, M o m ," I said, "I think it's like a p erfect circle som eone has drawn. If you had been there w hen it was drawn, you would know w here th e circle begins. But as you look at it now, there's no way o f telling. It's like a p erfect circle, w here the end co n n ects up w ith th e b eg in ­ ning w ithout show ing." W h en now, sixty years later, I teach A ristotle or Aquinas to university students, I try to ló cate the questioning ch ild in m e and my students. U nless I do so, the philosophy we do to g eth er will lose much of its u rgency and m uch o f its point. Let's return to the point about respecting children as partners in inquiry. Parents and teachers are often so im pressed w ith th e burdens they bear in having to nurture, instruct, reassure, and inspire th eir children that they fail to appreciate w hat children have to offer adults. O n e o f the excitin g things th at children have to offer us is a new philosophical perspective. C onsider th e case of Kristin, w ho was four years oíd. Sh e was teach in g herself to use w atercolors. As she painted, she began to think about the colors them selves. Sittin g on h er bed, talking to h er father, she announced, "Dad, the w orld is all made o f colors." Kristin's father, w ho, as I happen to know , wants to m ake sense of it all as much as his four-year-old daughter did, liked Kristin's hypothesis, and reacted positively. But, reco gn izin g a difficulty, he asked her, "W h at about glass?" Kristin thou gh t for a m om ent. T h e n she announced firmly, "C olors and glass." Like any good philosopher, Kristin knew w hat to do w hen one's

A Philosophers View of Childhood

15

grand h yp oth esis runs into a counterexam ple. O n e sim ply incorporates th e counterexam ple into the hypothesis! Kristin's c o lo r h yp othesis is n o t only fresh and ex citin g — at least as uniquely wonderful a gift to h er father, I should say, as any one o f th e w aterco lor pictures she m ight have presented to h im — it also recalls th e thinking of th e earliest philosophers we have any reco rd of, th e an cien t M ilesians. Like Kristin, the M ilesians w anted to know w hat everything is made of. T h ales said "W ater" (presum ably he th ou gh t th at the earth was som ething like frozen or co m p acted w ater, and th at air was very rarefied steam),A naxim ander said "T h e infinite" or "T h e indefinite"; w hereas Anaxim ines said "Air." (1 like Kristin's hypothesis b etter than any of th ese.) A later an ecd ote from Kristin recalls another p re-S ocratic philosopher, Parm enides. Kristin was five, and learning how to read. S h e was learning to reco gn ize syllables and to sound them out so as to b e able to reco gn ize words. Sh e was quite proud of her success. Again, sitting on h er bed talking to h er father, she com m ented, "I'm sure glad we have letters." Kristin's father was som ew hat surprised at that particular expression o f gratitude. "W hy?" h e asked. "C ause if th ere was no letters, there would b e no sounds," explained K ristin. "If th ere was no sounds, th ere would be no words . . . If there was no words, we couldn't think . . . and if we cou ld n't think, th ere would be no world." Kristin's chain reasoning is breathtaking. It is also rem iniscent o f Parm enides' enigm atic fragm ent to g ar auto noein estin te kai einai ("For th e same th in g is th ere b o th to be thou gh t of and to be"). T h a t m ight b e understood to entail 'O n ly w hat can be thought, can b e.' If, then, we grant Kristin her interesting assumptions th at (1) w ithou t words no th in g cou ld b e thou gh t and (2) w ithout le t­ ters th ere w ould b e no words, we g et th e fascinating conclusión 'W ith o u t letters th ere could b e no world.' B oth these an ecd otes from Kristin show how the th ou gh t of a

16

A Philosophers View o f Childhood

ch ild may be a priceless g ift to a parent or te ach e r w ith ears to hear. And b o th o f them also give us reason to think o f p h ilosophy as, in part, an adult response to th e questions o f ch ild h ood . T h e tw entieth century has seen an am azing grow th in th e study of child hood . T w o ideas have been central to th e w ay ch ild h o o d has been studied in our tim e. O n e is the idea th at child ren develop and th at th eir developm ent is a maturational process. In part, maturation is, quite obviously, a biolo gical process. C hild ren grow bigger, their legs and arms grow longer, baby faces grow into old er-looking faces, baby teeth fall out and are replaced by adult teeth, and so on. But m aturation is also a psy ch olog ical and social process. Baby talk, baby thoughts, and baby behavior are replaced b y the talk, thoughts, and behavior o f you ng child ren, th en b y th at of older children, adolescents, and, finally, adults. T h e second idea central to th e recen t study o f ch ild h o o d is th at grow th takes place in identifiable stages. As sch o o l teach ers can testify, the stages o f biological grow th children exp erien ce can be correlated only roughly w ith th eir actual ages. T h u s one ch ild in a given class will tow er over the rest, w hile an o th er has y e t to ca tch up w ith the class average. But th e stages o f b iolo gical, as well as intellectual and social, grow th are at least broad ly related to age. Putting th e idea of m aturation and th e idea o f a sequence of age-related stages to g eth er, we g et the co n cep tio n o f ch ild developm ent as a m aturational process w ith identifiable stages th at fall into an at least roughly age-related sequence. C learly m aturation has a goal; its goal is m aturity. Early stages are superseded by later stages that are autom atically assumed to have been less satisfactory. Thu s the "stage/maturational m odel" of ch ild developm ent, as we can cali it, w h ich has found unquestioned accep tan ce in the study of ch ild hood , has an evaluational bias built into it. W h atev er th e biolo gical or psy ch o lo g ical structures in a standard tw elve-year-old turn out to be, th e stage/matur­ ational m odel o f developm ent guarantees, b efo re any research is

A Pbilosopber's View o f Childhood

17

done at all, th at these structures will b e m ore nearly satisfactory than th e superseded structures of, say, a six-year-old. In m any areas o f human developm ent this evaluational bias seem s quite appropriate. W e don't w ant grown-ups, or even adolescents, to have to chew th eir adult-sized steaks w ith baby te e th . ^ But w hen it com es to philosophy, th e assumption is quite out of place. T h e re are several reasons for this. First, th ere is no reason w hatsoever to suppose that, simply by virtue o f grow ing up in som e standard way, adolescents or adults naturally achieve an appropriate level of m aturity in handling p h il­ o soph ical qu estion s— in, for exam ple, b ein g able to discuss w h eth er tim e m ight have had a beginning, or w h ether som e supercom p u ter m igh t b e said to have a mind. Seco n d , it should b e obvious to anyone w ho listens to th e p h il­ o soph ical com m ents and questions o f young children th at these com m en ts and questions have a freshness and inventiveness th at is hard for even th e m ost im aginative adult to m atch. Freshness and inventiveness are n o t th e on ly criteria for doing philosophy w ell: d iscipline and rigor should also cou n t heavily. And children can b e ex p ected to b e less disciplined and less rigorous than th eir adult counterparts. Still, in philosophy, as in poetry, freshness and inventiveness are m uch to b e prized. I recen tly asked a co lleg e class to respond, in w riting, to Tim 's question from th e beg in n in g o f Philosophy and the Young Child: "Papa, how can we b e sure th at everything is n o t a dream?" A m other in m y class recalled th at h er daughter, then th ree and a half, had o n ce asked, "M am a, are we 'live' or are we on video?" T h is child's question obviously bears an im portant resem blance to th e traditional dream question. But it is also a delightfully fresh and new question, on e th at cou ld n ot have been co n ceiv ed b efore T V , indeed b efo re th e d evelopm ent o f video cam eras and V C R s. So m e features o f th e dream problem carry over into th e video problem . T hu s ju st as I m ight have had the thou ght, in m y dream, th a t I am awake, so the w ord "live" m ight appear on the screen

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w hen I am w atching a video. But som e features are new. U n like th e dream problem , the video problem suggests th a t our lives are already on tape, ju st w aiting to b e shown. So children are often fresh and inventive thinkers. All to o often , m aturity brings w ith it staleness and uninventiveness. T h is is a second reason for rejectin g the evaluational assum ption bu ilt into th e stage/maturational m odel o f ch ild developm ent. T hird , D escartes taught us to do p hilosophy b y "starting over." Instead of assuming the correctn ess o f w hat m y teach ers have taught me, or w hat the so ciety around m e seem s to a ccep t, I am to make a fresh begin nin g to see if I can show b y som e m eans of m y very own th at

1 really do know w hatever it is I claim to know.

As co llege students soon learn in th eir first p hilosoph y course, it isn't easy to rid oneself of adult assumptions, even tem porarily, and even for a fairly circum scribed purpose. It isn't easy, th at is, for adults. C hildren have far less o f a problem . In a certain way, then, adult philosophers w ho follow D escartes in tryin g to "start over" are trying to make them selves as little children again, even if only tem porarily. T h a t is hard for adults. It is unnecessary for children. It isn't that "starting over" is all th ere is to doing philosophy. T h a t isn't true at all. But learning to be co m fo rtab le w ith "naive" questions is an im portant part o f doing p hilosoph y well. T h u s for this reason, as well as for th e o th er tw o, w hen it com es to doing philosophy, th e evaluational assumption of th e stage/maturational m odel gets things all wrong. Like the N ew Yorker's view o f the U n ited States, m y view of children as little philosophers is a distortion. But so also is th e conventional view o f ch ild h o o d as a d evelopm ent th rou gh a sequence of roughly age-related stages that aims at m aturity. Som etim es, it seems, th e best way to co rrect on e distortion is to pair it w ith an appealing, but opposed, distortion. I h op e th at th at is true in this case.

1 Theories and Models of Childhood

i_ik e m any parents o f our generation, my wife and I raised our child ren w ith a tattered co p y o f Benjam ín Spock's B ab y and Child Care ció se at hand. W h en a child's fever sh o t up in the middle of th e night, it was co m fo rtin g to find D r. Sp o ck saying, "Between th e ages o f 1 and 5 years, children may develop fever as high as 1 0 4 o." A nd w hen a neighbor's child, at six m onths, still had no te eth , it was reassuring to b e able to read to th e neigh bor from D r. Sp o ck, "O n e baby gets his first to o th at 3 m onths, another n o t till a year. Y e t b o th are healthy, normal infants.''1 A t th e beg in n in g o f th e ch ap ter titled "Your Baby's D ev elo p ­ m ent," how ever, D r. Sp o ck adopts a som ew hat different tone. It is as if h e w ere leaning b ack in his swivel chair and expatiating on grander them es. S e ctio n 35 1 , w hich begins this chapter, carries th e b o ld -p rin t cap tion, "H e's repeating th e w hole history of the human race." T h is first paragraph continúes: T h ere's n oth ing in th e w orld m ore fascinating than w atch in g a child grow and develop. A t first yo u think of it as just a m atter of grow in g bigger. T h en , as he begins to do things, yo u m ay think of it as "learning tricks.'' But it's really m ore com p licated and full of m eaning than th at. E ach child as he develops is retracin g th e w hole h isto ry o f mankind, physically and spiritually, step by step. A baby starts off in th e w om b as a single tiny cell, just th e w ay the first living th in g appeared in th e ocean . W eek s later, as he lies in the

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amniotic fluid in the womb, he has gills like a fish. 1 oward the end of his first year of life, when he learns to clamber to his feet, he's celebrating that period millions of years ago when man's ancestors got up off all fours. It's just at that time that the baby is learning to use his fingers with skill and delicacy. Our ancestors stood up because they had found more useful things to do with their hands than walking on them. The child in the years after 6 gives up part of his dependence on his parents. He makes it his business to find out how to fit into the world outside his family. He takes seriously the rules of the game. He is probably reliving that stage of human history when our wild ancestors found it was better not to roam the forest in independent family groups but to form larger communities. (229) H ere D r. Sp o ck draws on som ething well bey o n d his own clin ical experience, indeed, well b ey o n d th e clinical exp erien ce o f any o th er physician, to present a th eo ry o f ch ild hood . H is th eo ry is th e recap itu laro n theory. It is captured in the slogan "O n to g e n y recapitulates phylogeny,'' that is, th e developm ent o f th e in d i­ vidual repeats th e developm ent of th e race or species. Elem ents of the recapitulation th eo ry can b e traced b ack to th e p re-Socratic philosophy of ancient G reece. But it was n o t until th e nineteenth century th at som eone (th e G erm án b io lo g ist Ernst H aeckel) gave the th eo ry a sophisticated m odern form ulation. A little later th e Am erican p sychologist G . Stanley H all, in his classic w ork Adolescence, gave th e th eo ry one of its m ost influential statements. O th e r m odern thinkers w ho have given som e cred en ce to the theory include Freud, Piaget, and Karl M arx's co llab o rator, Friedrich E ngels— n o t to m ention D r. Benjam ín S p o c k !2 W e seem to know w hat D r. Sp o ck is doing w hen he gives us advice about teething, or about how high we can let th e baby's tem perature go before we g et help. But w hat is h e doing w hen he presents a theory of childhood? Again, we can accep t or re je ct D r. Spock's advice about feeding or to ilet training. It may go against our own exp erien ce, or against

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th e advice o f som eone else we trust. But w hat m ight lead us to a ccep t, or re je ct, D r. Spock's recap itu laro n th eo ry o f childhood? For th at m atter, w hy do we need a th eo ry o f ch ild h o o d in the first place? And w hat difference m ight it make w heth er we accep t th e on e D r. Sp o ck prom otes, or som e o th er theory, or none at all? Before I try to say a little in answer to these questions, I want to reflect for a m om ent on th e naturalness w ith w hich we accep t th e idea th at we need a g ood th eo ry o f child hood . I o n ce visited a very g ood m iddle sch o o l to talk w ith teachers th ere about th e possibility th at th ey m ight do philosophy w ith th eir children. D urin g th e discussion one o f th e teachers asked me w hat the th in kin g o f fourth graders was like. A t first I thou gh t this teach er was testin g me. I th ou gh t that, know ing well him self w hat the th in kin g o f fourth graders was like, he w anted to see if I knew, to o . H ow ever, I soon had to re je ct th at hypothesis. A fter I had made one or tw o tentative com m ents, th e situation suddenly struck m e as ludicrous. T h e man w ho had asked th e question was a very experien ced teach er o f fourth-grade children, w hereas I had never in my life taught th e fourth grade, or indeed, elem entary sch o o l at any level. T ru e, each of my own children had, b y th at tim e, passed through th e fourth grade, and I had o ccasio n ally had philosophical discussions w ith small groups of elem entary sch o o l children, including fourth graders. But by any reasonable measure I had had relatively little experience w ith the child ren this ex p erien ced fourth-grade teach er was asking me about. If anything, he was th e expert, and certain ly th e professional,- I was th e novice, th e amateur. W h y should I, a teach er of university students, be able to tell him about th e thinking o f the very creatures h e spent his w orking days w ith, w hen I saw them on ly very occasionally? I think th e answ er is th at this teach er had beco m e used to th e idea th a t university professors have theories about ch ild ren — about how th e y think, how th ey behave, and w hat th ey are like at this

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statfe or that. H e was so used to th e idea o f experts' th eories th at h e was quite prepared to suppose that som e outsider from a u ni­ versity som ew here m ight be able to tell him w hat th e peop le he knew best w ere really like* It is, no doubt, m ostly to psychologists th at we look th ese days for theories of child hood . But educators, to o , have theories, as do anthropologists and even language theorists, n o t to m ention cu l­ tural historians and political scientists. M ig h t a p h ilosop h er have anything useful to say about theories of childhood ? As I have already adm itted, philosophers have b een , on th e w hole, rem arkablv silent on the question o f w hat a ch ild is. But it would be rash to conclu de from this th at p hilosophy has n o th in g to contribu te to the th eo retical discussion of ch ild h ood . P h ilos­ ophy in the past has been preoccu pied w ith p roblem atic co n cep ts like space, tim e, causality, G od, free will, and th e like. As it turns out, th e co n cep t o f a ch ild is also problem atic in ways th at are philosophical. T h e sim plest theory as to w hat a ch ild is we could cali "the little person theory of ch ild hood ." A ccord ing to th at th eo ry, a ch ild is ju st a very small, because very young, human being. T h is is the th eory one m ight accep t w hen one thinks of ch ild developm ent as enlargementL As D r. Sp o ck puts it, "At first you think o f [d evel­ opm ent] as ju st a m atter of grow ing bigger." C learly there is, usually, a significant size d ifference b etw een children and o th er human beings. C hildren are generally larger than infants, but sm aller than adolescents and adults. T h is o b ser­ v a ro n is not quite as innocuous as it m ight at first seem. It m eans th at children, unlike m ost o f th e rest of us, are typically surrounded by giants,'' som e of w hom bend over to con verse with them , or even sit on the floor to be m ore on a level w ith them , but m ost of w hom are co n ten t to en jo y th eir position o f lofty superiority. M uch o f the m anufactured w orld around children is n ot appro-

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priate to th eir size. C hildren may n o t b e able to reach the light sw itch, or even th e doorknob, let alone th e door k nocker (or the co o k ie jar!). T h e m essage this gives to children is unm istakable: "Y ou are n o t (yet) a full m em ber of society.'' A child's size, m oreover, is con stantly changing. In fact, the to p ic o f size is a com m on su bject for adult remarks to and about child ren. "M y, how you have grown!" says the adult, as th e ch ild squirms. In this resp ect children are quite unlike m ost adults. Adults m ay put on w eight, or g et pregnant, or go gray and wrinkled, and m en, especially, may lose th eir hair. But for an adult it is in general okay, and som etim es even good, to be recognized , even after a lo n g interval, as "looking ju st the same." A child, by co n trast, is always in transition, and m ost obviously w ith respect to size. C hild ren shouldn't con tinu é to look ju st th e same. T h e y need to grow up. As a m atter o f natural course, this year's pants will soon b e to o short and last year's shoes have already been outgrow n. In th e w him sical children's story The Shrinking o f Treéhom, the hero, T re eh o rn , begins shrinking instead o f grow ing .3 T reehorn's parents and teachers give T reeh o rn th e clear message th at he is d oing som ethin g w rong. H e is failing to grow up as normal c h il­ dren do. C hild ren w ho grow faster than th eir age peers, or m ore slowly, are often made to feel th at th ere is som ething w rong, even that th ey are doing som ethin g w rong. N o t only is children's size thus in transition,- th ere is also a norm al rate of change. S o far, then, a ch ild is a sm all, grow ing human b ein g — bigg er than an infant, but sm aller than an ad o lescen t. Is that all? H ow do we m ake our th eo ry of ch ild h o o d m ore interesting, and m ore com plex? W e need to take acco u n t o f developm ent that is n ot ju st enlargem ent. In particular, we need to take accou nt of co g n itiv e, em otion al, and social developm ent. lers in th e sev enteenth century debated w h ether the

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m ost im portant ideas we have as adults are innate, or w h eth er th ey arise from experience we have had since infancy. T h e rationalists, like René D escartes, w ere innatists,- th e em piricists, like Jo h n Locke, were experientiajists. H ere is a passage in w h ich D escartes speculates on th e thin king o f a fetus in its m other's w om b: This does n ot m ean th at I believe th at th e m ind o f an infant m editates on m etaphysics in its m other's womb,- . . . it seems m ost reasonable to think th at a m ind new ly united to an infant's b o d y is w holly occu p ied in perceiving o r feeling th e ideas of pain, pleasure, heat, co id and o th er similar ideas w h ich arise from its unión and interm ingling with th e body. N on eth eless, it has in itself th e ideas of G od , itself, and all such truths as are called self-evident, in the same w ay as adult humans have when th ey are n o t atten din g to th em ; it does n ot acquire th ese ideas later on, as it grow s older.

H ere is Locke, taking th e experientialist side: Let us then suppose th e mind to be, as w e say, w hite paper, void of all ch aracters, w ithout any id eas:— H o w com es it to be furnished? W h e n ce com es it b y th at vast store w hich th e busy and foundless fancy of man has painted on it w ith an alm ost endless variety? W h e n c e has it all th e materials of reason and know ledge? T o this I answer, in one w ord, from EXPERIENCE.4

T h e debate betw een innatism and experientialism has con tin u ed down to the present tim e, though the term s o f referen ce have shifted som ew hat. T o d ay the leading experientialists are behaviorists, th e m ost famous being B. F. Skinner. Behaviorists differ from L ocke in that they forswear all interest in th e co n ten ts of our minds. T h e y view th e m ind as a "black bo x," rath er than a "white paper" on w hich experience "writes." A cco rd in g to b eh a v ­ iorists, the way experience "writes" on human and o th e r animal organisms is through operant cond itioning. O r, to sh ift to an oth er m etaphor, "O p eran t con d itionin g shapes beh avior as a sculptor shapes a lump of cla y ."5 T h e m ost prom inent innatist of our tim e is th e linguist N oam

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C hom sky, w ho supposes th at all of us are born w ith th e structures o f a universal gram m ar "wired in." T h e flavor o f Chom sky's approach can b e appreciated by notin g w hat he has to say about w hat h e calis "P lato s problem ," th at is, the problem of explaining how we can know as m uch as we do w hen th e evidence available to us is so lim ited. "M uch o f the interest o f the study of language, in m y op inion," C hom sky writes, lies in th e fact th at it offers an ap proach to P lato s problem in a dom ain th at is relatively well circu m scrib ed and open to inspection and inquiry, and at th e sam e tim e deeply in tegrated in human life and th ou gh t. If w e can d iscover som eth in g about th e principies th at en ter into th e con stru ction of this particular cogn itive system , th e principies of th e language faculty, w e can progress tow ard a solution for at least one special and quite im portant case of P latos problem . W e can then ask w h ether these principies generalize to o th e r cases . . . M y own belief is th at the principies . . . are in crucial resp ects specific to th e language faculty, but th at the approach m ay indeed be suggestive elsew here

. .6

Suppose we reserve th e term 'innatist' for people w ho, like C hom sky, think th at th e m ost basic cogn itive structures do n ot evolve during th e d evelopm ent of a human individual, though of course th o se structures may go from b ein g merely latent to beco m in g manifest. T h e n we can make a fairly clean distinction betw een in n at­ ists and recapitulationists. For th e recapitulationists the structures them selves are like Japanese flowers: th ey unfold during ch ild ­ h ood. M oreover, the way in w hich th ey unfold repeats th e way th e human race has evolved and developed in history. W h a t d ifference does it make w hether one is an experientialist, an innatist, or a recapitu lationist about childhood? First off, we must adm it th at no one today is in a position to present an altog eth er adequate th eo ry o f ch ild h o o d that would com m and th e resp ect o f developm ental psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, and educational theorists. W h a t we have instead are a num ber of

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26

th eoretical m odels th at guide research in m ore lim íted ways and offer help in interpreting data. Som e o f these m odels fit neatly under th e innatist, th e experientialist, or the recapitu lationist banner. O th ers fall u nd er.m ore than one categ o ry, o r co m bin e aspects of one orientation w ith som ething else, say, a th eo ry of sexuality or a th eo ry o f human personality. T h u s Piaget, for exam ple, tries to co m bin e all th ree o f the m odels I have m entio n ed ,7 and Freud com bines a recapitu lationist m odel w ith his own theory o f human sexuality .8 T h eo retical m odels have the virtue o f suggesting co n n ectio n s we m ight n ot have made w ithout them . But as lo n g as we have alternative m odels, each useful in its own way but none clearly and obviously superior to all the rest, we should b e on th e lo o k ou t for w hat a given m odel may encourage us to overlook, or misunderstand, as well as for w hat th at m odel may help us understand better. C onsid er th e recap itu laro n m odel, w ith w hich we began. By appeal to th e recapitulation m odel D r. Sp o ck encourages us to b ecom e fascinated w ith th e way our baby grows and develops by thinking of th at infant as "retracing th e w hole history o f m ankind, physically and spiritually, step by step." T h a t is n ot a bad way to celebrate the grow th and developm ent o f one's child. T h e recapitulation m odel may b e suggestive and helpful to th e scientific researcher as well as to th e parent. E lizab eth Bates, in h er article 'T h e Em ergence of Sym bols: O n to g e n y and Phylogeny," explains how certain "com p onent parts" o f language (im itation, tool use, social m otivation to share referen ce to o b jects) may have evolved separately in phylogen y and how d evelopm ents in the infant ju st before language acquisition may b e th o u g h t of as recapitulating th e evolutionary seq u en ce .9 It is, by contrast, the experientialist m odel th at lies b eh in d recent research show ing th at babies learn to discrim inate th e basic sounds of the language th ey hear around them even b efo re th ey reach six m onths o f age. A ccord in g to this research babies w ho

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27

regularly h ear English spoken in th eir presence are able to distinguish th e sounds 'la' and 'ra' at six m onths, w hereas babies who have heard Jap an ese instead are n o t .10 T h e innatist m odel guides o th er research in fruitful directions. In a paper called "C og n itive Basis o f Language Learning in Infants" Jo h n M acnam ara offers evidence that "infants learn th eir language b y first determ ining, independent of language, the m eaning w hich a speaker intends to co n v ey to them , and by then w orking out th e relationship betw een the m eaning and th e expression they heard." T o b e able to do this, M acnam ara supposes, th e infants must already have, wired into th eir neurology, a m ental language. It is this innate "m entalese" th at then gets expressed, he thinks, in th e acquired, natural language— English, say, or N orw egian, or C h in e s e ." T h e re is an o th er moral I Nvish to stress even m ore than th e one about th eo retical guidance. C hildren are n o t only o b jects o f study,• th ey are also, w ith us, m em bers o f w hat K ant called "the kingdom o f ends." It is all righ t to be curious about them , and we should certain ly feel responsibility for th eir education and welfare,- but, above all, we ow e them respect. And here is precisely w here our th eo retical m odels for understanding them may dehum anize them and encourage inappropriately cond escen d in g attitudes toward them . C on sid er these recapitulationist sentim ents of Cari Gustav Jung: "C h ild h o o d , how ever, is a State of the past . . . T h e ch ild lives in a pre-rational and above all in a pre-scientific world, the world of people w ho existed b efo re us .''12 A cause for co n cern here is the claim th at child ren live in a pre-rational and pre-scientific world. T h a t claim must be treated w ith great caution. W h ereas it is ce r­ tainly g oo d to b e w arned that a child's ideas may, in a given co n tex t, be quite different from yours or m ine, to maintain that child ren live in a p re-scientific and even pre-rational w orld is arrogant and inappropriately condescending. For on e thing, a young ch ild may understand som ething about

Theories and Models o f Childhood

28

th e m odern, scientific w orld b ette r than m ost adults do. T a k e com puters, or ju st video games. W h en th e n eig h b o r child ren from up th e lañe com e to visit me, th ey som etim es brin g th e ir p o ck et video games w ith them . T h e y try to explain to m e w hat is happening w hen th eir little fingers press th e keys on th e keyboard so nim bly and effectively, but alas, th ey don't usually succeed. I am th e one, I feel, w ho belongs to th e p re-scientific w orld — certain ly to th e pre-video-gam e world! As for th e thou gh t o f children's b ein g pre-rational, Piaget, p er­ haps m ore than anyone else, has show n us in dram atic ways how th e responses o f children may som etim es seem bafflingly irrational. (W e shall explore th at to p ic further in C h ap ter 4 .) But som etim es children are also surprisingly rational, even wise. C o n sider th e follow ing exam ple. Som e years ago a young m o th er carne up to m e after a talk I had given to tell m e about taking h er four-year-old son to see his grandfather, w ho was dying. T h e b o y cou ld see th a t th e grandfather was in a bad way. (H e died a w eek later.) O n th e w ay h om e th e b o y said to his m other, "W h en people are sick and ready to die, like Grandpa, do th ey sh o o t them ?" T h e m o th er was shocked . "N o," she replied, "the p ólice w ouldn't like th at." (H ere th e m o th ­ er's response was som ething Law rence K o h lb erg w ould put at a pre-m oral stage of moral development,- see C h ap ter 5.)

T h e boy thought a bit more and then said, "Maybe they could just do it with medicine." It is quite possible th at this four-year-old had seen or heard o f som e seriously ill or m aim ed pet or farm animal th a t was, as we say, "put out of its misery" by b ein g shot. W h y n o t Grandpa? T h e analogy is apt. It is part o f w hat m oves d octors to adm inister lethal doses to dying patients w ho are in misery,- it is part o f w hat m oves m any of us to agree th at euthanasia, in certain circum stances, m ay be eth ically accep table, even eth ically obligatory. T h e re is, in principie, no lim it to th e sop histication on e m ay bring to th e discussion o f euthanasia. O n e can certain ly invoke

Theories and Models oj Childhood

29

m oral th eories and moral principies th at one would n ot be able to explain to th at four-year-old child . H ow ever, I suspect that m ost actual cases o f euthanasia in our culture are co n ceiv ed and carried out in term s th at would b e perfectly intelligible to that y ou n g child. If I am right, th en this case counts as evidence against th e recapitu lationist idea th at the ch ild must live in a pre-rational world. T h e re may, o f course, b e very g ood reasons w hy th at child's m o th er w ould n o t w ant to discuss euthanasia w ith him. But "H e w ouldn't understand" is n o t one o f them . T h e recapitulationist m odel, insofar as it suggests th at a four-year-old would necessarily b e unable to understand w hat m otivates a caring physician to give a lethal dose to a dying patient, or a caring daughter to con sen t to th a t act, gives us a bad reason for invoking w hat K o h lb erg calis th e "p u n ishm ent-and -obed ience orientation" and cu ttin g o ff all discussion o f th e eth ical issues involved in dealing w ith dying loved ones. T h e m odels o f d evelopm ent th at theories of ch ild h o o d offer to stim ulate our research and challenge our attem pts at understanding child ren m ay have m any useful functions. But we must guard against lettin g th o se m odels caricature our children and lim it th e possibilities we are w illing to reco gn ize in our dealings w ith them as fellow human beings.

Piaget and Philosophy

J e an Piaget had a very special kind o f genius. H e was able to think up experim ents w ith these three crucial ch aracteristics: First, th ey have arrestincj results. T h e y show children reactin g to experim ental situations in ways th at surprise us because th ey are so very different from the ways in w hich we w ould react. T w o balls of clay that, as the ch ild agrees, co n tain th e same am ount of clay are flattened— the one drastically, th e o th e r m inimally. "Are th ey still th e same?" asks th e experim enter, cagily. "N o," says th e child, obligingly. T h e n , p ointin g to th e th ick er one, th e ch ild adds, "T h at one is heavier." W e are startled b y such results. W e b eco m e intrigued. Seco n d , th e experim ents are replicable. Piaget's m ost famous experim ents, such as those co n cern in g conservation, are, in fact, fairly easy to replícate. Y ou don't need fancy equipm ent. Y o u don't need to ch o o se "the right children"; m ost any children will do. Y o u do need to ask the children exactly w hat Piaget asked— or at least you need to com e as cióse as your own language will allow . But you don't need com p licated scorin g manuals to reco rd th e results, let alone special training sessions to b e able to observe w hat is going on. T hird , the experim ents reveal an age-related secjuence. It m atters how oíd th e children are, and, in general, if you brin g b ack th e

Piaget and Philosophy

31

sam e child ren a cou ple o f years later— alm ost regardless of w hat has happened in the m eantim e, so lo n g as M o th er T im e has ticked away for a cou ple o f y ears— the children will react differently. W ith on ly th e slightest encouragem ent from Piaget we can see from th e experim ents th at the children are now at a different stage. O n ly a first-rate genius cou ld think o f lots o f experim ents th at all, or alm ost all, have these th ree features. T h e se three features, b y them selves, go a very long way tow ard selling us on Piaget's th eo ry. Perhaps better: these very general features of Piaget's experim ents are pretty m uch enough to sell m ost people on the general idea o f a Piagetian th eo ry o f cogn itive developm ent, w ith really very little regard for w hat the detailed co n ten t of th at theory turns out to be. N o te how this is so. FrrsJ, th e fact th at th e experim ents produce arresting results easily con vin ces us that, know ing our children so well, we don't in fact know them at all. It co n vjn ces us th at our children are, in im portant ways, strangers to u silt's n ot enough, we quickly co n -

4,

elude, to b e w ith our children all day long to g et to know them . W e need a theory about them . T h e expert, the theoretician , needs to tell us parents and teachers w hat our children are really like. Piaget's arresting experim ents bring hom e that message. N o d oubt th e fourth-grade teach er I m entioned in th e last ch ap ter w ho asked m e, "W hat's th e th ou gh t o f fourth graders like?" had received th at m essage. He was the fourth-grade teacher.

¡

I was th e co lleg e professor. H e spent his w hole day w ith fourth graders. I didn't. Y e t he w anted me to tell him w hat these creaturesT^

^

’

h e spent his w hole day w ith w ere like, or anyway, w hat their th o u g h t was like. Perhaps som ew here in his teach er training h e j ^ ^ had learned, and been influenced by, Piaget's arresting experim ents. Perhaps for th at reason he was open to bein g to ld b y som e supposed expert th at th e th ou gh t processes o f the very children h e saw every day w ere really very different from anything his regular exposure to them would lead him to expect.

^

1

Piaget and Philosophy

32

Second , th e fact th at these experim ents are rep licable m akes it quite plausible to think th ere lurks a scien ce in this vicinity. T h e re must be, it seems, a scientific th eo ry th at these experim ents co n firm, a th eory quite on a par w ith th e th eories th a t g et confirm ed b y similarly replicable experim ents in physics and ch em istry th at our colleagues in th e natural scien ces run every day. T h ird , the fact th at these experim ents display an age-related sequence of results makes it virtually im possible to resist th e c o n ­ clusión th at cognitive developm ent is a maturational process, in fact a m aturational process quite analogous to fam iliar processes of biological m aturation. W e know it is no g oo d tryin g to te a ch a new born infant to walk. T h e bones, m uscles, and nervous system of th e infant need to mature first. Sim ilarly, it is overw helm ingly natural to conclu de from Piaget's experim ents th a t it's no g oo d trying to teach kids anything excep t w hat is "age-appropriate." M ental bones and p sychological m uscles need to m ature, to o . W ith o u t going into any detail in this ch ap ter co n cern in g Piaget's experim ents, and w ithout consid ering th e specific co n ten t of th e theories Piaget takes them to support, I w ant now to co n n ect this general ch aracterization o f Piaget w ith a question th at naturally arises from C hap ter

1 , nam ely, Is it w orthw hile encour-

aging children to do philosophy? C onsid er first th e m aturational point, th at is, the p oint th at seems to b e brou gh t out b y th e agerelated sequences of interestingly different responses to Piaget's questions. T h is p oint naturally prom pts one to ask w h eth er doing philosophy is a cog nitively mature activity, or, instead, a co g n itively immature activity. If it is a mature activity, th en we shouldn't exp ect anyone w ho isn't cog nitively mature to engage in it natu­ rally. M ore particularly, we shouldn't ex p ect to find th a t doing philosophy is a natural activity o f ch ild hood . Evidence, or apparent evidence, to the co n trary — such as th at presented in th e first ch ap ter— would b e h ig h ly suspect. Prima facie, evid en ce to th e contrary would have to be chalked up eith er to ( 1 ) overinterpreting the data, that is, reading p h ilosophy in to th e words of

Piaget and Philosophy

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you ng child ren, or else to ( 2 ) having an insufficient grasp o f w hat real p h ilosophy is, and h enee m istaking on ly apparently p h ilo ­ sophical com m ents and questions for the real thing. As for actually encouraging children to do philosophy, if ph i­ losop h y is a co g n itively mature activity, to encourage children to do p h ilosophy would be as pointless, perhaps even as dam aging to th e child, as trying to g et new born infants to walk. D oin g p h ilosophy w ould n o t b e an "age-appropriate activity" for c h il­ dren, certainly n o t for you ng ones. S o m uch for assuming th at doing philosophy is a cognitively mature activity. A lternatively one m ight try supposing th at p h i­ losop h y is a co g n itiv ely immature activity. In that case one would certain ly ex p ect to find children naturally engaged in doing p h i­ losoph y all right, but th en th ere would b e no point in encouraging child ren in this, for it would b e som ething the normal ones, anyway, cou ld b e ex p ected to grow out of. (Professional philos­ ophers like m e would b e children, w ho, in an im portant respect, sim ply never grew up.) N ow none o f this fits eith er w hat we know about children or w hat we know about philosophy. Suppose philosophy is taken to b e a co g n itiv ely mature activity, henee presum ably n ot som ething eith er naturally found in children or appropriately to be encouraged in them . I have m yself presented evidence, for exam ple in Philosophy and the Young Child, that som e young children do quite naturally m ake com m ents, ask questions, and even engage in rea­ soning th at professional philosophers can reco gn ize as p h ilosoph ­ ical. W h en Ian in th at bo o k, age six, protests to his m oth er that th e th ree unpleasant children of his parents' visiting friends have taken over th e T V set and kept him from w atching his favorite program , he asks provocatively, "W h y is it b ette r for th ree people to b e selfish than for one?" D eftly he turns on its head th e utilitarian ju s tific a ro n for th at particular case o f aggrandizem ent, nam ely, "T h ree people are b ein g made happy, rather than ju st one." Ian's question, even if m otivated by rage and frustration, is phil-

Piaget and Philosophy

34

osophically acute. It is n ot p roto-p hilosop hical, o r quasi-philosophical, or sem i-philosophical; it is the real thing, th e very same kind of probing and questioning th at takes place am ong p ro fes­ sional philosophers in th eir sem inars, con feren ces, and inform al discussions w ith one another (perhaps also, in som e cases, m otivated by rage or frustration, or by th e need to g et a jo b , rath er than the puré love o f w isdom). I have also presented evidence, for exam ple in Dialogues with Children, th at even after children have been socialized out o f doing philosophy naturally, say betw een th e ages o f eig h t and tw elve, th ey respond beautifully to th e opportunity to engage in ph ilo s­ ophy w hen it is presented to them w ith som e im agination. T h e rem arkable success of th e P hilosophy for C hild ren Program developed by M atthew Lipman and his colleagues provides m uch m ore substantial testim ony to th e same effect. As for supposing th at philosophy is a co g n itiv ely im m ature activity, th at simply doesn't fit th e reality. It is true th at th ere is som ething characteristically naive about philosophy,- but it is a profound naiveté, n o t a cog nitively im mature sort. C on sid er the Kristin anecdotes from the first chapter. In one, K ristin, age four, proposed the hypothesis "T h e w orld is all made of colors." In th e second, Kristin, age five now, expressed gratitude for letters, "Cause if there was no letters, th ere would b e no sounds,- if th ere was no sounds, th ere would be no words,- if th ere was no words, we couldn't think,- and if we couldn't think, there w ould b e no world." If that's immaturity, what's so great about maturity? O n e way out of the awkward dilemma posed b y asking w h eth er doing philosophy is a cognitively mature or a co g n itiv ely im m a­ ture activity is to say th at som etim es it is one and som etim es th e other. Piaget him self often suggested th at child ren, in th eir c o g ­ nitive developm ent, recapitúlate th e history o f W estern p h ilo s­ ophy. T h is recapitulationist idea belongs to th e same fam ily as th e suggestion from D r. Sp o ck th at I discussed in th e last chapter. But it focuses on a, cosm ically speaking, relatively re cen t period of history.

Piaget and Philosophy

35

A cco rd in g to this suggestion, children begin by bein g little preS o cra tics .1 T h e y go on to beco m e, successively, Platonists, Aristotelians, Sch olastics, C artesians, and then, perhaps, British em piricists. N ow I m yself don’t think the evidence supports any such claim o f general developm ent. But suppose it did. T h e problem about m aturity w ould n ot b e solved, unless one supposed th at the history o f p h ilosophy itself exhibits a m aturational process. And surely th ere is inadequate reason to suppose th at th at is so. It would, I think, b e quite easy to argüe that on any reasonable scale o f m aturity, Plato was as mature a thinker as Q uine, or Kripke, or H aberm as, or Derrida. T o con sid er th e Kristin anecd otes again, I have already suggested th at there is at least som e lim ited affinity betw een Kristin's idea th at th e w orld is made o f colors and familiar ideas th at the p re -S o cratic

M ilesian s— T h ales,

Anaxim ander,

and

Anaxi-

m en es— put forward about "world stuff." I have also suggested that w e link Kristin's breathtakin g reasoning about how w ithout letters th ere w ould b e no w orld to th e later p re-S ocratic philosopher Parm enides. A fter all, Parm enides said som ething like "T h e same th in g can b e th ou gh t as can be." Y e t even if we suppose Parm enides to have been a m ore mature th in ker than th e M ilesians, th ere is an obvious way in w hich you sim ply don't g et any m ore mature philosophically than som eone w ho can say, "W ith o u t words there would be no th ou gh t and w ithou t th o u gh t there would be no w orld." T h a t is rem arkably ció se to absolute idealism,- it's also ció se to m odern deconstructionism . K ristin at tw elve or tw enty or forty -eig ht may well re je ct th a t line o f reasoning, or, m ore likely, forget it and b ecom e in ter­ ested in som eth ing else instead,- but if she does any of those things, th e explanation will n o t be that she has beco m e a m ore mature thinker. Frustrated w ith this problem o f how to fit ch ild philosophy into a story

about co g n itiv e

developm ent suggested by

Piaget's

arresting experim ents, one m ight try saying that philosophy hasn't an yth in g m uch to do w ith co g n itive developm ent at all. Perhaps

Piaget and Philorophy

36

th e interest in doing philosophy and the ability to do it well o ccu r in ch ild hood quite independently of th e cap acities co g n itiv e psych ologists are interested in. O f course we can make 'cognitive developm ent' a tech n ical term for w hatever is revealed by Piaget's arresting experim ents. A nd then it will b e true, I think, th at p hilosophy is som ew hat peripheral to cognitive d evelopm ent— w hatever co g n itiv e d evelopm ent, so understood, turns out to be, th at is, w hatever th e b est accou n t of th ose arresting experim ents should turn out to b e. (It m ight turn out, say, that those differential responses are largely a m atter o f progressive socialization. But I needn't take any stand on th at question here.) T h is last m ove invites th e obvious question, Sh ould we as parents and teachers b e interested in philosophical th in kin g in you ng children, rather than ju st cognitive d evelopm ent— w here c o g n i­ tive developm ent is now taken to b e sim ply th e Piagetian stuff? I m yself think the answer is clearly yes. But w h eth er or n o t I am right, we get no help from th e now trivialized truth th at p h ilo s­ ophy has little to do w ith cognitive developm ent. Let's return to th e fourth-grade teach er w ho to o k m e aback b y asking me, "W hat's th e th o u gh t of fourth graders like?" I th in k he assumed I could tell him som ething interesting and w orthw hile about the stacje of cognitive developm ent ch aracteristic o f fourth graders, m aybe th at I could recou nt som e arresting experim ental results in th e fashion of Piaget and give him a little th eo ry to help him make th ose arresting results in telligible to him self. I may have left the im pression earlier th at I, as a philosopher, could certainly do no such thing. But in fact I th in k th ere is a Service philosophers can render to nonphilosop h ical parents and teachers th at is at least partially analogous to w hat th e fourthgrade teach er w anted me to do for him. Philosophers, in devoting th eir lives to th e study o f th e profoundly naive questions o f philosophy, can help n on ph ilosop h ical parents and teachers to reco gn ize and appreciate som e o f th e

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naively profound questions o f child hood . It isn't th at a philosopher can say, "At age five you can ex p ect your daughter, if she is norm al, to b e co n cern ed w ith th e problem o f the external world." O r, "At age seven you can ex p ect your son, if he is developm entally on track, to b e p reoccu pied w ith th e problem o f induction.'' W h a t a professional philosopher can do is to co lle ct exam ples of p h ilosophical thin king in young children and then, b y linking th o se child ish thou ghts to our philosophical tradition, help par­ ents and teach ers to reco g n ize philosophy in th eir children, resp ect it w hen it appears, and even particípate in it and encourage it on occasio n . C on sid er this anecd ote from C hrista W o lf's recen t novel Stoifall. T h e narrator is having a telep h o n e conversation w ith h er daughter about th e daughter's son, a b o y o f presum ably six or seven years o f age. T h e boy's m o th er talks first, then the grandm other, who is also th e book's narrator. "He roars around outside the whole day on his bicycle . . . Otherwise he occupies himself with the basic questions of existence. Today, for example, sitting on the potty he asked his father through the door, 'How does the big bathroom door get through my small ey e?'" "For heaven's sake," I said,- "and what happened then?" "Naturally his father produced a precise drawing for him: the bathroom door, the eye, in which the rays of light cross, the route through the optic nerve to the visual center in the brain, and that it is the business of the brain to enlarge the tiny image in the consciousness of the observer to the normal size of a bathroom door." "Well? Did that satisfy him?" 'You know him. Do you know what he said?— 'And how can I be certain that my brain really makes the bathroom door the right size?'" "Well," I said after a pause,- "what do you think? How can we be certain?" "Stop it!" said my daughter,- "not you, too!"2

Piaget and Pbilosopby

38

A lthough this incid en t appears in a novel, it is alm ost surely based on a real-life event. Let's cali the child, w ho is given no ñam e in th e story, Karl. Karl's w orry about how th e bath room door, w hich is big, can g et through his eye, w hich is small, is a little like a w orry m y own son o n ce had, a w orry I reported on in Philosophy and the Y om g Cbild ( 8 - 9 ) :

'

I am tucking m y eigh t-year-old son, Jo h n , in bed. H e looks up at m e and asks, quite w ithout w arning, "D addy, w h y don't I see yo u double, because I have tw o eyes and I can see yo u w ith each one b y itself?" W h a t do I say? First, I try to make sure th at I understand w h at is puzzling him. "You have tw o ears," I point out. "Are y o u surprised y o u don't hear double?" Jo h n grins. "W h at is hearing double?" “W ell, m aybe m y -m y v o i-vo ice w o-w ould s-sound li-like thithis," I say. H e reflects. "But y o u r ears b oth go to th e sam e place." "And couldn't it be th at yo u r eyes b oth go to th e sam e place?” 1 suggest. H e gets serious, thinks, then grins again. "You're just giving me an oth er p rob lem /' he protests. "I w an t to think about th e on e 1 already have." Fair enough. "M aybe,” I suggest, "it's because th e picture y o u g et w ith your left eye com es to g e th e r w ith th e picture yo u g e t w ith your right eye. W h en th ey co m e to g e th e r th ey m ake one picture." W e experim ent w ith tw o fingers, on e clo ser to ou r eyes, th e o th er farther away. W e try focusing now on one, now on th e oth er. T h e aim is to see how , b y focusing on th e n earer finger, w e can see th e farther one double and vice versa. T h e m oral is supposed to be th at th e tw o pictures don't always co m e to g e th e r to make one, though th ey usually do. M y son is n ot satisfied. It turns out th at he has co n stru cted for

Piacjet and Philosopby

39

himself, elaborating in various ways on what he has learned at school about visión and the retinal image, a complex theory of visión according to which one image comes through each eye, is reversed, rereversed, and then projected in front of the subject. No wonder he is worried about why we don't see double! I suggest several ways of simplifying his theory, but he won't accept simplifications. Til have to think about it some more," he says. 'Til talk to you again after I get it worked out."

Jo h n 's sch o o lteach er, like Karl's father, seems to have thou ght that th e fact th at we have retinal images explains how we can see. But, as philosophers from D escartes and L eibniz right down to the present day have pointed out, th e fact th at we have retinal images brings w ith it problem s o f its own. W e have tw o retinal images, y et norm ally we don't see double. W h y? (Joh n) O r: O kay, so p ro jectin g an im age o n to the retina, in fact a very small im age onto th e retina, is how a b ig o b je c t like the bathroom door gets into som eth in g as small as an eye. But how can th e brain use a tiny im age to figure out w hat size things really are? D oes it in fact generally figure out w hat size things really are? (Karl) I don't think th ere is any age such th at it is natural for children o f th a t age to ask w hy it is th at we don't generally see double. Ñ o r do I think th ere is any standard age for children to ask how it is th a t th e large o b jects one sees can g et through th e small open in g in one's eye, or how we can b e certain th at one's brain m akes th e bath room d oor seem the right size. Y e t m any young child ren do puzzle over visión, and m any puzzle over it in a genuinely philosophical way. In any case, Karl's questions, like Joh n 's, are an invitation to do p hilosophy. A parent or teach er w ho doesn't hear th e questions, or doesn't understand that th ey are m ore than, and different from, a m ere request for inform ation, misses a ch an ce to do philosophy. T h a t parent or te ach e r also misses out on som ething interesting

40

Piaget and Philosophy

and im portant about Karl, and Jo h n , and o th e r children like them . It is som ething Piaget's rem arkable experim ents will n o t help us much to appreciate. T h e y may even stand in th e way. If I am right about all of this, or even som e o f it, th en it is im perative th at we not let th e results of Piaget's genuinely rem ark­ able experim ents set our educational agenda or define for us th e cap acity for thou gh t and reflection in our you ng children.

4 Piaget and Conservation

S o far, no doubt, I could b e charged w ith b ein g a rom antic about ch ild h ood . Perhaps I am a rom antic. I admit th at I w ant to encourage in adults— esp ecially in co llege students w ho take my p h ilosop h y courses, but also in adults quite generally— a style of "naive" qu estioning th at com es naturally to m any children, and com es hard, often very hard, to m any adults. Piaget, one m igh t think, is m uch m ore serious about ch ild h ood than I am. H e realizes how im portant it is for children to grow up. H e w ants to help us all understand b ette r som e o f th e ways in w h ich grow ing up, m entally, requires overcom ing w hat one m igh t cali th e "cognitive déficits" o f childhood. T o sharpen up w hat I w ant to say about Piaget let us turn, now, to som e o f th o se supposed déficits and to the gains th at are supposed to w ipe them out. In this ch ap ter I shall argüe th at even th e co g n itiv e developm ents th at Piaget charts m ost persuasively are n o t th e straightforw ard achievem ents th ey m ight at first seem to be. C on servation experim ents are perhaps th e m ost famous experim ents in th e Piagetian repertory. T h e y lie at the heart o f his co n trib u tio n to th e study o f child h ood . T h e y offer w hat he him self seem s to have taken as crucial support for his claim th at young child ren are w hat he calis "eg o cen tric phenom enalists." In this ch ap ter I shall d evote m yself exclusively to w hat Piaget

Piaget and Conserva tion

42

and his colleague Barbel Inhelder say about th e conservation of "substance," w eight, and volum e in young children. I shall take as my main text the canonical statem ent o f Piaget's findings in this area, nam ely, Piaget and Inhelder, The Child's Construction o f Q u m tities: Conservation and Atomism.'

-

Piaget and Inhelder report finding th at children from five to thirteen years oíd react to ( 1 ) th e deform ation o f a ball o f clay, (2) the dissolution o f lumps o f sugar in a beak er o f w ater,

and (

the popping of a grain o f popcorn, in ways th at can b e organized into four main stages, three of w hich fall into substages as follow s: Stage I

— up to age 7 or

Stage II (A, then B)

—8 to 10

Stage III (A, then B)

— 10 to 11 or 12

Stage IV (A, then B)

— 12 and on

8

In the clay-ball experim ents th e children are first presented w ith clay in the shape of a ball; then, b efo re th eir eyes, th e ball is flattened, or tw isted into a co il, or cu t into pieces. N ext, th e c h il­ dren are asked, co n cern in g the clay in its new deform ed or m inced cond ition: (i) Is th ere as m uch clay as before? (ii) D oes th e clay w eigh as m uch as before? (iii) W ill the clay displace as m uch w ater as before (th at is, w hen dunked into a beaker, m ake th e w ater go up as high as it did before)? A t Stage I the children answer no to all three qu estion s— even when th ey have been shown the result o f putting th e deform ed clay on a balance to reveal its w eight, or into a m arked beaker of w ater to reveal its volum e. A t Stage IIA children w aver in answering (i) and then at IIB say yes to (i), but th ey co n tin u é to answer no to (ii) and (iii), again, despite w hat seem s to us to be clear em pirical evidence for a "yes" answer. A t Stage IIIA children waver co n cern in g (ii) and then at IIIB th ey answer yes to (ii) as well as (i), but th ey still answer no to (iii). A t IV A th ere is a wavering response to (iii) and finally at IVB child ren answ er yes to all three questions.

Piaget and Conservation

43

T o th eir experim ents w ith th e clay ball Piaget and Inhelder add tw o m ore sets o f experim ents— one co n cern in g lumps of sugar and o n ce co n cern in g a popcorn seed. D ependably at Stage IIB, and n o t at all before I1A, a ch ild will suppose that the sugar persists in th e w ater after th e lumps have com p letely dissolved. D ep en d ­ ably at II1B, and n o t at all before II1A, the ch ild will suppose the w eigh t o f th e solution will b e the same after the sugar has dis­ solved as b efo re. And dependably at 1VB, and n ot before IVA, the ch ild will suppose th e volum e, as m arked by the w ater level in the beaker, to rem ain th e same after dissolution. T h e experim ents w ith the popcorn seed are similar, excep t for th e Stage IVB response. A t this stage, Piaget and Inhelder report, th e ch ild will suppose som ething very com p licated , namely, th at th e sum o f the volum es o f the bits (atom s) th at make up th e popped popcorn seed will b e th e same as th e sum of th e volumes o f th e bits (atom s) th at made up the unpopped grain. T h e y will suppose this, Piaget and Inhelder report, even though th ey obviously realize th at th e gross volum e o f the seed is much greater after it has been popped than before. In in terp reting these results Piaget and Inhelder m ake such co m ­ m ents as these: . . . while the invariance of solid objects is acquired during the sensori-m otor stage (beginning at the end of the first year of life), the conservation of matter, weight and volume is not constructed until a later phase of development. (3) T he first stage marks a total failure to grasp the conservation of substance, weight and volume, even during very slight deformations in shape. (5) Stage II sees the discovery of the conservation of substance, but not yet of weight and volume. (9) Sub-Stage IIIB sees the immediate affirmation of the conservation of weight, conceived as a logical necessity. (4 2 -4 3 )

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44

W h a t exactly are th e principies that, accord in g to P iaget and Inhelder, are "constructed" or discovered during this developm ent? T h e y never say. ít is a revealing com m entary on th eir attitudes, b o th to the children th ey are studying and to th e great m etaphysical and scientific questions at issue in th ese experim ents, th at th ey never b o th e r to form úlate th e principies th e ch ild ren seem to be laboring to discover, or, as th e y say, "to con stru ct." C onsid er the principie o f th e conservation o f volum e. T h e idea can't be sim ply that, say, th e volum e o f a solid o b je c t is invariant through tim e. Balloons and popcorn w ould b e obvious cou nterexam ples. Is it th at the sum o f th e volum es o f th e atom s th at constitute a solid o b je c t is invariant through tim e? T h a t w on't do either. People and trees grow in volum e, even in th e sum o f th e volum es of th eir constitu ent atoms. Is th e idea rather th at solid o b jects are conserved in substance, w eight, and volum e through certain kinds o f chanije? But th en we need to know through what kinds o f ch an g e th ey are conserved. T h e re is no discussion in P iaget and Inheld er o f th e kinds o f ch an ge through w hich substance, w eight, and volum e are c o n ­ served. Perhaps the b est way of understanding w hat P iaget and Inheld er are after is to confine oneself to cases in w h ich n o th in g is added to, or taken away from, a solid o b je c t or liquid mass. Follow ing this idea, we m ight arrive at th e follow ing form ulations o f th e relevant conservation principies (w here 'C S ' stands for co n serva­ tion o f substance, 'C W ' for conservation o f w eight, and 'C V ' for conservation o f volum e): (CS)

One will end up with just as much stuff as one started out with, so long as no stuff has been added or taken away.

(CW ) One will end up with something that weicjhs exactly as much as it did at the beginning, so long as no stuff has been added or taken away. (CV)

One will end up with something that displaces exactly as much liquid as it did at the beginning (or, anyway, whose atoms col-

Piaget and Conservation

45

lectively displace exactly as much . . . as they did at the begin­ ning), so long as no stuff has been added or taken away.

T h e se are very nice principies indeed. W h en I say th at th ey are very n ice, I don't m ean to suggest th at I accep t them . I don't. (M o re on th at in a m om ent.) But, if Piaget and Inhelder are right, I o n ce did. Anyw ay, as I say, these are very nice principies. T h e y are in tellectually very satisfying. T h e y speak well o f children as natural philosophers. W h a t is g oin g on w hen children gradually co m e to a ccep t these principies? H ere is m y own interpretation. A t Sta g e I, children have rather im pressionistic notions o f th e quantity o f o b je cts and masses. It m ay very well be, as Piaget and In held er suggest, th at a ch ild will em phasize one dim ensión and ignore th e others. T h u s a ch ild m ight decide th at a wad of clay, in b ein g elongated , had b eco m e "bigger" than it was before and m igh t decide this on th e basis o f length alone, ignoring thickness. T h e m ove to Stage II is clo sely related to accep tin g the co m b in ed principies (A) N o th in g com es out of nothing, and (B) N o th in g passes away into nothing. T o g eth e r, (A) and (B), plus th e assum ption (C ) Su bstan ce can n o t be transform ed into an yth in g th at is not substance (for exam ple, energy), yield th e principie th at P iaget calis th e conservation o f substance (C S ). As for (C W ), th e ch ief notions o f w eight at Stages I and II seem to b e som ew hat disorganized ideas o f felt lightness and felt heaviness. T h e re may, how ever, b e o th er ideas, perhaps incom patible ideas, as well, for exam ple, th e idea th at a squashed ball o f clay is actually heavier than it was before because it presses down over a b ig g er area. U sin g th e dom inant notions, though, th e notions of w eigh t "to th e feel," th e ch ild will naturally conclu de th at th e clay is ligh ter after th e ball has been flattened and the popcorn lighter after th e grain has been popped. W h a t seem s to happen at Stage III is that the ch ild develops a n o tion o f w eigh t th at is linked to standard w eighing procedures,

Piaget and Conservation

46

for exam ple, to the use of a balance. W ith this new n otion available, the ch ild will reason that deform ation and dissolution are, at som e appropriate level o f analysis, sim ply rearrangem ents o f th e bits that make th in g s up. Sin ce th e w eigh t o f th e w hole, th e reasoning continúes, is th e sim ple sum o f the w eights o f th e bits th at make it up, neith er deform ation ñor dissolution alters total w eight. A t Stage IV children develop th e n otion o f three-d im ensional volume equivalence. (Before this stage th ey had been w orking w ith an im pressionistic and vague notion o f size.) M oreover, at this stage children reason that, although som e transform ations, such as the popping o f popcorn and th e rising o f bread dough, produce som ething w ith altered gross volum e (w hat P iaget and Inhelder cali "global volum e"), still, th e sum o f atom ic volum es (w hat th ey cali "corpuscular volum e") will rem ain th e sam e— unless, of course, som ething has been added or taken away. T h e re seems also to arise at Stage IV th e idea o f density as a relation

betw een

w eight,

o b jectiv ely

understood

now,

and

volume, co nceived now three-dim ensionally. Even m ore im pressive, there seems to develop at this stage th e idea th a t th e differen ce betw een th e w eights of bodies o f the sam e volum e can be understood as th e difference betw een com p actness or looseness of the atoms in those bodies, w here the densities, and indeed th e volumes, o f the atoms them selves are th ou gh t to b e standard. T o me, one of the m ost rem arkable things about this story is th at it com es cióse to recapitulating classical atom ism — n ot m odern atom ic theory, of course, but the m etaphysical system first elaborated by D em ocritus and Leucippus in th e fifth cen tu ry B .C . and presented, centuries later, by Lucretius in his De rerum natura. T h e thoughts expressed in the last paragraph, for exam ple, seem to ech o this passage from Lucretius: Again, why do we find some things outweigh others of equal volume? If there is as much matter in a ball of wool as in one of

Piaget and Conservation

47

lead, it is natural that it should weigh as heavily, since it is the function of matter to press everything downwards, while it is the function of space on the other hand to remain weightless. Accordingly, when one thing is not less bulky than another but obviously lighter, it plainly declares that there is more vacuum in it, while the heavier object proclaims that there is more matter in it and much less empty space .2

H o w is one to evalúate this great story o f intellectual adventure th a t seem s to repeat itself in th e life of each norm ally developing child? For m e it is a story o f excitin g intellectual achievem ent, a natural exercise in speculative m etaphysics. Piaget sees things differently. Preoccupied, as h e is, w ith the idea th at cognitive develop m en t in children is a m aturational process directed tow ard the mature co m p eten ce o f a standard adult, Piaget sees this co n ser­ vation story as th e stage-by-stage v icto ry over intellectual déficits in th e very small child. A t th e beginn ing of this developm ental process, a child, on Piaget's understanding, is incom p eten t in various fundam ental ways. C orning gradually to accep t the principies o f th e conservation of substance, w eight, and volum e means, for Piaget, a gradual v icto ry over th at incom p etence, an overcom ing o f certain, im portant co g n itive déficits. P iaget and Inhelder m ention tw o cognitive déficits in particular th a t child ren overcom e w hen th ey com e to accep t (C S ), (C W ), and (C V ). T h e y are eg ocentrism and phenom enalism . Thus, during Stage I, accord ing to Piaget and Inhelder, both [m atter and weight are] treated as functions of the direct perceptive relations imposed on the subject by his combined ego­ centrism and phenomenalism. [The child's] egocentrism reduces weight to a quality of what is being weighed or moved, and matter to a quality of what can be seen or retrieved by the eye . . . Phe­ nomenalism, in its turn, prevents these children from recomposing and grouping the perceptive relations into rational systems and thus from going beyond the appearances. (45)

Piaget and Conservation

48

A t Stage II, w eight is said to b e still "steeped in egocen trism and phenom enalism " ( 4 5 ) , and the em ergen ce o f an o b jectiv e co n c e p ­ tion of w eight at Stage III is called a "new v icto ry over egocen trism and phenom enalism " (4 6 ). T h e y tell us th at "the phenom enalist and eg o cen tric approach to volum e [how ever] persists at Stage III and . . . the dissociation [o f th e su bjective from th e o b je ctiv e ] on ly appears at Stage IV " (6 3 ). W h a t are, in this co n tex t, eg ocentrism and phenom enalism ? U nfortunately Piaget and Inhelder never give any clear accou n t o f w hat th ey mean by egocentrism ' or 'phenom enalism .' S o m e ­ tim es th ey suggest that egocentrism and phenom enalism to g eth er are the b elief th at "all things are w hat th ey appear to b e on d irect inspection" (7 5 ) . T h e re is here an ech o o f th e great G reek Sop h ist, Protagoras, who is supposed to have said, "M an is th e m easure of all things, b o th of w hat is th at it is, and o f w hat is not, th at it is not." Plato interpreted Protagoras to be saying th at "each th in g is to me as it appears to me, and is to you as it appears to you" ('Tbeaetetus 15 2 A ). T h e idea is th at th ere is no such th in g as how th e ball of clay is "in itself," w hether, for exam ple, it is in itself light, or heavy. If it seems heavy to m e and ligh t to you, th a t is the end o f the m atter. Piaget's idea seems to be th at children at the earlier stages are phenom enalists because th ey are w edded to th e appearances (phenom ena), th at is, to how things seem . T h e y are eg o ce n tric in th at each ch ild translates all questions about quantity into questions about how m uch there seems to be "to me." Suppose N ico le, at Stage II, is asked, ( 1 ) Is th e rolled-up ball o f clay heavier than the clay was w hen it was a flattened sheet? T o N ico le, at Stage II, th at question can only m ean, ( 2 ) D oes th e rolled-up ball seem to you heavier than th e clay did w hen it was a flattened sheet? Let's suppose th at th e co rrect answer to ( 2 ) is "H eavier." If N ico le gives "H eavier" as h er answer to ( 1 ), th a t will be, Piaget and Inhelder suggest, because h er on ly w ay o f understanding "Is the . . . ball heavier?" in ( 1 ) is: "D oes th e ball seem [phenom enalism ] heavier to you [egocentrism ]?"

Piaget and Conservation

49

Should w e, to o , understand this failure as th e result o f egocentrism and phenom enalism in little N icole? It seems strange to suppose th at N ico le is firmly in th e grip of phenom enalism . After all, having reach ed Stage II, she has, accord ing to Piaget's own findings, already "constructed" th e nonem pirical, th at is, nonphenom enal co n c e p t o f substance. Sh e insists that, quite regardless o f appearances, if no clay has been added and none taken away, th ere is still the same am ount o f the stuff, even thou gh it now seem s heavier than it seem ed before. M oreover, already at Stage HA, accord in g to Piaget, children are quick to suppose th at th ere exist atom s to o small to be seen. T h u s, w hen a ch ild at this stage is asked w hat happened to the dissolved sugar, th e ch ild answers, "It's in crum bs, in tiny little crum bs th at n o bo d y can see." N o t even w ith a m agnifying glass? th e in terrog ato r wants to know . "N o," replies the child, "they're m uch to o small" (8 3 ). Again, this hardly justifies a claim of childh o o d phenom enalism . As for egocentrism , extrem e eg ocentrism would b e a total failure to reco g n ize th at th ere even exist o th er subjects, or oth er points o f view. Piaget's w ork on very you ng infants, w ho seem n o t y e t to have th e co n c e p t o f a perm anent o b ject, has been th o u gh t to establish th at infants are extrem ely eg o cen tric. H ow ever, even P iaget does n o t suppose th at children in the age range we have been discussing (seven to tw elve years oíd) are extrem ely eg o ce n tric. Ñ o r do th e experim ental results he and Inhelder report support any such claim . W h a t we m ight cali "m oderate e g o ­ centrism " w ould b e eith er (a) a lack o f interest in how things look (feel, seem , e tc.) to o th e r su bjects, or else (b) an inability to succe ed in im agining how things look (feel, seem , etc.) to o th er sub­ je c ts o r from o th e r points o f view. Rem arkably, th ere is no attention at all in these experim ents to w hat ch ild ren ex p ect adults, or o th e r children, to say in answer to th e con servation questions. D o es N ico le think th at to h er sch o o l chum , Jacq u es, th e rolled-up clay will seem heavier than th e flatten ed -ou t clay? P iaget and Inhelder don't ask the question.

Piaget and Conservation

50

T h e y don't try to determ ine w h ether a ch ild like N ico le is interested in how th e clay feels to her friend. Strangely, it is the "feelings" o f the balance th at P iaget and Inhelder attend to. "Th^fe can be no clearer d em o n stra ro n of these children's eg o cen tric approach to w eight," th ey write,"w eight is an unquantifiable quality th at affects th e scales in precisely the same way as it affects th e human hand" (3 2 ). T h e ir idea seems to be that these children are eg o ce n tric because th ey are poor at im agining how th e clay will feel to th e balance! Surely th at is a very bad way o f understanding w hat is g oin g on. It isn't really th e case that N ico le begins b y b ein g bad at im ag­ ining how the clay will feel to th e balance, and th en gets b ette r at taking th e b alan ces feelings into account. R ather she learns to make a distinction betw een how things feel and how th ey really are, w here th e scales are supposed to help h er determ ine, w ith respect to w eight, how things really are. I conclu de that th e claim th at th ese conservation findings show children gradually overcom ing egocentrism and phenom enalism is unsubstantiated.

Putting aside the specific claim s o f eg ocentrism and p h en om e­ nalism Piaget and Inhelder make, can one still say th a t children overcom e im portant cogn itive déficits as th ey pass throu gh this developm ent? Before we can answer th at question, we need to ask w hat status (C S ), (C W ), and (C V ) en joy. Are th ey truths of reason— w hat philosophers cali a priori truths? If not, are th ey fundamental laws o f Science? If th ey are neith er of these, are th ey at least im portant em pirical truths? In fact, the principies can n o t be a priori truths, fundam ental truths o f Science, or even low er-level em pirical truths. T h e reason is th at th ey are not truths at all,- th ey are all false. As Piaget and Inhelder make clear throu ghou t th eir discussion, w hat they cali the conservation o f substance is a principie o f th e conservation of matter. But as older children learn in th eir high

Piaget and Conservation

51

sch o o l physics courses, it is n o t m atter, but mass/energy, th at is guaranteed to b e conserved. S o (C S ) is false. As for (C W ), m any, if n o t m ost, children these days know about "w eightlessness" in space travel. T h e y know , then, th at (C W ) doesn't h o ld in a space ship. And so, long b efo re th ey take a physics class, th ey know th at (C W ), as a universal principie, is also false. Sim ilarly, (C V ) is also defective. N o t to o long ago I read in the New York Times o f an Iowa scien tist w ho had created a sort o f antirubber. If it is stretch ed in one direction, it expands in every oth er d irection . T h e author o f th e Times article com m ented (w ithout even m en tio n in g P iaget): "At first glan ce, such materials seem to v iólate th e law o f C onservation of V olum e. A ctually, though, th ere is no such law — unlike energy, volum e is n o t a quantity th at needs to rem ain co n stan t in a physical system ."3 T h o u g h (C S ), (C W ), and (C V ) are all false, "constructing" them is, nevertheless, a con sid erable achievem ent. As I have already indicated, (C S ) seem s to m e an esp ecially satisfying principie. T h e fact th at ch il­ dren do n ot, on th eir own, co m e up w ith th e idea th at mass can b e transform ed into energy should n o t obscure th eir achievem ent in co n stru ctin g (C S ). Piaget him self makes clear th at (C S ) is not arrived at on th e basis o f observations. As th e experim ents reveal, ch ild ren accep t (C S ) lo n g b efo re th ey suppose th at eith er w eight (as revealed b y th e balance) or volum e (as revealed by w ater level in th e beaker) is conserved. So m eh o w each ch ild is led to think som ething like this: "N o stuff has been added and no stuff taken away,- so there must be th e sam e am ount o f stuff left; it is ju st in a different shape now, w ith a d ifferent w eight and volum e." T h a t is a wonderful exercise in ratio n alistic m etaphysics. As it turns out, th e w orld doesn't co o p erate. T h e w orld allows for th e transform ation of m atter into energy. But one cou ld n't know that, ju st by thinking about squashed clay balls or dissolved sugar cubes. It isn't, th en, th at th e co g n itiv e d evelopm ent Piaget charts w ith

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his conservation experim ents records the w iping out o f real co g nitive déficits, w hereas th e philosophical thinkin g I prize is. on ly a kind of intellectual play. For one thing, th e achievem ents P iaget touts are riot the accep tan ce o f truths at all, but rath er th e "con struction" o f intellectually satisfying principies th a t all turn out to be false. Even if it is essential to co g n itive m aturity th a t children go through stages in w hich th ey co m e to accep t, successively, (C S ), (C W ), and (C V ), this d evelopm ent can n o t b e view ed as a step-by-step victory o f truth over falsehood. Secon d ly , aspects o f the developm ent P iaget charts are, in fact, quite philosophical. In particular, th e "construction" o f (C S ) w ith its com p on ent principies— (i) no th in g com es out o f n oth in g, and (ii) n oth ing passes away into n o th in g — is w onderfully p h ilo so p h ­ ical. So , to o , is th e atom ic th eo ry th at begins to em erge already at Stage II. As Piaget him self notes, this th eo ry is quite like th e an cien t philosophical theories o f D em ocritu s and Leucippus. It is m uch less like m odern atom ic theory, w hich, despite using th e term 'atom ,' (m eaning, originally, "indivisible thing") is n o t co m m itted to supposing that there really are any "ultím ate," indivisible particles. T h e children's atom ic th eo ry includes th e idea th a t each atom has a determ ínate volum e. O n th at th eo ry it at least m akes sense to suppose that, for exam ple, the sum o f th e volum es o f th e atom s in an exploded grain o f popcorn is th e same as th e sum o f th e atom s in the grain before it was popped. In m odern atom ic th eory, b y contrast, th e idea o f th e volum e o f an atom has no clea r application. T h e children's atom ic th eo ry is a w onderful in tellectual c o n ­ struction. It is, in fact, a philosophical constru ction. W e should n o t denígrate its intellectual beauty ju st because, in th e real world, (C V ) is false. Thu s th e main difference betw een P iaget and m e is this: W h ereas Piaget searches for an age-related sequen ce o f co g n itiv e developm ents that are to be found in all norm al child ren and th at

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form an age-related sequence, I am also interested in, say, Kristin's h yp oth esis th at all the w orld is made o f co lo r, even though there is no age at w hich all, or even m ost, children can b e exp ected to co m e up w ith th at thought. T h e re is som ething m ore to add. I am m yself still reflecting on w hy any o f us m ight think th at (C V ) is true, not ju st children of a certain age. I would like to g et clearer than I now am about w hat m akes (C V ) such a plausible principie, even though it turns out to b e false. In th e sev enteen th cen tu ry there was an interesting debate on w h eth er every bod y, no m atter how small, is intrinsically elastic, o r w h eth er th e very sm allest bodies, th e atoms, are rigid and im penetrable. If th e atom s are rigid, then elasticity is a property o f bod ies th at are com pounds o f atom s, for exam ple, a rubber ball. It will b e explained as th e cap acity o f these larger bodies (for exam ple, th e ru bber ball) to let th eir con stitu ent atom s b ecom e m ore densely or m ore loo sely packed. T h is d ebate on w heth er elasticity is an intrinsic property o f all bod ies, including atom s, or only a derived property o f bodies th at are them selves com p osed o f atom s, is crucial for (C V ). O bviously if even atom s are them selves elastic, (C V ) does not hold. I find this debate fascinating. I w ant to understand b ette r than I now do, w hat gives each side in th e debate its plausibility. T h is kind o f in terest also marks m e o ff from Piaget and Inhelder. If th ey w ere ever intrigued by a d ebate o f this sort, they have carefully co n cea led th eir interest from the readers o f their book.

Moral Development

I s it a good idea to think o f moral d evelopm ent as c o n c e p t displacem ent? T h a t is, is it a g ood idea to co n ceiv e m oral d evelop­ m ent as exchanging a less adequate co n cep t o f h on esty, courage, justice, obligation , or w hatever, for a b ette r one, and then exchanging th at co n cep t for a still b ette r one? H ow would the story go? W ell, con sid er th e co n cep t o f moral obligation. O n e m ight say th at a ch ild starts out w ith on ly a very external co n cep t o f obligation. A ccord ing to this "stage-on e c o n ­ cept," an obligation is som ething som eone else holds on e responsible for, n o t a responsibility one lays on oneself. T h e relevant "som ebody else" would b e an authority figure— M o th er, Father, T ea ch er, Priest, P ólice O fficer. T h e em bedded co n c e p t of b ein g held responsible would also b e external in th at it would have to do w ith th e threat o f physical punishm ent and th e prom ise of material reward. Thu s suppose M o th er tells me not to raid th e co o k ie jar. Sh e goes o ff to th e grocer's and leaves me alone in th e house. I am obliged not to eat any cookies w hile she is away. If I am very small, perhaps my understanding o f b ein g held responsible for keeping my hands out of the co o k ie ja r would b e lim ited to th e realization that, if I do take an oth er co o k ie and M o th er finds out, I will probably be spanked. G ettin g a m ore advanced co n cep t o f obligation m ight th en co n -

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sist in g ettin g a m ore nearly internal co n cep t o f being responsible for keep in g my hand out o f the co o k ie jar. T h e threat of physical punishm ent and the prom ise o f material reward m ight com e to play no essential role in m y understanding o f m y obligation. Instead, th e fear th at M o th er m ight show disappointm ent b y the lo o k on h er face would, perhaps, b e threat enough. A t this point, th ou gh , m y co n c e p t of obligation would still be som ew hat external in th at th ere would have to b e som eone outside me, some external authority figure, to h o ld m e responsible for w hatever it is I am ob ligated to do. A t a third stage o f m oral developm ent, on this co n cep tdisplacem ent m odel, I m ight eventually learn to function as my own authority figure, m y own "lawgiver." I could then recogn ize an o b ligatio n to resp ect th e wishes o f my m other, or the o b lig a­ tion to b e brave, or to tell the truth, even w hen there was no lik elih o od th at M o th er or Father, T e a ch e r or Priest, would b e able to ch e ck up on me. T o be sure, I m ight w ant th e approval of some au thority figure. I am on ly human. A nd if I lied or behaved in a cow ardly fashion, I would doubtless prefer th at no authority figure find out. But at th e third stage I would find n oth ing odd or paradoxical in th e suggestion th at I have an obligation, say, n ot to read m y office-m ate's electro n ic mail, even though that responsib ility has never been specifically laid on m e by m y parents or teach ers, even m y boss, and it is n o t backed by th e prom ise of external reward or th e threat o f external punishment. Is this a g ood w ay to think o f moral developm ent? O n e thing th a t should give us pause is the realization that, accord in g to this m odel o f m oral developm ent, th o se children w ho are at th e first stage in th e process are really only "pre-m oral" beings. T h e reason th e y are on ly pre-m oral is th at th eir co n cep t of obligation as the realization th at th ey will likely b e punished if th ey do such-andsuch is n o t a co n c e p t o f moral obligation at all. T o see th at this is so, im agine th at I live in a p ólice State. I may agree to rep ort to th e p ó lice th e daily activities o f my neighbor,-

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I may agree to do this even though I con sid er such rep ortin g distasteful, perhaps even w rong. I may do it anyw ay out o f fear th at I will otherw ise lose my jo b . In any case, I can a ccep t th e obligation th e p ólice lay on m e to spy on m y n eigh bors w ithou t my thinking o f it as b ein g a moral o bligation, and w ithou t its b ein g for me a moral obligation. If the co n cep t of obligation th at children have includes no recognition, on any level, o f the moral appropriateness o f at least som e of the things th ey feel obligated to do, th en th eir co n c e p t of obligation is n ot a co n cep t of moral obligation at all. It is ju st th e recognition th at th ere are som e things we g et punished, or rewarded, for doing. Som e people may w elcom e this co n sequ en ce of th e co n cep tdisplacem ent m odel of moral developm ent. T h e y will agree th at young children are, in fact, on ly pre-m oral agents. For them th e co n cep t o f obligation a ch ild has at, say, age five has to do w ith m orality only in the very minimal sense th at on e needs to have this co n cep t so as to be able to exch ange it later on for a co n cep t w ith real, moral co n ten í. It is thus a genuinely pre-m oral co n cep t. I, myself, consider this con sequ en ce enough b y itself to discred it th e concep t-d isp lacem en t approach to understanding m oral developm ent. It is not th at I think young child ren are m orally b etter than th e co ncep t-d isp lacem en t approach allows. It is rather th at I think young children, even very young child ren, are at least genuinely moral agents. By th at I do n o t m ean ju st th at th ey are capable o f som etim es doing the right thing. I m ean th at th ey are capable of som etim es doing the right th ing for th e righ t reason, or, at least, for a g ood reason, a genuinely m oral reason. T h e y may not be able to articúlate well th e reasons th ey have for fulfrlling their obligations. But th ey are cap able o f reco g n izin g and accep ting a moral obligation as a claim on them th a t is som eth in g 'different from a threat o f punishm ent or a prom ise o f reward. W h a t I have in m ind is som ethin g rather ordinary, but y et also profound. O n e can see it, I think, in this description o f and com -

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m entary on th e behavior of an infant, M ich ael, then on ly fifteen m onths oíd: [M ichael] was struggling with his friend, Paul, over a toy. Paul started to cry. Michael appeared concerned and let go of the toy so that Paul would have it, but Paul kept crying. Michael paused, then gave his teddy bear to Paul, but the crying continued. Michael paused again, then ran to the next room, returned with Paul's security blanket, and offered it to Paul, who then stopped crying.

T h e psy ch o lo g ist M artin L. H offm an, perhaps the leading research er on em pathy in you ng children, com m ents: First, it does seem clear that Michael assumed that his own teddy, which often comforts him, would also com fort his friend. Second, its failure to do this served as corrective feedback, which led Michael to consider alternatives. Third, in considering the processes underlying Michael's final, successful act, three possibilities stand out: (1) he was simply imitating an effective instrumental act observed in the past; that is, he had observed Paul being comforted with the blanket. This can be tentatively ruled out, since Michael's parents could not recall his ever having such an opportunity. (2) In trying to think of what to do, he remembered seeing another child being soothed by a blanket, and this reminded him of Paul's blanket— a more complex response than might first appear, since Paul's blanket was out of Michael's perceptual field at the time. (3) Michael, as young as he was, could somehow reason by analogy that Paul would be com forted by something that he loved in the same way that Michael loved his own teddy.1

H offm an adds: "I favor th e last interpretation, although it does postúlate a com p lex response for a young child." It is w orth n o tin g th at the interpretation th at H offm an says he favors does n o t acco u n t for M ichael's behavior unless we also assume th a t M ich ael som ehow th ou gh t he ought to co m fo rt Paul. H ow ever ex actly one interprets this particular incident, it seems to me obvious th at some very young children sometimes act in gen-

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uinely moral ways, n ot ju st in pre-m oral ways. T h a t m eans, th ey act w ith som e kind of understanding th at w hat th ey are d oing is a good th ing to do because, say, it will h e lp som eone out, or com fort som eone, and not ju st that it m ight be a way to avoid being punished or a way to g et rewarded. Sin ce th e co n cep tdisplacem ent approach to moral d evelopm ent allows child ren at the earliest stages only a pre-m oral understanding o f w hat th ey are doing, it is for that reason d efective. Let's see how this p oint plays itself out w ithin th e term s o f th e m ost influential contem porary th eo ry of moral d evelopm ent, th at of Law rence K ohlberg. K o h lberg presents su bjects w ith moral dilemmas and then grades th eir responses, in particular, th e justifications th ey offer for their solutions to th e dilem m as, so as to lócate each su bject at one o f six or so stages o f moral d evelop ­ m en t .2 T h e m ost famous of K ohlberg's dilemmas is this one: In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cáncer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. H e paid $ 4 0 0 for the radium and charged $ 4 ,0 0 0 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 2 ,0 0 0 , which is half what it cost. H e told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and considered breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.3

As I say, subjects are assigned by K o h lb erg to a stage o f moral developm ent, not according to w hat th ey say H ein z should do (for exam ple, steal the drug), but rather acco rd in g to th e justification th ey offer for w hatever th ey say th at H ein z should do. (For exam ple, the su bject m ight say, "H e should steal th e drug and give

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it to his w ife because saving som ebody's life is m ore im portant than w h eth er you steal.'')

1 a su bject will ex h ibit w hat K o h lberg calis "the punishm ent and o b ed ien ce orientation." A t Stage 2 an elem entary A t Stage

recip ro city em erges, but it amounts only to "You scratch my back and FU scratch yours." Stages

1 and 2 constitute w hat K o h lb erg

calis th e "P reconventional Level" of moral developm ent.

3 4 is

Stages 3 and 4 m ake up th e "C onventional Level." A t Stage on e has achieved th e "g oo d -bo y-n ice-girl orientation",- Stage th e "law and order" orientation. Stages 5 and

6 co n stitu te w hat K o h lberg calis th e "Postconven-

tion al," "Autonom ous," or "Principies" level. Stage 5 is based on th e idea of a social co n tract. And, finally, at Stage

6 "right is

defined b y th e decisión of co n scien ce in accord w ith self-chosen ethical principies appealing to logical com prehensiveness, universality and co n siste n cy .”4 D urin g som e th irty years of investigation, K o h lberg and his collab orators amassed a staggering am ount of evidence to show th a t th e order o f this developm ent is fixed, in that no one reaches

1 w ithou t first going through stage n, and th ere is no regression to an earlier stage .5 stage n +

K oh lberg's schem e seems to show little interesting cultural bias. (By 'interesting cultural bias' I m ean bias that can n o t be elim inated b y th e sensitive redescription of K ohlberg's dilemmas to fit oth er cultures.) As one re cen t investigator has put th e m atter, T he evidence suggests that Kohlberg's interview is reasonably cul­ ture fair when the content is creatively adapted and the subject is interviewed in his or her native language. The invariant sequence proposition was also found to be well supported, because stage skipping and stage regressions were rare and always below the level that could be attributed to measurement error.6

For th ese and o th er reasons, K ohlberg's th eo ry is one of the best articulated and m ost thorou gh ly supported theories in all devel-

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opm ental psychology. N evertheless, m any people are profoundly dissatisfied w ith it. Perhaps my com m ents about th e inadequacy of the co n cep t-d isp lacem ent approach to understanding m oral developm ent reveal an im portant source o f th at dissatisfaction D oes K ohlberg's th eo ry make clear w hy th e c o n c e p t o f obli-

1 ("punishm ent and o b ed ien ce o rien ­ 2 ("you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours")

gation a child has at Stage ta ro n ") or Stage

is a moral co n cep t at all, even if on ly a prim itive m oral co n cep t? T h e answer is no. A K ohlbergian m ight reply by p ointing out th a t th e first tw o stages are characterized as th e "pre-m oral level." T h e idea is, presumably, that th e co n cep ts of obligation a ch ild has at th ese stages are moral only in th e sense that on e has to develop each o f them and m ove on to som ething else in order to arrive at a genuinely moral co n cep t. Such a reply seems unsatisfactory for tw o reasons. First, it is surely im plausible to suppose th at n o t a single su b ject

1 or 2 has any understanding at all of w hat real m orality consists in. Secon d , a similar difficulty recurs anyw ay at Stage 3 , at Stages

and perhaps even at Stage 4. O n e w ho conform s to exp ectation s simply to avoid disapproval (Stag e 3) or even on e w ho acts to maintain the "given social order for its own sake" (Stag e

4)7 has

not, it seems, or at least not fo r those reasons, attained a specifically moral understanding o f obligation.

5 , or even 6, are really pre-m oral stages. Sin ce, acco rd in g to K oh lberg's research, hardly anyone, perhaps no one, reach es Stage 6, and It begins to look as though all stages befo re Stage

Stage

on ly a small m inority reach even Stage 5, we are driven to th e unw elcom e conclusión th at the vast m ajority o f peop le do n ot have a specifically moral co n cep t of o bligation. It is n o t ju st th at m ost people do n ot usually act morally,- th at w ould hardly b e a surprising conclu sión. W h a t is b o th surprising and o b jectio n a b le is the conclusión th at the vast m ajority o f people do n o t have any real understanding o f w hat m orality consists in. T h is w orry is underlined by th e fact th at K o h lb erg him self

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defines m orality in term s o f im partiality, universalizability, reversibility, and prescriptivity. If K o h lb erg is righ t and a jud gm en t is m oral if, and on ly if, it exhibits those formal features, then th e co n cep ts o f obligation on e has at low er stages o f developm ent are n o t even prim itive moral concepts,- th ey are n o t moral con cepts at all. T h is w orry can b e made co n crete by appeal to a h yp oth etical exam ple. Suppose Susan, age six, is given a K o h lberg interview and is found to b e at Stage

1 . W h a t this m eans is th at Susan's

ability to reason h er w ay through a moral dilemma and to resolve a m oral conflict, and esp ecially h er ability to articúlate such a resolution, are very prim itive. N ow suppose th at w hen cookies and orange ju ice are distributed to Susan's class in sch o o l, Susan herself happens to g et tw o cook ies, w hereas Jam es, through a simple oversight, gets none, and everyone else gets one. W e can im agine th a t Susan first rejo ices in h er g ood fortune, but then, n oting th at Jam es g o t no co o k ie at all, gives one o f hers to him. Sh e has done th e fair thing,- she has done w hat she ought to do, w hat, in those circum stances, m orality requires. O f course Susan m igh t have given Jam es h er extra co o k ie out o f fear th a t she w ould b e reprim anded for accep tin g two cookies w hen Jam es had none. O r she m ight have given him a co o k ie in th e h o p e o f praise from h er teach er, or a favor, later on, from Jam es. S h e m igh t have had these m otivations. But th ere is no reason to suppose she has to act out o f fear o f punishm ent or hope o f reward. In particular, and this is the crucial point, th e fact th at she scores at Stage

1 in a K o h lb erg interview does n o t mean that

she cannot act out o f a sense o f fairness w hen she is not con fron ted w ith a m oral dilem m a, let alone co n fro n ted w ith th e need to resolve and ju stify h er resolution o f a moral dilemma. A K oh lberg ian m igh t reply th at Susan does n o t really have a sense o f fairness if h er moral reasonincj is at Stage

1 . Sh e may be

m od eling beh avio r th at she observes in others, or con form in g to pressures from adults or peers, but she is n ot really actin g from a

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sense o f fairness unless she can give Stage 5 or Stage

6 reasoning

to resolve a moral dilemma. In m y view, this K ohlbergian response focuses on on ly on e o f the several dim ensions of. m oral d evelopm ent and ignores all th e rest. T o make this p oint clear, let me outline an alternative co n cep tion of moral developm ent. Each o f us can bring to mind, for each m ajor term of moral assessm ent in our active vocabulary (for exam ple, 'm oral,' 'im m oral,' 'fair,' 'unfair,' 'honest,' 'lying,' 'brave,' cow ardly,' and so on ) at least one paradigm atic situation to w hich we think th e term applies. O u r understanding o f w hat these term s m ean includes our ab ility to assimilate o th er cases to these paradigms. O u r first paradigm o f bravery is, perhaps, su cceed in g in n o t crying in the doctor's office w hen we are about to b e stuck w ith a needle. For telling a lie my paradigm m ay b e denying, falsely, th at I ate little brother's piece of candy w hen he was out playing. For fairness, th e paradigm m ay b e dividing th e co o k ies evenly am ong the m em bers o f a school class so th at each one gets th e same num ber o f cookies. It will be o b jected th at I am m aking a naive m istake here o f th e kind th at Sócrates' hapless interlocutors are always m aking in th e early Platonic dialogues. An exam ple of lying, even a paradigm exam ple, is n o t what lying is. Surely, th e o b je ctio n continú es, on ly som eone w ho can define 'lying' satisfactorily really know s w hat lying is, and on ly such a person has su cceed ed in latch in g o n to the immoral behavior th at is properly called "lying." M y reply is tw ofold. First, it is an open question w h eth er any of us can give an entirely satisfactory definition o f 'lying.' (W e should n ot be surprised th at the early P laton ic dialogues end in perplexity!) Y et m ost of us have a w orking grasp o f w hat lyin g is. T h erefo re, having a w orking grasp of w hat lying is, is som ething o th er than being able to give an entirely satisfactory definition of 'lying.' In fact, it can consist in having a basic understanding of

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cen tral paradigms o f lying and the ability to com pare o th er cases to th ese paradigms so as to determ ine w heth er they, to o , should co u n t as cases o f lying. Seco n d , Sócrates' techn ique in the early P latonic dialogues requires his interlocu tors (and his readers!) to test out suggested definitions w ith th eir own intuitions. Thu s Sócrates in Book I of th e Republic rejects Cephalus's definition of 'justice' ('telling the truth and paying your debts') by asking, rhetorically, w hether one should return a w eapon to its ow ner if, in th e m eantim e, th e ow ner has g on e mad. As readers, we are exp ected to answer, "N o, of course not." But on w hat basis can we give th at answer if we have, as y et, no satisfactory definition o f 'justice'? C learly such testing of suggested definitions b y counterexam ple is a futile exercise unless we already have a w orking grasp o f the relevant term of m oral assessm ent. H aving such a grasp may consist simply in having a basic understanding o f central paradigms and th e ability to assess o th er cases by referen ce to those paradigms. In m y view m oral developm ent takes place across at least five different dim ensions. First, there is th e dim ensión of paradigms. A fabrication to escape punishm ent is a good first paradigm for lying. A m isrepresentation to gain som e advantage for oneself may be a seco n d paradigm. (Lisa says she doesn't know w hat tim e it is— th ou gh she does, really— so as to be allow ed to w atch th e rest of h er T V program .) A group conspiracy to flout authority may be a third paradigm. (A lbert tells the teach er he did not see w ho shot th e spitwad even though he saw Leonard do it.) A seco n d dim ensión o f moral developm ent is relative success in offerin g defining characteristics. 'Saying som ething naughty the w ay Louis did' may be a simple, but appropriate, beginning. 'U tterin g a falsehood' will be an im provem ent. 'U tterin g a falseh o o d w hen you know better' is still better. 'Saying som ething you know is false to deceive som eone else' is even b etter than that. It is im portant to reco gn ize, how ever, th at none of these defi­ nitions is entirely satisfactory. C onsid er the last one ('Saying

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som ething you know is false to deceive som eone else'). Suppose th e teach er wants to find out w ho spread mustard on th e washbasins in th e scho o l w ashroom . Sh e already has circum stantial evidence th at m y sch o o l chum Ben did it. M oreov er, she has g ood reason to think th at I w itnessed th e awful deed. But she can n o t punish Ben unless a witness com es forward. S h e asks m e and I deny th at Ben did it. T h e teach er may realize th a t I am p ro tectin g my friend. (I have often done th at befo re.) T h e re is no d eception involved. I may even realize th at th e te ach e r realizes th a t I am p ro tectin g my friend. Still, w hen I say th at I didn't see Ben spread mustard on the wash basins, I tell a lie. So the last definition is also defective. M oreover, I do n o t know how to repair it. Perhaps som eone can offer a definition o f 'lying' th at fits all our ch erished intuitions and is also inform ative. But th e im portant p oint is th at no one need b e able to do this to have a w orking grasp of w hat lying is. T o begin w ith, one need on ly have a basic understanding o f one central paradigm. A third dim ensión of d evelopm ent co n cern s th e range o f cases th at fall under each term of moral assessm ent and how we deal w ith borderline cases. Is w riting a bad ch eck , w hen on e knows th at one's balance is insufficient to co ver th e ch e ck , a case o f lying? C an a photograph lie? Is it lying for a student w ho was throw n out o f co llege to w ear th e co lleg e tie? A fourth dim ensión o f moral d evelopm ent co n cern s th e adjudication o f conflicting moral claims, or to put th e m atter less tendentiously, th e adjudication of apparently co n flictin g m oral claim s. Som etim es telling a lie is n o t b ein g naughty,- som etim es it is one's duty. H ow can this be? T h o u g h it is prima facie w rong to tell a lie, o th er moral claim s may override th e dem and to tell th e truth. W e develop m orally as we g et b ette r and b ette r at th in kin g our way through such conflicts, or apparent con flicts. Fifth, th ere is th e dim ensión of moral imacjination. M ich ael, at fifteen m onths, seems to have had the im agination to understand Paul's distress and to think o f g ettin g Paul's security b lan k et so

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th at Paul would be com forted . Even at th at very young age, M ich ael was quite advanced along the dim ensión of moral im ag­ in a ro n . O f course M ichael's exp erience of th e w orld and his under­ standing o f how it w orks will b e very lim ited at fifteen m onths. A very y ou n g ch ild will not be able to em pathize w ith, say, a victim o f racial o r gend er discrim ination because the child's experience and understanding o f so ciety are to o lim ited. In general, we may h o p e to advance along th e scale o f moral im agination as we grow old er and our exp erience of life becom es broader and deeper. Y e t this need n o t happen. People b eco m e overw helm ed by th e problem s o f the so ciety around them , or increasingly preoccupied w ith th eir own personal agendas. W h en th at happens, even a very y ou n g and inexperien ced child can catch us adults up short w ith a direct, em p ath etic response to, say, a hom eless person trying to keep warm in a cardboard b o x under a bridge. A child's naive question can awaken our sleeping im agination and sym pathy, and even m ove us to take moral action. O n th e view I advócate, then, moral developm ent takes place across th ese five different dim ensions. K o h lberg concen trates on on ly one, nam ely, the fourth dim ensión (adjudicating moral con flicts or dilem m as). But lo n g before a ch ild will have to deal with m oral dilem m as, let alone give a justification for resolving a dilem m a, th e ch ild can have a strong em pathetic response to the victim s o f suffering, or injustice, and a w orking understanding of cen tral paradigms for term s o f moral assessment. M o st o f us never lose the paradigms we first assim ilated in ch ild ­ h o o d . T h e equal división o f co o k ies rem ains for us a paradigm of distributive ju stice. As Susan grows and develops we hope she will enlarge h er stock of paradigms from handing out cookies fairly to distributing w ork assignm ents fairly am ong w orkers o f varied abilities, to , perhaps, refusing to ch an g e th e rules in th e m iddle o f a gam e. A nd w e h op e Susan will grow along o th er dim ensions of m oral d evelopm ent as well. But th e sim ple paradigms of distrib-

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utive ju stice will stay w ith her perm anently. And no co n trast betw een the virtuosity of her later reasoning and th e naiveté of h er early appeal to simple paradigms can establish th at th o se early actions were n o t really perform ed from a sense o f fairness. Parents som etim es report to me that one ch ild in th eir fam ily g ot recognized early on as the "justice person" in th at family. Perhaps it all began w ith co o k ie distribution at age three. But it con tin u ed through middle ch ild hood, late ch ild hood , and ad olescen ce. T h is particular child would always be the person in th a t fam ily w ho would ask, "But is that really fair?" M o th er or Father m igh t be called on to reassess things in answer to a question like th at from a child. And the "justice person” needn't b e the old est ch ild o f th e family, either. T h eories o f c ognitive and moral developm ent often encourage us to distance ourselves from ch ild ren — b o th from th e c h ildren around us j n d from our^own ch ild h ood selves. Su ch distancing som etim es produces a new respect for children. A fter all, it warns us against

faulting children

for shortcom ings

th at

express,

accord ing to the theories, immature co g n itive and m oral structures th at are entirely norm al for children of the given age range. Y e t such distancing can also encourage cond escen sion . If we suppose th at children live in conceptual worlds th at are structurally different from ours, but that will naturally evolve into ours, how can we fail to be cond escend ing tow ard children as m oral agents? T h e cond escension, thou gh understandable, is unw arranted. O n e reason it is unw arranted is that, as we saw in th e last chap ter, later structures are n ot entirely unquestionable accom plishm ents; characteristically, they are problem atic in ways th at philosophers never tire of exposing. Thu s it is an open question w h eth er anyone at all can provide an entirely satisfactory th eo ry o f ju stice or, as I rem arked earlier, even an entirely satisfactory definition o f 'lying.' A nother reason such con d escension is unw arranted is th a t chil-

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dren, in th eir sim ple directness, often bring us adults back to basics. Any developm ental th eo ry th at rules out, on purely th eoretical grounds, even th e possibility th at we adults may occasionally have som eth ing to learn, m orally, from a ch ild is, for that reason, defective,- it is also m orally offensive.

Children's Rights

i h o u l d children en jo y rights th ey are n o t now th o u gh t to have, for exam ple, the right to vote, th e right to refuse to atten d sch o o l. or the right to divorce th eir parents? O r has th e children's rights m ovem ent already g one to o far? In the m idst o f the 1992 U .S . presidential cam paign a juven ile cou rt case in Florida th at raised th ese questions received widespread newspaper and televisión coverage. T h e issue th at caught th e public attention was w hether children should have a righ t to divorce their parents. O n Ju ly 9, 1992, a judge in a Florida State cou rt had ruled th at a tw elve-year-old b o y had legal standing to p etition to term ínate his parents' rights so that he cou ld b e legally adopted b y his foster parents, G eo rg e and L izabeth Russ. Initially referred to , presumably for his own pro tectio n , as "G reg o ry K .," G reg o ry him self revealed th at his family ñame was K ingsley. It seem ed appropriate that, in seeking to have th e right to take his m oth er to cou rt, on his own behalf, G reg o ry should also waive th e p ro tectio n o f anonym ity usually accord ed minors. A fter G reg o ry had appeared on national T V , interview ed b y Barbara W alters, he becam e som ething o f a celeb rity . Because the case carne to public atten tion in the m idst of an electio n cam paign for the U .S . presidency, indeed one in w hich th e Republicans tried

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to m ake "fam ily valúes" a central cam paign issue, politicians soon tried to use G regory's p etition for th eir own political purposes. T h e relevance o f th e case o f G reg o ry K ingsley to Bill C linton's cand id acy was, no doubt, en h an ced b y the fact th at C linton's wife, H illary Rodham C lin to n , had w orked for the C hildren's D efen se Fund and had w ritten several significant articles on children's rig h ts .1 G eo rg e Bush to o k th e opportunity of the judge's ruling to warn voters against "advocates o f th e liberal agenda," w ho, acco rd in g to Bush, "even encourage kids to hire lawyers and haul th eir parents into co u rt ."2 G regory's father had signed papers co n sen ting to the term ination o f his parental rights. S o it was the rights of the m oth er to have cu stod y o f th e ch ild th at w ere at stake. As we soon learned, G reg o ry had lived for on ly eig h t m onths o f th e previous eigh t years w ith this m o th er and she had to ld the authorities w hen she gave him up the last tim e, "You take him b ack .” G reg o ry w on his case in th e Florida court. H e seem s also to have w on w idespread support in th e cou rt o f U .S . public opinion. T o m ark th e start o f his new life, G reg o ry ch anged his ñame. U p o n b ein g officially adopted by his new parents he was to be Shaw n Russ. T h e case o f G reg o ry K ingsley does n o t stand alone. W e can see in b o th th e U n ited States and Europe a gradual extensión of th e legal rights child ren are reco gn ized to have. T h e question of th eir m oral rights, thou gh separate, is n o t en tirely distinct either. As we saw during th e civil rights m ovem ent of th e 1960s, reco g n izin g th e moral rights o f a certain group of people often m otivates us to w ork to chang e th eir legal status as w ell; conversely, ch an g in g th e legal status acco rd ed som e group o f people often encourages us to ch an g e our m oral attitudes tow ard them as well. C hild ren raise an issue for tw o ethical principies in particular, nam ely, th e A u tonom y Principie and th e Paternalism Principie. A cco rd in g to th e A u tonom y Principie, rational individuáis should

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be self-determ ining. A ccord ing to th e Paternalism Principie, th e autonom y of an individual may be restricted if such restriction is in that individuáis own in terest .3 T w o distinct, but relate^, questions arise w hen we seek to bring a ch ild under th e A utonom y Principie: (1) Is the child sufficiently rational, or rational in the right way, to be able to be self-determining? (2) W ould it be in a child's own interest to restrict that child's ability to be self-determining?

1 con cerns the application o f th e A utonom y Principie considered by itself. Q u estion 2 con cerns how paternalism bears Q uestion

on autonom y. It asks w hether, in som e particular case, th e P ater­ nalism Principie should "trump" th e A utonom y Principie. A pplied to G reg o ry K ingsley, the A utonom y Principie, unrestricted, would valídate G regory's right to sue his m o th er for th e term ination o f her parental rights, so th at he could b e adopted by the parents of a big and loving family, w here he felt at hom e. But was G regory sufficiently rational, at eleven or tw elve years o f age, or rational in the required way, to be able to exercise a righ t of self-determ ination (Q u estion

1 )? M o st televisión view ers w ho saw

him in the W alters interview, or w atched him in cou rt on C ab le N etw ork News (C N N ), seem to have decided th at he was. T h is is the way the New York Times reported G regory's cou rt appearance: The dark-haired sixth grader took the stand for more than an hour, his shoulders just barely rising above the witness stand. Exhibiting a presence and sophistication unusual for a boy his age, G regory explained how he had met his foster father during a visit to the youth center where he had been placed. Gregory said that for almost two years while he was in foster care his mother never visited, called or wrote to him. "I just thought she forgot about me," he said on the stand in an unemotional voice. Later he explained that after he was taken from foster care the first

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time, his m other had promised him he would never have to go back again. H e was placed in foster homes twice after that, and Gregory testified that that was what had changed his feelings about his mother. "I just thought she didn't care any more," he said, staring straight ahead at his lawyer, Jerri A. Blair, and not turning to look at his natural m other 20 feet away. "I figured that if she breaks her promise she just doesn't care very much.''4

T h e reporter's com m ent, "exhibiting a presence and sophistication unusual for a b o y his age," is w orth reflecting on for a m om ent. It m ay well be th at G reg o ry was unusually mature and sophisticated for a b o y o f his age. O n e suspects th at such confid ence and selfassurance as G reg o ry displayed would be especially unusual am ong children w ithout stable hom e lives. But w hat the repórter in this case fails to m ention is that a child's cou rt appearance like th is— live on C N N !— is alto geth er w ithout precedent. W e are hardly in position to jud ge how unusual "for a b o y his age" his cou rt appearance was, th ere b ein g no o th er exam ples of a court appearance quite like this o n e ] As m uch as anything else, this case m ay have encouraged people to ask w hether it was j ust prejudice and c o nd escension th at led us to b e surprised at G regory's poise and sophistication^ As for Q u estion

2 above, hardly anyone w ho follow ed this

co u rt case cou ld have doubted that it was in G regory's own best in terest to b e adopted by the new family. Sin ce th at is certainly w hat G reg o ry him self w anted to happen, there is no reason to think th at restricting his autonom y would som ehow have served his own interests. Só in this case, anyway, the outcom e m ight be th o u g h t to be th e same w h eth er G regory's autonom y takes preced en ce or, alternatively, paternalism wins out over autonom y. T h e case o f G reg o ry K ingsley carne exactly a quarter of a century after In re Gault (1 9 6 7 ), th e famous U .S . Suprem e C ourt case in w h ich m inors w ere, for th e first tim e, recogn ized to have the

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constitutional rights of due process, for exam ple, th e righ t to a counsel and the right to b e w arned th at an ythin g th ey say m ight b e used in evidence against them . r

W e can ex p ect th at qhildren will slow ly b e given m ore and

m ore autonom y w ithin our legal system , and th at th ey will be allow ed to exercise that autonom y at a you n ger and you n ger age. Is th at a g ood thing? T h e jud gm ent in th e philosophical literature on children's rights is som ew hat mixed. In 1974 Jo h n H o lt w rote, "I propose th at th e rights, privileges, duties, responsibilities of adult citizen s be m ade available to any young person, o f w hatever age, w ho wants to m ake use o f th e m ."5 In a similar spirit H ow ard C o h én published, six years later, his classic defense o f the liberationist position on children's rights, Ecjual Rights fo r Children. T h is is the co re o f C oh en 's position: 1 am not saying that nobody should have a right unless everyone has it . . . W hat 1 am saying is that unless relevant differences can be demonstrated, it is not right to treat people differently,- it is unjust. In my view the differences between adults and children, such as they are, have been way overstated by those who support the double standard. Children are presumed to be weak, passive, mindless, and unthinking,- adults are presumed to be rational, highly motivated, and efficient. The picture is drawn too sharply, of course, and nobody pretends that there are not exceptions. The trouble, however, is that a decent account of equal rights for chil­ dren cannot be based on the exceptions. If it is, we have only readjusted the double standard; we have not eliminated it.6

O th e r im portant voices in th e cali for reco g n izin g children's rights have been Bob Franklin and Shulam ith Firestone. Firestone, in h er Work, em phasizes the co n n ectio n betw een w om en's liberation and children's liberation: "W e must include th e oppression o f child ren in any program for fem inist revolution or we will b e su b ject to th e same failing of w hich we have so often accused m en: of n ot having gone deep enough in our analysis, of having m issed an

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im portant substratum o f oppression m erely because it didn't d irectly co n cern us ."7 Laurence D . H ou lgate, in his The Child and the State.- A N om ative Theory o f Juvenile Rights, tries to stake out a m ore m oderate position b y allow ing utilitarian considerations to tem per th e requirem ents o f ju s tic e .8 Laura Purdy, in her re cen t bo o k, In Their Best Interest? The Case Against Ecjual Rights fo r Children, takes an explicitly utilitarian position in re je ctin g children's liberation. Purdy summarizes her position this way: First, by severing the asymmetrical legal ties that now bind parents and children together, equal rights would weaken appropriate parental authority. Tw o critically important consequences could be expected to follow. O ne is that parents would be more reluctant to provide for their children the kind of early training that now appears to be necessary for responsible and moral behavior later. T he other is that adolescents would be less likely to take their parents' guidance seriously. Both of these consequences could reasonably be expected to have detrimental effects not only on chil­ dren's own well-being but on their ability to particípate constructively in a good society . . . Second, equal rights would require abolition of compulsory schooling. W hile it is obvious that there is a good deal the matter with the schools at present, it doesn't follow that what is the matter could best be gotten rid of by undermining their authority in this way . . . Third, equal rights would propel many children into the workplace at an early age, where, without education, they would be prepared for only the most menial jobs. There they would be sub­ je ct to the uncertainties of fluctuating demand and might survive only by exposing themselves to various hazards or underbidding other needy workers.9

W e can ex p ect this debate to go on. W e can also expect, as I have already indicated, th at b o th th e num ber and the types o f rights th a t child ren are reco gn ized to have will continu é to grow. M ore-

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over, we can ex p ect that the minimum age at w hich child ren are recognized to have a given right, such as th e righ t to take a parent to court, will recede. T h is is certain ly th e cu rrent trend. Perhaps conservative critics o f children's rights like Laura Purdy will slow th e trend; but th ey will not, I think, stop it, let alone reverse it. C an we, w ithout trying to settle th e debate b etw een advocates of children's rights and th eir detractors, find philosophical reasons to w elcom e this trend? I think we can. It is to th a t reasoning th at I now turn. Purdy, in her re je ctio n of children's liberation, predicts th at enlarging the realm o f rights accord ed to children will ten d to underm ine the authority o f parents and th e school. T h e problem o f how to understand authority, and esp ecially th e problem of how to understand rational authority, is alm ost as oíd as philosophy. R eflection on th at problem , I suggest, m ay give us reason to applaud the gradual liberation o f children in our so ciety, w hatever fears and anxieties com e w ith th inkin g about th e expansión of children's rights. In a stable and cohesive so ciety parents and teach ers are re c ­ ognized by children as authority figures. S o cio lo g ica lly speaking, parents and teachers exercise authority over children b y virtue of the social positions th ey occupy. But are such authority-structures rationally justifiable? T o ask this question in its general form is to raise th e philosophical problem of rational authority. T h e philosophical problem of rational authority was first raised by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro. In that dialogue Só crates m eets Euthyphro, w ho is going o ff to a cou rt to charge his fath er w ith im piety. Sócrates expresses surprise th at E uthyphro w ould bring a charge against his own father in a cou rt o f law. T h e im plication of Sócrates' surprise is th at children owe th eir fathers h o n o r and respect in such a way that it is alm ost unthinkable th at th ey would charge th eir own fathers w ith a crim e. Euthyphro him self is unm oved by th e suggestion th a t it m ight be impious of him to charge his father w ith im piety. H e adds that

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th e ch arge he wants to bring against his father is an extrem ely serious o n e ; in fact, the charge is negligent hom icide. T h e victim o f this crim e, as Euthyphro tells th e story, had him self, in a drunken rage, killed one o f th e household slaves. Euthyphro's fath er had then bound this man hand and foo t and had g one o ff to ask a priest w hat to do. Bound and abandoned in a ditch, the man had died from hunger and coid . Euthyphro holds his father responsible for this man's death and proposes to have his father in d icted in court.

.

T h in k in g o f n egligent hom icid e as a form o f im piety m ay first strike us as strange. But we should rem em ber th at "D o n ot killi" is also on e o f th e T e n C om m andm ents in our Jew ish and C hristian traditions and th at civil religión also plays at least an im plicit role in our m odern, secular governm ent. Só crates responds to Euthyphro's story in a m anner th at is typical for th e figure of Sócrates in P la to s early dialogues: he asks Euthyphro w hat piety is. T h e question seems appropriate, since Euthyphro, if he is charging his father w ith im piety, ought really to know w hat piety is. M uch o f th e dialogue is taken up with Euthyphro's unsuccessful attem pts to define 'piety' and 'im piety.' T h e crucial p oint in th e dialogue com es w hen, after Euthyphro has tried saying th at piety is w hatever all the gods love, Sócrates asks his famous and profound question: "Is th e pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because th ey love it?" (Euthyphro

10A).

T h e "Euthyphro problem ," as we may cali it, can b e translated into m o n o th eistic term s m ore fam iliar to those of us in th e Jew ish, C hristian , and M uslím traditions. T h in k o f a religious believer who supposes th at m orality rests on divine com m and. For such a person, w hat it m eans to say "X is right" m ight be "G o d com m ands us to do X ." A nd w hat it m eans, for such a person, to say "Y is w rong" is "G o d com m ands us n o t to do Y ." N ow com e th e S o cratic questions, 'Is d oing X right because G o d com m ands us to do X, o r does G o d com m and us to do X because it is right?' and 'Is doing

Children’s Rights

76

Y w rong because G o d com m ands us n o t to do Y, or does G o d com m and us n o t to do Y because it is wrong?'

.

C onsid er murder and consider the claim 'M urder is w rong.' W h a t that claim means, ,on th e proposed analysis, is 'G o d co m ­ mands us n o t to murder.' But is murder w rong because G o d co m ­ mands us not to murder, or does G o d com m and us n o t to murder because it is wrong? If we ch o o se th e first alternative (m urder is w rong because G o d com m ands us n o t to murder), we are theological voluntarists. From this p oint of view th e volition or will, or co m ­ mand, or approval, o f G o d is th e bo tto m line. T h e re is no accounting for G od's will or com m and or approval on this alter­ native. O n the o th er hand, if we ch o o se the secon d alternative (G o d com m ands us n o t to murder because it is w rong to murder), we are theological rationalists. From this p oint o f view th ere is, at least in principie, a way of accou ntin g for G od's will and G od's co m ­ mands. (G o d wills and com m ands w hat is right, and on ly w hat is right.) But th at also means th ere is a moral standard independent of G od, a moral standard by w hich G o d can b e judged. T h eo lo g ical voluntarism encourages th e idea that, even if G od's will and com m and w ere arbitrary, th ey would still d eterm ine w hat is right and wrong. T h e o lo g ica l rationalism , by con trast, suggests th at G o d is not all-powerful, since G o d must con form to th e standards of m orality. T h e Euthyphro Problem also has a purely secular application, and th at is, of course, w hy I am discussing it here. Suppose we say to the child, "W h at M am a says goes," th a t is, "W h a t M am a says is right." N ow the Euthyphro question is, 'Is it righ t because M am a says it, or does M am a say it because it is right?' If we take the first alternative, M am as com m ands establish w hat is right, even w hen th ey are based on M am as prejudice or whim . If we take the second, the fact that M am a says to do this, or that, drops out as inessential in understanding w hat makes so m eth in g right. T o know w hat makes som eth ing right we should lo o k rath er to the reasons M am a has for com m anding th e things she com m ands. O n this view, in fact, M am a is accountable for w hat she com -

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mands, w hereas on th e previous one w hat M am a com m ands is autom atically right. W h a te v er we w ant to say about th e original, th eo lo gical versión o f th e E uthyphro Problem , we should respond to the secular v er­ sión b y g oin g betw een th e horns o f the dilemma. Suppose M am a says, "N o m ore T V and no m ore N intendo until you have finished you r schoolw orkl" T h is com m and has som e prima facie claim to accep ta n ce sim ply because M am a says it and M am a is in th e position o f au thority w ith resp ect to th e child. But, in a reasonable fam ily, th ere will b e som e possibility for challengin g the co m ­ m and — if n o t righ t away, then a little later perhaps, or on some o ccasio n w hen such m atters g et discussed. T h e possibility of ch a l­ lenge, som etim e, som ew here, means th at com m and is only prima fa cie righ t because M am a com m ands it. O n a deeper level, we must think th a t M am a com m ands it because it is right, or good, or advisable. If th e ch allen ge reveáis th at the com m and is n ot really w arranted (say, because th e child's hom ew ork is not due for an o th er day, or because M am a had prom ised th e ch ild an hour of T V , or w hatever), then the prima facie claim to rightness is overridden. It is th e possibility o f review that makes th e authority rational, rath er than m erely arbitrary. Purdy says th at children's liberation will tend to underm ine the au thority o f parents and teachers. But how is th at authority to b e understood? Let's co n cén trate, as before, on parental authority. If o n e has authority over a ch ild sim ply by virtue o f standing in a certain b iolo gical relationship to th e ch ild (by virtue o f having b o rn e o r sired th e child ), then there needs to be, as indeed there is in our so ciety , a legal m echanism for ch allengin g th at authority and callin g it to account. As things now stand, and have stood for a lo n g tim e, th ere are ways for som e person or agency to go to co u rt to ch allen g e th e assumed authority o f a negligent or abusive parent over a child. T h e new question is w hether children th e m -. selves should have "standing" in cou rt to petition the cou rt on th eir own behalf. Let's go back to th e case o f G reg o ry K ingsley. As T V reports

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on th e evening news made quite clear, G regory's m o th er had lon g ago given up h er responsibility for hirn,- she had aband oned him to state agencies. Even if she did now w ant him back, she was n o t in position to provide him w ith a satisfactory hom e. (In fact, evidence th at she herself was battered by h er current lover suggested th at she was n o t even able to provide herself w ith a satisfactory h om e.) O f course, th e jud ge in Florida cou ld have term inated th e m oth er's parental rights to G reg o ry w ithout reco g n izin g G regory's right to petition the cou rt on his own behalf. So th e issue is n o t w h ether a biological parent's rights to h er ch ild are absolute, or w h ether th ey may b e term inated against h er will w hen th e cou rt deems such term ination to be in th e child's b est interest. T h e issue is w hether th e child, in this case, tw elve-year-old G reg o ry, should be re co gnized to have a right to p etition th e cou rt on his ow n b ehalf and have th e cou rt respond to him, rath er than ju st to_his interests^ Put in term s o f th e philosophical problem o f rational authority, the issue is w h ether th e cou rt should reco g n ize G reg o ry as a rational agent, able to m ake up his own m ind on this m atter, to w hom th e cou rt is beh old en to4ju stify its exercise o f authority in review ing his m other's authority over him . T h e interview s w ith G regory in th e media and G regory's co u rt appearance give us g ood reason to say "Yes, G reg o ry is mature and reasonable enough for the cou rt to deal w ith him directly as a directly in terested party in the dispute." Som e politicians have discussed th e idea o f child ren having a right to divorce th eir parents as if, having such a right, th e y cou ld simply walk out on th eir parents w ith im punity. As w e can see from th e case o f G reg o ry K ingsley, how ever, having such a righ t m ight simply give children standing in a cou rt o f law to m ake certain petitions on th eir own beh alf and have th e cou rt respond to them (as well as to th eir parents, o f course) rath er than simply to a cou rt-appointed or co u rt-reco g n ized guardian. In an ideal family, children, as th ey grow older, b eco m e m ore

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and m ore free to ask for a review o f rules, practices, and d e c is io n s ^ th at reguláfé- th eir livés w ithin

thé

family. T h a t

1

gradually

increasing right to ask for review recogn izes several im portant truths: ( 1 ) as th ey grow up, children are increasingly able to function as agents on th eir own beh alf; ( 2 ) allow ing children gradually to m ake m ore and m ore decisions about th eir own lives co n trib ­ utes to developing th e m aturity th ey need to function well as ; adults,• (3 ) reco g n izin g a right to appeal parental decisions and | review fam ily practices th at a ch ild wishes n o t to accep t carries I w ith it th e im plicit understanding th at these decisions and practices are n o t accep tab le sim ply because a parent lays them down I as "law"; rather, in th e paradigm case, anyway, they are laid down/ because th e parent considers them w ise or correct. T h e society's treatm ent o f parental authority should parallel the w ay in w h ich parents in an ideal fam ily treat th eir own authority over child ren. N o t on ly should G reg o ry K ingsley, if he is suffi­ cien tly m ature, have a righ t to p etition th e cou rt on his own behalf to have his m other's authority over him term inated; he should also have a right to have the cou rt address its decisión to him, n ot ju st address som e guardian or agency assumed to represent him and his interests. T h is righ t o f p etition is w hat g ives co n ten t to the idea th at parental authority is not based solely on th e accid en t o f b ío ío g ic a l relatioñw&ut also on the testable claim that G reg o ry 's parent is carrying *out h er responsibility to do w hat is righ t for h im. G regory's right to p etition on his own behalf, and n ot simply throu gh som e third party, carries w ith it the recogn ition that, already at age tw elve, G reg o ry is able to make reasonable judgm ents about w h eth er his m o th er has been carrying out h er responsibilities tow ard him,- should th e cou rt deny his p etition, he deserves to have th e cou rt explain to him, and n ot ju st to a guardian, th at h e is w rong, and why. S o should child ren b e reco gn ized to have rights th ey do not now en jo y , or to have them at a y ou nger age than th ey now en jo y them ? I think so, thou gh I have n o t tried to present a full case for

^

80

Children's Rights

th at conclusión in this chapter. W h a t I have tried to do instead is much m ore lim ited. I have p ointed out th at our so ciety is m oving slow ly in the direction o f assigning m ore rights to child ren and assigning rights at an earHer and earlier age. A nd I have suggested th at there is a way o f understanding this developm ent th a t m akes it philosophically w elcom e. It is to see authorities in our so ciety as rational authorities, people w ho, even if th ey first co m e to "occupy their positions o f authority by b iolo gical accid en t, can be ’appropriately called upon to ju stify th eir exercise o f authority, and ju stify it in the presence o f th eir children, as soon as th o se children are capable of m aking reasonable judgm ents about th eir own interests.

7 Childhood Amnesia

.As

a sev en -year-old ch ild I asked m yself how I knew th at my

m em ory cou ld be trusted. W h a t co n cern ed me was n ot w hether events had really happened th e way I thou ght I rem em bered them , for exam ple, w h eth er my m em ory o f my last birthday, or my first day in sch o o l, was accurate. R ather w hat interested me was the p ossibility th at huge chunks o f my experience m ight simply have dropped out o f m y m em ory w ithout my realizing it. If m y m em ory w ere full o f gaps, its very "gappiness" m ight disguise th e gaps. H o w cou ld I know? T o reassure m yself, I devised a simple experim ent. I would d eliberately select very ordinary events, otherw ise quite unw orthy o f recall, and assign each a num ber. T h e n , at a later tim e, I would attem p t to recall event # 1 , event # 2 , and so on. I realized that I m igh t later forget the w hole experim ent. In that way, a gap in my m em ory m igh t wipe out the test for gaps in my m em ory. H ow ever, if I w ere able to rem em ber th e test later on, and if I were able to recall, or even seem to recall, otherw ise quite uninteresting events to go w ith the num bers ' 1 ,' '2 ,' and so on, I would have, I th o u gh t, at least som e minimal evidence that much of m y waking life was indeed safely bound into my b o o k o f personal m em ory. I did n o t know then that, accord in g to Jo h n Locke, to be the sam e person as th at seven-year-old child, brushing his teeth with th e m ixture o f salt and soda M o th er had thou gh t best, in the

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bathroom of th at little house on C am den Street, I w ould have to b e able to "repeat the idea o f [th at] past action w ith th e same consciousness [I have] o f any present action . . have had the idea that w h ether

But I seem to

1 really was a persisting su b ject o f

such day-to-day experiences was som ehow or o th er at stake in m y amateurish experim ent. For som e m onths after devising my experim ent 1 w ould o ccu p y m om ents o f reflection w ith th e attem pt to recall o n ce m ore th o se arbitrarily num bered events. I was pleased at th e m inim al reassurance I g ot this way o f my continu in g existen ce as a person. I was also interested in the question o f how far b ack in to th e past my m em ory w ent. W h a t was m y first m em ory? Som etim e during m y elem entary school years I decided th a t th e earliest experience I could rem em ber was th at of g oin g down an en closed slide at the C hicag o W orld's Fair in 1933, w hen I was alm ost four. T h e event had been marked w ith special significance b y m y m other, w ho, as often happened in m y ch ild hood , had apparently thou ght me com p etent to look after m yself and on ly later, w hen I didn't turn up as soon as she exp ected at th e bo tto m o f th e slide, felt guilty th at she had not given me clo ser supervisión. T h o u g h my m em ory o f th at event was, perhaps, solidified b y my hearing the story to ld in th e family, I retained co n fid en ce, a rem nant o f w hich I still have, that I actually rem em bered goin g down th at slide in C hicag o . T h e attendant had w arned me to keep my hands at my side, w hich I dutifully did. But on e result of pressing m y hands to m y side was th at I lost m y balance on the descent and got turned around and slow ed down, until I h it my head on th e pavem ent at the b o tto m . A pparently th e blow was severe enough to make th e event m ore m em orable, but n o t severe enough to oblitérate it. W h y do we care w hat our first m em ory is? Perhaps we care for som ew hat th e same Lockean reason th at I co n c o c te d my m em ory experim ent. L ocke thou ght that b ein g the same human being2 as, say, th e little baby show n in the faded photograph on my dresser top was very different from b ein g th e same person as th a t infant.

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Being th e same human being, according to Locke, consists in having a bod y th at is sim ply a later stage o f the bod y th at baby has in th e picture. But to be th e same person requires, he thought, having a co n n e ctin g m em ory— a m em ory o f b ein g held in m y m other's arms on the occasio n portrayed in the picture. Suppose that, in fact, th e bo d y o f that baby has, over th e years, gradually turned into th e bod y I now have. T h e n I am th e same hum an b ein g as th at baby. But, having no m em ory o f bein g held as a b ab y by m y m o th er on any such occasion as th at portrayed in th e photograph, I cou ld n ot be th e same person as th at infant in th e picture. "It is plain," Locke w rote, "consciousness, as far as ever it can b e extended , should it b e to ages past, unites existences and action s, very rem óte in tim e, into the same person, as well as it does th e existen ces and actions o f th e im m ediately preceding m om ent: so th at w hatever has the consciousness o f present and past action s, is th e same person to w hom th ey b o th b elo n g ."3 S o , on Locke's criterion o f personal identity, even if I am the sam e hum an b ein g as that baby in th e faded photograph, I am n ot th e sam e person. In fact, as a person, o r at least as th e person I now am, I carne into b ein g at th e tim e I w ent down th e enclosed slide at th e C h ica g o W orld 's Fair. L o ok in g at one's fam ily p h o to álbum, or perhaps at family m ovies o f one's early child hood , it is, in fact, quite easy to g et the idea th a t th e you ng ch ild in those pictures is "not really m e." And th e reason for this sense o f alienation from the ch ild pictured there is th e L ockean reason th at one sim ply can n o t rem em ber doing or exp erien cin g th e things th at ch ild is pictured as doing or experien cin g . O n e sim ply can n o t rem em ber being th at child. Sigm und Freud seem s to have been the first investigator of ch ild h o o d to cali special atten tion to the phenom enon o f ch ild ­ h o o d am nesia ("infantile amnesia"). T h is passage from Freud's 'T h r e e Essays on Sexuality" is ch aracteristic: W hat I have in mind is the peculiar amnesia which, in the case of most people, though by no means all, hides the earliest beginnings

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of their childhood up to their sixth or eighth year. H itherto it has not occurred to us to feel any astonishment at the fact of this amnesia, though we might have had good grounds for doing so. For we learn from other people that during these years, of which at a later date we retain nothing in our memory but a few unintelligible and fragmentary recollections, we reacted in a lively manner to impressions, and that we were capable of expressing pain and joy in a human fashion, that we gave evidence of love, jealousy and other passionate feelings by which we were strongly moved at the time, and even that we gave utterance to remarles which were regarded by adults as good evidence of our possessing insight and the beginnings of a capacity for judgement. And of this we, when we are grown up, have no knowledge of our own!4

Freud goes on in this passage to link ch ild h o o d am nesia w ith hysterical amnesia and to suggest a p sychological explanation for both . "C an it be, after all," he asks, "that infantile am nesia, to o , is to be brought into relation w ith the sexual impulses of child hood ?" H is answer is, of course, yes. Freud claim ed that psychoanalysis cou ld unearth ch ild h o o d m em ories th at are now inaccessible to us: "In psy ch o -an aly tic treatm ents we are invariably faced by th e task of filling up these gaps in th e m em ory of childhood,- and in so far as th e treatm ent is to any extent successful— th at is to say, extrem ely frequ en tly — we also succeed in brin ging to ligh t th e co n ten t o f th ese forgotten years of ch ild h o o d ."5 Exactly how successful psychoanalysis is in u nearthing ch ild ­ h ood m em ories is a m atter of som e controversy. But presum ably the success it could be exp ected to have w ould co n cern m em ories w ith sexual significance— typically, m em ories th at involve in sóm e way a sexual attraction to one's parent. For this reason alone, even a lifetim e of psychoanalysis could b e ex p ected to uncover only a small fraction of one's w aking life as an infant or a very young child. O f course, w hen we stop to think about it, we realize th at we

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can recall on ly a small fraction o f our lives anyw ay— even our adult lives, even w hat we did last m onth or last week. W ith prodding I m ight b e brou gh t to rem em ber my third- or fourth-grade teach er, and perhaps an incid ent or tw o from those school years. But th ere is no w ay I cou ld b e brou ght to rem em ber w hat happened every day, let alone every w aking hour and every waking m inute o f every day. So even if there are m em ories to co n n e ct me w ith every y ear o f m y life since, say, the age o f six, m ost of the experien ces o f my w aking life are forever lost from memory. T h a t sim ple fact is a g oo d introduction to the m ost famous criticism o f Jo h n Locke's m em ory criterion o f personal identity. A bou t a centu ry after Locke published his m em ory criterion, the S co ttish p h ilosop h er T h o m as R eid su bjected it to a devastating criticism .6 Suppose, R eid said, a brave young officer, d ecorated for his heroism , had been beaten as a b o y for ro bbing an orchard. A nd suppose further that, as an oíd general, this man could rem em ber b ein g d ecorated as a brave young officer, and that th e y ou n g o fficer cou ld rem em ber b ein g flogged as a boy, but the oíd general cou ld no longer rem em ber b ein g flogged as a boy. T h en we can use Locke's criterion to generate a con trad ictory co n clu ­ sión. T h e oíd general b o th is and is not the same person as the y ou n g b o y w ho g o t flogged for ro bbing th e orchard. H e is the sam e person because the oíd general, rem em bering bein g d eco ­ rated, is th e sam e person as th e young d ecorated officer, and the you ng officer, rem em bering bein g flogged, is the same person as th e orch ard robber, and if a = b and b = c, then a = c. Y e t the o íd general is n o t th e same person as the b o y w ho was flogged for ro b b in g th e orchard, since th e oíd general can n o t rem em ber this episode from his youth. A ny criterion th at produces co n trad icto ry results is, for th at reason, unsatisfactory. So Reid urged, co rrectly I think, th at L ocke's criterion o f personal id entity is unsatisfactory. To

deal w ith

Reid's o b je ctio n

several philosophers have

recen tly proposed a weo-Lockean acco u n t o f personal id en tity .7

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A ccord ing to neo -L ocke, th e oíd general w ould n o t need to b e able to rem em ber being flogged as a ch ild to b e th e sam e person as the child w ho g ot flogged. It would b e enough th at th ere b e a chain of m em ory in th e .way R eid described. If th e oíd general rem em bers bein g decorated as a young officer and th e you ng officer rem em bers bein g flogged as a b o y, this new "linking criterion" (as we may cali it) would generate th e co n clu sión th a t th e oíd general is the same person as th e young b o y w ho was flogged. In fact, th e "linking criterion" allows for, n o t ju st a single in ter­ m edíate link w ith a past episode, but as m any interm ed íate links as you like. Thus, if I can rem em ber going down th e slide at th e C h icag o W orld's Fair in 1933 and h ittin g m y head on th e b o tto m , and the ch ild w ho w ent down the slide at the fair in 1933 and h it his head on th e b o tto m cou ld rem em ber g ettin g a sco o ter for C hristm as six m onths earlier, and th e ch ild w ho g o t th e sco o ter could rem em ber going shopping for red W ellin g to n b o o ts six m onths before that, then, b y th e linking criterion , I am also th e ch ild w ho w ent shopping for red "W ellies" a w hole y ear b efo re th e earliest m em ory I can now cali up. W h a t this new linking criterion o f personal id en tity does is to include in th e life o f me, as a person, m uch th a t I can now no longer recall, in fact, much, much m ore than I can now recall. I am th e person w ho did A if eith er I can now rem em ber d oing A, or else I can rem em ber doing B and th at person w ho did B can rem em ber doing A, or I can rem em ber doing C and th a t person w ho did C can rem em ber doing B and the person w ho did B can rem em ber doing A, and so on for as m any interm ediate m em ory links as you like. R ecen t w ork on m em ory in infants suggests that, if we use a linking criterion of this sort for personal identity, th e early ch ild ­ h o o d and even infancy th at would certainly b e lost to us on a standard Lockean criterion o f personal identity will b e ours after all. O n e experim ent has shown th at a m em orable exp erien ce of an infant o f on ly six m onths may b e accessible to th a t ch ild as

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m uch as tw o years later .8 So th e cap acity for episodic m em ory extends b ack into very early infancy. But eventually, as we grow up, alm ost all th o se very early episodic m em ories are apparently lost. W h a t begins to develop in th e three-y ear-old is so-called autobiograph ical m em ory .9 By this tim e we can give our personal m em ories at least a minimal "story line." Episodic m em ories that seem irrelevant to th e story we are able to tell about our lives sim ply drop out. For an adult, th en, m uch of ch ild h o o d is lost to direct recall. Perhaps it never made it into th e "long-term -m em ory bank" anyw ay, or perhaps it g o t th ere but was later dislodged b y the developm ent of autobiographical m em ory. But recognition of this fact shouldn't m ake me think o f m y ch ild h o o d self as an alien creature, any m ore than I should think o f th e man w ho w ent into th e bank on, say, th e third of O c to b e r th ree years ago to withdraw seventy-five dollars from m y ch eck in g a ccou nt as an alien creature. (H e was m e!) I can n o t now rem em ber b ein g the man w ho w ithdrew th e seventy-five dollars from my accou nt on th at occasion , but th e n ext w eek I still rem em bered w ithdrawing th e m oney w hen I sought to rationalize m y bankbook. And th e w eek after th a t I rem em bered rationalizing m y ban kbook w hen I ordered new ch e ck fillers, and so on, in an intertw ined set o f m em ory links th at co n n e ct th e first experien ce w ith my present life, experience, and m em ory. A nd so it is, to o , w ith m y ch ild hood. I can't now rem em ber m y seco n d day o f sch o o l. But a w eek later I still could, w hen a friend's m o th er asked me about the first w eek of school. And a w eek after th a t I cou ld rem em ber b ein g asked about the first w eek o f school, even th ou gh already the d irect m em ory o f th e second day was fading. Still, th ere are m em ory links th at co n n e ct up th at distant day w ith the present one. T o find w hat I have ju st been saying satisfactory does n ot rule out supposing th at there are psy cholog ically interesting gaps in

88

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one's m em ory, including p sychologically interestin g gaps in one's m em ory of one's own ch ild hood. Perhaps a Freudian or o th er account of amnesia m ight help us understand w hy som e o f these gaps are there. But it isn't that our child hood s are, in general, unrelated to us through m em ory. A nd so we do n o t have this reason for feeling, as a general thing, alienated from our ch ild ­ hood. T h e m em ory link that co n n ects us w ith our very early selves may be convoluted; but then so are th e links th at co n n e ct us w ith the day-to-day existen ce we en jo y ed last year, or last m on th , or even yesterday.

8 Childhood and Death

iV la n y adults are sh ocked to realize that tw o classics o f modern children's literature deal directly w ith death. T h e y are shocked because th e very idea o f discussing death w ith children strikes them as offensively inappropriate. Y e t n o t only are Charlottes Weh b y E. B. W h ite and Tuck Everlasting by N atalie Babbitt good books th a t child ren really like, th ey are also serious attem pts to co m e to term s w ith our com m on m o rtality.1 Tuck Everlasting is a philosophical adventure story. Full of action and surprise, it is held to g eth er by a rem arkably sustained, eloquent, and engrossing effort to co n vin ce W in n ie, th e young heroine, th a t th e ordinary life of childh ood , adulthood, oíd age, and death is vastly preferable to an everlasting life arrested at ten or sev enteen or forty-tw o. W in n ie Foster, ten years oíd, w ho is about to drink from a spring in h er family's w ood, is suddenly kidnapped by M ae T u ck and h er tw o sons. T h e T u ck s eventually explain to W in n ie that th e y a ll— father, m other, and tw o sons— drank from th at spring eigh ty-sev en years ago. T h e result is that th ey all stopped aging. "If you'd had a drink o f it today,'' M ae tells W in n ie, "you'd stay a little girl forever. You'd never grow up, n o t ever." T h e T u ck s p oin t out th at th ey don't fit into the so ciety around them . T h e y can't even stay in on e place for long. "People g et to w ondering," as M ae puts it.

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M o re basically, the T u ck s sim ply don't fit into th e world. O u t in a row boat on a summer's evening, M ae's husband, T u ck , tries to explain. "Everything's a w heel," h e says, "turning and turm ng, never stopping. T h e frogs^ is part o f it, and th e bugs, and th e fish, and th e w ood thrush, to o . A nd people. But never th e sam e ones. Always com ing in new, always grow ing and ch an gin g, and always m oving on. T h at's th e way it's supposed to be. T h a t's th e w ay it is" (5 6 ). W h en their row boat gets stuck, T u ck m akes ready use o f th e analogy: But this rowboat now, it's stuck. If we didn't move it out ourself, it would stay here forever, trying to get loose, but stuck. That's what we Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. W e ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, W innie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. (56)

A t one p oint W in n ie blurts out, "I don't w ant to die." T u ck replies: N ot now, your tim es not now. But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing. But it's passing us by, us Tucks. Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't cali it living, what we got. W e just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road. (57)

Tuck Everlasting gradually nudges its readers, w h eth er children or adults, to th e conclu sión th at any life th at includes real living has a beginning, a middle, and an end. G iven th e c h o ice b etw een an unendingly arrested ch ild h o o d and a life of th e norm al sort, th e h eroine of the story finally chooses m ortality. T h e reader, w h ether nine or eigh ty-nine, is likely to approve th e ch o ice , or, if n o t actually approve it, at least understand it. S ch oo lteach ers and librarians report th at this b o o k is well liked by children. N o doubt m any adults, esp ecially th o se w ho have

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n o t been able to co n fro n t th eir own m ortality, recoil at th e suggestion th at a b o o k for children should co n fro n t this top ic, or that th ey can profit from reading it. T h e y are w rong. In fact, I on ce heard a sch o o l librarían testify to th e w orth o f having parents discuss this bo o k , w ith th eir children, in a public setting. T h e librarían had run a "great books for children" group in w hich Tuck Everlasting was included. T h e children, w ho had been rem arkably open and reflective in discussing th e b o o k am ong them selves, w ere

esp ecially

interested to

hear how

th eir own

parents

responded to th e bo o k. T h e didn't know w hat th eir parents had to say about death, since th e to p ic had never been bro ach ed at hom e. In th e end, th e parents seem ed grateful to have been prodded in to d isclosing to th eir children th eir own fears and anxieties, particularly in response to such a wise story.

T h e popularity o f Charlotte's Weh is, in a way, even m ore surprising than th a t o f Tuck Everlasting. It is, after all, a b o o k in w hich there are passages like this one: The thought of death carne to him and he began to tremble. "Charlotte?" he said, softly. "Yes, Wilbur?" "I don't want to die." "O f course you don't," said Charlotte in a comforting voice. (62)

T o b e sure, W ilb u r is only a pig. And C h arlo tte is ju st a spider. Still, an yon e w ho has co m e this far in th e story will doubtless have co m e to identify w ith these characters, m uch as if th ey were hum an beings. N o doubt th e barnyard setting and th e fact that th e ch aracters are n o t ju st animals, but talking animals, distance us som ew hat from th e them e of m ortality, or at least m ortality in "the real w orld." It is, after all, a talking pig's m ortality and a talking spider's m ortality th at th e story is about. N evertheless, the characters, though som ew hat rem oved from "real life," are hardly rem óte. T h e engaging directness w ith w hich

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th ey talk about th eir situation makes th e analogies to hum an life and death unm istakable.

.

By the tim e we are grown up, m ost o f us have ourselves given som ething very m uch like W ilbur's speech, or had it given to us b y som eone else. I can rem em ber during m y gradúate sch o o l days having m y friend, Klaus, w ho was an exch an ge student from Berlín, tell o f b ein g aw akened during th e n ig h t b y Sh an ti, an Indian gradúate student in m athem atics we b o th knew. "W h at is it?" asked Klaus, w ho was struggling to wake up. "I don't want to die," said Shanti. Klaus, w ho had been a m edical orderly in W o rld W a r II w ith th e G erm án army on the Russian front, and w ho had m ade vivid com parisons in my hearing o f his own war exp erien ce w ith T o lstoy's account o f Prince A nd rés b attlefron t exp erien ce in W ar and Peace, had him self had Shanti's th ou gh t m any tim es. "O f course you don't," he said to Shanti. In Charlotte's Web, C h arlo tte does m ore than co m fo rt h er friend Wilbur,- she saves him from slaughter b y m aking him a famous pig. She does th at by w riting m essages in h er w ebs th a t celeb rate W ilbur. E. B. W h ite makes it clear to the readers o f this story th at writers do som etim es have th e ability to m ake ch aracters outlive th eir creator's lives. T h e poignancy of the story arises from the to u ch in g irony that, as C harlo tte realizes from th e first, she herself is doom ed to die at the end o f th e summer. H er last efforts, as h er stren gth fades, produce an enorm ous egg sack, w h ich is h er on ly h op e o f a sort o f afterlife. Charlotte's Web is popular w ith children w ho have no experien ce w ith life-threatening illness or death. But it en jo ys a special place in the lives of may children battling term inal illness, as M yra Bluebond -L angner reports in her p ioneering w ork on leukem ic c h il­ dren, The Prívate Worlds o f Dying Children.The most popular book among these children was Charlotte's Web. W hen Mary and Jeffrey reached stage 5 [the stage of full awareness

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of their illness], it was the only book they would read. Several children at stage 5 asked for chapters of it to be read to them when they were dying. But as one parent stated, "They never chose the happy chapters." T hey always chose the chapter in which Charlotte dies. After any child [in the pediatric oncology ward] died, the book had a resurgence of popularity among the others.2

In a re cen t co lle ctio n of papers, Children and Health Care-. M oral and Social Issues, tw o philosophers, Rosalind Ekman Ladd and Loretta M . K opelm an, explore th e reasons w hy this b o o k m ight b e so popular am ong children dying o f leukemia, and w hat message th ey m igh t g et from it.3 A ccord in g to Ladd, "the main valué statem ent th at the b o o k as a w hole makes is this: W h a t is natural is g oo d and dying w hich is natural and in accord ance w ith nature is a g oo d dying and to b e accep ted , but a death w hich is unnatural is a bad death and to b e p ro tested" (1 0 9 ). In those terms th e initial th reat to kill W ilb u r, becau se he was th e runt pig, as well as the som ew hat later threat to slaughter him J o r m eat, are b o th bad, and to b e resisted . But C h a rlo tte s dying at the end o f a spider's norm al life span is good, and som ething to be accepted. Ladd tries to bring out som e of the ways in w hich C h a rlo ttes death is a g ood one: She is aware of what is happening to her, she plans for it, lays her eggs, talks with her friends about it and says her good-byes. Much of the peacefulness that surrounds her death may be attributed to her foreknowledge and planning. Although the life-span of a spider cannot be changed, Charlotte is still able to exercise choice over some aspects of her dying. H er first great choice is to go with W ilbur to the Fair, even though that means she will die there instead of at home. Then she chooses to use her last days spinning words into her web to help Wilbur. (115)

As Ladd points out, fam ilies and m edical personnel may help dying ch ild ren exercise ch o ice s, th at will make th eir deaths approxim ate m ore clo sely to C h a rlo tte s m odel o f "the good

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death." Y et, o f course, a dying child, o r even a ch ild w ith a lifethreatening illness, will learn in m any different ways th a t th ere is n othin g at all natural about the death o f a child.

Loretta Kopelman, in her reply to Ladd, treats Charlottes Web as, among other things, a response to the problem of evil. ("If the Creator is good, omniscient, and powerful, why do the innocent suffer pain and early death?",- 126) She compares the response of W hite's story to Plato's response: Plato and W hite seem to picture suffering and evil in the world differently. For Plato, the non-moral evils of pain, untimely death, and loss cannot be eliminated from the world because they are part of what is. There is no way to make the chaotic world entirely fit real notions of goodness and justice. No one is to blame,- this is a necessary feature of finitude. But the picture suggested in E. B. White's Charlottes Web is that the world is not only as good as it can be (a view with which Plato might agree) but that when viewed from the right perspective, evil has a purpose or disappears as illusory. Life is a triumph, miracle, and glory. (126—127) T o back up her interpretation K opelm an quotes th e penultim ate paragraph to the story: Mr. Zuckerman took fine care of Wilbur all the rest of his days, and the pig was often visited by friends and admirers, for nobody ever forgot the year of his triumph and the miracle of [Charlottes] web. Life in the barn was very good— night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days. It was the best place to be, thought Wilbur, this warm delicious cellar, with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything. (White, 183) Kopelm an goes on to com pare the tw o responses to th e special evil o f dying children:

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Plato suggests nature is "contaminated," and pain and suffering simply are part of the conditions of finitude. The child who gets sick and suffers is "dealt a bad hand" by nature. W hite suggests another view, however, which may explain why children facing death find Charlotte's Web comforting. In this story, fears are expressed but we are reassured: everything is as good as it can be, evil and suffering are explained as necessary, death is not painful, and those who do n.ot.have to die (Wilbur) are saved. O ne is not - / abandoned since one is "never without friends." The dying person [C harlotte] is central, good, and wise. She is always loved and remembered as a good friend and a person of accomplishment. There is rebirth and continuity: “each spring there were new baby spiders.'' (127)

I suspect th at n o t m any parents or m edical professionals discuss th e problem of evil w ith seriously ill children. It's good then that th ey can read, in story form, at least one im portant response to it. T h e re will doubtless be th o se w ho protest th at all this discus­ sion rests on a sentim entalized over-interp retation o f th e capacities and responses o f you ng children. D evelopm ental psychologists have show n, these protesters will insist, that young children have no adequate co n cep t o f death. T h erefo re, young children w ith life-th reaten in g illness can n o t understand the threat they face, and so are incapable o f discussing it as a m anifestation o f the problem o f evil. Susan C arey, in h er Conceptual Chance in Childhood, reports that "there is a robust clinical literature on the child's understanding of death" and th at all authors "agree on th ree periods in th e child's em erging understanding o f death" (6 0 ).4 C arey summarizes this way th e picture th at em erges from this developm ental literature o f th e first stage o f a child's understanding of death: In the first period, characteristic of children age 5 and under, the notion of death is assimilated to the notions of sleep and departure. T he emotional import of death comes from the child's view of it

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as a sorrowful separation and/or as the ultimate act of aggression •

In this period death is seen neither as final norias inevitable.

Just as one wakes from sleep or returns from a trip, so one can return from death. Although children associate death with closed eyes and immobility, as fn sleep, they do not grasp th e_tot aljtyjjt~ the cessation of function. Ñ or do they understand the causes of death. Even though they might mention illness or accidents, it is clear that they envision no mechanisms by which illness or acci­ dents cause death. (60)

And here is h er summary accou n t o f the n ext stage: The second stage (early elementarv vears) in the child's understanding of death is transitional and is characterized differently in the different studies. All authors agree that children now understand the finality of death, and that they understand the sense in which a dead person no longer exists. However, children still see death as caused by an external agent_. . . The child does not yet conceptualize death in terms of what happens within the body as a result of these external events. (61)

And here is the third stage: In the final stage death is seen as an inevitable biological process. Such a view of death first becomes evident around-age.-9-or 1 0 . . . T o [a] question about the causes of death, one sage 12-year-old answered, "When the heart stops, blood stops circulating, you stop breathing, and that's it . . . W ell, there's lots of ways it can get started, but that's what really happens." (64)

N o doubt there are various difficulties one m igh t raise w ith the claim th at these are the stages in w hich children co m e to under­ stand w hat death is. But certainly if this acco u n t is even roughly co rrect, there is no g ood reason to try to discuss death, le t alone the death of children as a m anifestation of th e problem o f evil, w ith young children, say, children under th e age o f nine. T h is is because vounger children will n ot understand th e finality o f death. O n e set of ethical issues im portant in th e treatm en t o f alm ost

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all patients, including children, co n cern s ^disclosure) H ow much should d octors tell patients about diagnoses and prognoses? T h e standard developm ental accou n t o f how children acquire an adequate co n c e p t o f death suggests that, for stage one or stage two child ren w ho are suffering from a life-th reatenin g accid en t or ill­ ness, disclosure is sim ply a nonissue. Sin ce these patients have on ly a p ro to -co n cep t of death and, therefore, only a defective co n cep tio n o f the threat posed by life-th reatening accid ents and illness, th ey sim ply aren't in a cogn itive position to have th e seriousness o f the situation disclosed to them . Perhaps th e m edical team needs to try to deal w ith these children's fears in th e way on e m igh t try to deal w ith an adult's phobias,- but these patients are apparently n o t co g n itively com p eten t to have their true situ­ ation revealed to them . A related issue is decisionmakintj. W h a t part, if any, should a seriously injured or ill ch ild play in decisions co n cern in g treatm ent? Even thou gh co n se n t to treatm ent is n o t a legal requirem ent for ch ild patients, perhaps som e sort of involvem ent in th e d ecisión process is morally required if th e c h ild is .ta b e respected as a person in h er or his own right. But w hat sort o f involvem ent? T h e relevance o f th e standard developm ental accou n t is, it seem s, equally clear here. T o play any sort of meaningful role in m aking decisions co n cern in g one's own treatm ent, one has to understand som ethin g o f th e seriousness o f one's illness or injury and appreciate to an im portant ex ten t w hat success and failure in treatm en t am ount to. A ch ild w ith a lim ited.or_defective co n cep t o f death is sim ply n o t equipped to understand th e seriousness of lt f ^ h r e a te n in g illness or injury and, th erefore, can n o t play any rational role in ch o o sin g the best course of treatm ent. T h e standard developm ental accou nt o f how children com e to develop a c o n c e p t o f death thus seems to underw rite a com p letely paternalistic approach to children under nine years of age w ith resp ect b o th to (1) disclosure o f diagnosis and prognosis and (2) co n se n t to treatm ent. O n e is encouraged to think that, although

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th e m anagem ent o f ch ild patients ought to m inim ize p atient dis­ tress,

it need

not,

indeed,

it cannot really,

resp ect patient

autonomy,- the cognitive co m p eten ce required for autonom y is simply m issing in young .children. Before we rest to o com fortably in our accep ta n ce o f m edical paternalism for ch ild patients, it is w orth reflectin g on th e ex p e­ rience of the children on w hom th e research on "con cep ts of death" was done. T h e only exp erience m any o f them will have had w ith death is the death o f a pet. Even if a ch ild in th e age range studied has experienced a death in the fam ily, it will m uch m ore likely have been th e death of a grandparent than th a t o f a parent or sibling. O f course, there are children in this age range w ho have lost a parent, sibling, or best friend. A nd there are children w ho, them selves, suffer life-threatenin g accid ents or term inal illness. In fact it was children in this last group th at we w ere focusing on in asking w h ether or how m uch th ey should b e included in th e disclosure o f diagnosis or in decisionm aking. But these cases, b ein g excep tional, will not have played a significant role in establish in g how children com e by a co n cep t o f death. W e need to ask, specifically, w hether the standard developm ental acco u n t applies to them . H ere th e research o f M yra B luebond-Langner in The Prívate Worlds o f Dying Children is esp ecially relevant. T h e child ren Bluebond -L angner studied w ere victim s o f acute ly m p h o cy tic leukemia. A t the tim e of h er study, 1 9 7 1 - 7 2 , th e prognosis for such patients was alm ost hopeless. Fifty patients w ere included in her study, thirty-tw o as "inform ants," eighteen as "prim ary inform ants." T h e ir ages ranged from th ree to nine. O f th e eigh teen pri­ mary inform ants, six survived at the end o f th e n in e-m o n th study. By the tim e Bluebond-Langner finished w riting h er b o o k som e five years later, none was still iiving. W hat

em erges

from

Bluebond-Langner's

studies

is

that,

although the children did go through identifiable stages in com in g to understand and deal w ith th e likely onset o f th e ir own death,

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th o se stages w ere co rrelated w ith th eir own life experience w ith a term inal illness, and n o t at all w ith th eir ages. T h e se are the stages Bluebond-Langner identified: T he children first learned that "it" (not all the children knew the ñame of the disease) was a serious illness. [Stage 1] At this time they also accumulated Information about the ñames of the drugs and their side effects. By the time children reached stage 2, they knew which drugs were used when, how, and with what consequences. T he third stage was marked by an understanding of the special procedures needed to administer the drugs and additional treatments that might be required as a result of the drugs' side effects . . . But they saw each procedure, each treatment, as a unique event. N ot until they reached stage 4 were they able to put treat­ ments, procedures, and symptoms into a larger perspective. By then, the children had an idea of the overall disease process— that the disease was a series of relapses and remissions, and that one could get sick over and over again in the same way, and that the medicines did not always last as long as they were supposed to, if at all. But it was not until the fifth stage that the children learned the cycle ended in death. T hey realized [then] that there was a finite number of drugs and that when these drugs were no longer effective, death became imminent. (167)

O f course, any ch ild w ho reach ed the fifth stage in this process had a co n cep tio n o f death as the irreversible cessation o f all b io lo g ical functions. And any ch ild w ho reached that stage knew th a t death w ould co m e to h er or him, n ot som etim e in th e unreal future, but soon. Thus, every leukem ic ch ild in BluebondLangner's study w ho reached Stage 5 would have a co n cep tio n of death th a t included all th e elem ents in th e last-stage co n cep t of th e standard developm ental account. Bluebond-Langner's stages m ight b e thou gh t of as Piagetian, ex cep t for on e crucial feature: th e u tter irrelevance of th e child's c h ro n o lo gical age. T h is feature also puts h er accou nt at odds w ith th e standard developm ental account.

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Bluebond-Langner explains the im portance o f a child's exp eri­ en ce this way: T he place of experience in the socialization process helps illuminate why a child could remain at a given stage without passing to the next for what seemed an unusual length of time. Tom , for example, remained at stage 4 for a year, whereas Jeffrey remained at stage 4 for only a week. Since passage to stage 5 depended on the news of another child's death, and none had died after Tom reached stage 4, he could not pass to stage 5. W hen Jennifer died, the first child to die that year, all the children in stage 4, regardless of how long they had been there, passed to stage 5. The role of experience in developing awareness also explained why age and intellectual ability were not related to the speed or completeness with which the children passed through the stages. Some three- and four-year-olds of average intelligence knew more about their prognosis than some very intelligent nine-year-olds, who were still in their first remission, had had fewer clinic visits, and henee less experience. (169)

C learly the standard developm ental accou nt o f how children acquire the co n cep t o f death is irrelevant to term inally ill children in a hospital ward w ith o th er term inally ill children. O n e could, perhaps, extrapólate from these findings to con clu d e that, if we placed children on a continuum from N o direct experience with death at all at one end to Terminally ill and in a treatment procjram with other terminally ill children at th e other, the exp erience o f th e vast m ajority of children would place them som ew here betw een th e two extremes,- but perhaps m ost o f them w ould b e clo ser to th e innoce n ce extrem e than to th e extrem e o f term inal illness. T h e standard developm ental acco u n t o f how child ren acquire á co n cep t o f death is satisfactory, at best, for child ren in the "normal" range of experience w ith life-th reaten in g a ccid en t and illness, th at is, children largely in n o cen t of such exp erien ce. It is irrelevant to children w ith a great deal o f such exp erien ce. T h erefore, it is also irrelevant to eth ical issues about w h eth er we should

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disclose th e bleak prognosis to a ch ild w ith a term inal illness, or en list th e child's participation in treatm ent decisions. T h e re is, in fact, som e evidence th at treating term inally ill ch il­ dren w ith a real resp ect for th eir autonom y by disclosing their prognosis a n d fenlisting th eir participation in treatm ent decisions increases dram atically th e ch an ces th at the children will be h ealth y o f m ind and free from severe depression.5 N o d oubt som e children w ho face th e real prospect of imminen t death also have, for th at very reason, im portant things to tell us and to discuss w ith us if we are only strong enough to listen and to share. But having a good discussion w ith such a child , even w ith th e help o f a g ood story like Tuck Everlastinc) or Charlotte's Web, requires b o th an openness to the ch ild and an openness to thinking about death th at we adults finds extrem ely difficult to m anage. A term inally injured or ill ch ild is th e ultím ate th reat to our parental pretensions. If we can learn to deal honestly w ith th at th reat and to deal respectfully as well as lovingly w ith such a child, we will have taken a m ajor step in th e devel­ op m en t o f our own maturity.

Literature for Children

I s th ere som ething inevitably "phony" about stories w ritten by adults for children? Som e people have th o u gh t so. Jacq u elin e R o ses b o o k The Case o f Peter Pan carries the subtitle The Impossibility o f Children's Fiction.' Rose w rites: "C hildren's fiction is im possible, n ot in th e sense th at it can n o t b e w ritten (that w ould b e nonsense), but in th at it hangs on an im possibility . . . T h is is th e im possible relation betw een adult and child" (1). O n e th ing th at Rose thinks makes th e relation betw een adult and ch ild in children's literature im possible is th e "rupture" betw een adult w riter and ch ild reader. "C hildren's fiction sets up th e ch ild as an outsider to its own process," she continú es, "and then aims, unasham edly, to take th e ch ild in" (2 ). O f course th ere is an obvious w ay in w hich all fiction aims to "take the reader in." W riters o f fiction are storytellers w ho make up stories and tell them as if th ey w ere reporting on som ething th at had actually happened. Y ou may protest th at adult readers, at least, are seldom taken in. And by th at you would mean th at adults ty p ically know they are reading fiction rather than fact, w hereas child ren m ay b e far less clear, b o th about th e general d istinction betw een fact and fiction and also about w heth er a given story is fact or w h eth er it is fiction. I'm not at all sure that children, as a general th in g, are indeed

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"taken in" b y th e stories they read or have read to them . A t least I am n o t co n vin ced th at m any of them think that w hat happens in a fictional story "really did happen." Anyway, it isn't taking child ren in by m aking them think som ething purely fictional is factual th at m ost interests Rose. Sh e is m ore co n cern ed th at ch il­ dren's fiction m ay b e m otivated by an adult's unhealthy infatuation w ith an idealized child , an infatuation th at may be sexual in som e unconsciou s or repressed way. I have no wish to play down th e m otivational com plexities to b e found in the w riters o f fiction in general, or writers o f fiction for children in particular. G o o d writers are artists and, as we all know , artists are am ong th e m ost fascinating subjects for p sy ch o ­ logical study there are. But I think we should be suspicious o f the idea th at all, or even m ost, writers o f children's stories have m ore co m p lex o r m ore questionable m otivation than writers of oth er types o f fiction. For an instructive contrast to R o se s deep suspicions about the w riters o f children's literature and the stories th ey write, we m ight lo o k to a provocative co m m ent from W . H . Auden. 'T h e re are g oo d b ooks," Auden w rote, "w hich are on ly for adults, because th e ir com p rehension presupposes adult experiences, but there are no g oo d books w hich are on ly for children.''2 Auden is no doubt righ t th a t a g oo d b o o k for children will b e one a reader need n ot have h ad adult experience to com p rehend or appreciate. Auden is also right, I think, in insisting th at a g ood children's b o o k is one a reader need n o t lack adult experience or sophistication to appre­ ciate. A nd th at fact is very im portant. If a g oo d b o o k for children is sim ply a g ood b o o k th at does n o t presuppose adult experien ce or sophistication, then there need b e no "rupture" in children's literature betw een w riter and audien ce. H ow can this be? H ow can there b e books th at adults can appreciate fully as m uch as children? O n e m ight suppose th at the on ly w ay this cou ld happen would be for a b o o k to indulge adult nostalgia for an earlier and m ore in n o cen t life. If this w ere right,

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then a good children's b o o k would have to be phony for an oth er reason. It would have to encourage adult readers to pretend th ey w ere children again. N o doubt children's books do often appeal to adult nostalgia. T h is nostalgia may take various forms. It m igh t b e nostalgia for one's own ch ild h o o d — perhaps nostalgia induced b y reco llectio n s of hearing this story, or similar stories, as a child. O r it m igh t be nostalgia brought on by thinking about characters or situations in the story that recall one's own child hood . O r th e nostalgia m ight ju st be a longing for a sim pler world, a w orld as presented to, or through, the eyes of a child. In the last ch ap ter I discussed tw o classic children's stories th at appeal to adults as well as to children by addressing th e existential issue o f our com m on m ortality. N atalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting and E. B. W h ite's Cbarlotte's Web deal w ith th at m ost frightening issue o f all, death, in a genuinely philosophical way, nam ely, by encouraging us readers, w h ether oíd or young, to reflect freshly on th e m eaning of death. O th e r children's stories are ju st as p h il­ osophical, even w hen th ey are less existential. C onsid er the story "T h e G arden," from A rnold Lobel's w onderful co llectio n Frog and Toad Together} In th e story T o a d , trying to follow the exam ple of his friend Frog, plants seeds in his garden. Finding that th e seeds do n ot im m ediately sprout and show their sprouts above the soil, T o a d shouts at them to grow. Frog tells him he is frightening his seeds. T o a d is horrified at th e th ou gh t th at he m ight have frightened his seeds. T o co m fo rt them h e burns candles in their vicinity. H e sings songs, reads poetry, and plays music to his seeds. W h en these various efforts produce no observ­ able result, T o a d lam ents, "T h ese must b e th e m ost frightened seeds in the w hole w orld." Exhausted, he falls asleep. Frog wakes T o a d up w ith the joyfu l news th at th e seeds have finally sprouted. T o a d is, of course, pleased and relieved. H e mops his brow and sighs, "But you w ere right, Frog, it was very hard work."

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From m y own rather extensive experience o f reading this story to hearers o f all ages, I can testify th at it has b o th an im m ediate and a lasting appeal. Toad 's earnest naiveté inevitably moves us. And we naturally resonate, w heth er we are four or seventy-four, to th e w ay Frog tries to help his som ew hat sim ple-m inded friend. But th e real genius o f the storyteller shows itself in th e last line: "You w ere right, Frog, it was very hard w ork." T h a t line gets an appreciative sm ile and chu ckle out o f everyone, from age three to eig h ty -th ree. T h e jo k e is profound. N o reader or hearer really thinks that singing to seeds, playing the violin for their benefit, or reading poetry to them will make them sprout and grow. But w hy not? T h e story, one cou ld say, is a dram atization o f a fallacy teachers o f inform al lo g ic som etim es cali by the Latin ñame post hoc, ercjo propter hoc. ("A fter this, therefore because o f this.") T h e m ere fact th a t seed grow th follow s p oetry reading, for exam ple, is n ot by itself sufficient evidence to establish th at poetry reading causes, or even helps cause, seed grow th. O f course, m any, m any cases of seed grow th after poetry reading w ould b e m ore significant in establishing the causal hyp othesis, though perhaps n o t very m uch m ore significant, unless th ere w ere also cases like this one excep t for having no poetry reading and then no seed grow th either. T h a t further finding m ight suggest th e need for y et further investigation. W e w ould w ant to know if it was really th e extra hours of light from burning candles during the all-nig ht vigil th at caused seed growth, rath er than the p oetry reading itself. And now, o f course, we are well launched on the difficult task o f tryin g to say w hat kind o f evidence is necessary and sufficient for establish ing th at one th ing is the cause o f another. T h e general question belo n gs to philosophy. T h e specific question about w hat m akes seeds grow belongs to botany, or to agriculture, w here, in fact, th e possible effect o f doing som ething like playing music to sprouts or plants is a m atter o f genuine controversy.

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Toad's earnest rem ark about it's b ein g hard w ork to g et th e seeds to grow is, of course, a jo k e . But it is th e kind o f jo k e th at reminds us of our ignorance and u ncertainty and encourages us to think m ore about th e m atter. In this way it is a p h ilosop h ically provocative jo k e . For the adult reader the problem o f w hy th e burning of candles is, or is not, a cause o f seed grow th m ay lack th e freshness and u rgency it cou ld have for a child . But vis-á-vis our children we adults have on ly th e pseudo-advantage of know ing w hat m ost people conven tionally cou n t as real causes rather than false ones. U nless we are rather so ph isticated ph ilo s­ ophers, we will not b e prepared to specify w hat we co n sid er n ecessary and sufficient cond itions for one event's b ein g th e cause of another. Each of th e Lobel stories in this co lle ctio n includes a line th at makes a philosophically provocative jo k e . T a k e "D ragons and G iants." T h a t story is about bravery, w hich, if we are h o n est, we will also admit we have trouble defining and identifying. T h e story begins w ith Frog and T o a d asking them selves w h eth er th e y are brave th e way the characters in the story they are reading are. Those characters fight giants and slay dragons. T o determ ine w h eth er th ey, to o , are brave, Frog and T o a d lo o k into a m irror. "W e look brave," th ey report. "Yes, but are we?" th ey w ant to know . T o prove th ey are brave, Frog and T o a d set o ff on a dangerous mission: they clim b a m ountain. W h ile on th eir m ission th ey encounter a hawk, a snake, and an avalanche— all natural enem ies of frogs and toads. T h a t th ey survive these threats m igh t cou n t in favor o f th eir bravery, if th eir activity w ere n o t so frenzied and hysterical. In the end th ey run b ack to Toad 's house, w here one jum ps into b ed and pulís the co ver over his head, and th e o th er jum ps into the clo set and closes th e door. T h e y stay in their respective hiding places a very lo n g tim e, "just feelin g very brave together." T h e story's final line, "just feeling very brave to g eth er," uses genuinely S o cratic irony to makes us realize so m eth in g im portant.

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C on fid en t as we readers are th at Frog and T o a d in the story are n o t really brave, w e probably can't say w hat bravery is, at least n o t in any clearly satisfactory way. D oes one have to do so m e­ th in g dangerous to b e brave? Som etim es, it seems, staying in one's place (even in bedl) rather than running away (perhaps into big sister's b ed room ) expresses bravery. Is having a sinking feeling in one's stom ach o r having one's knees k n o ck and one's teeth ch a tter even relevant to th e question o f w heth er one is brave? W e may find it hard to say. But if we can't define 'brave' in any fully sat­ isfactory way, how can we b e certain th at Frog and T o a d are n ot brave? T h e jo k e is not ju st on Frog and T o ad . W h e th e r we are four o r forty, th e jo k e is also on us. A rnold L obel had a special genius for incorporating So cratic iron y into his sim plest children's stories. H is one-liners have the grace, hum or, and profundity o f great poetry. Y e t Frog and Toad Together, because o f th e utter sim plicity o f its vocabulary, counts as a prim er, an "I can read'' book. For a seco n d exam ple, I ch o o se a story to ld in an equally eco nom ical way, th ou gh it is aim ed at a som ew hat older child . It is Yellow and Pink b y W illiam S teig .4 S teig also illustrated his story, and th e pictures are an im portant part o f its charm . Still, th e story b y itself is beautiful. T w o w ooden figures, one painted pink, th e o th er yellow , lie on new spapers in the sun, perhaps to dry. T h e y look like m arionettes, ex cep t for n o t having strings attach ed to them . T h e pink one is sh o rt and fat, w hereas th e yellow one is straight and thin. Each starts to w onder w hat h e is doing th ere on newspapers in th e sun. W h e n Y ello w n o tices Pink beside him he asks, "D o I know you?" "I don't think so," Pink replies cautiously. "D o you happen to know w hat we're doing here?" Y ellow asks. Pink doesn't know. "W h o are we?" asks Yellow . Pink doesn't know th at either. "So m eo n e must have made us," Pink conjectu res.

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Yellow produces all sorts o f difficulties w ith Fink's h yp othesis and him self proposes, "W e're an accid ent, som ehow or o th e r we ju st happened.'' Pink starts laughing. "You mean these arms I can m ove this way and that," he asks incredulously, "this head I can turn in any direction, this breathin g nose, these w alking feet, all of this ju st h ap ­ pened, by som e kind of fluke? T h at's preposterous!" Yellow is n o t swayed. H e invites his com p anion to stop and reflect. "W ith enough tim e," he says, "a thousand, a m illion, m aybe tw o and a half m illion years, lots of unusual things cou ld happen. W h y not us?" W ith great patience Pink takes up one feature o f th eir co n stru c­ tion after another. In each case he ch allen ges Y ellow to suggest how th at feature cou ld have been th e result of an accid en t. For each feature Pink m entions Y ellow tries to say how it could, indeed, have been the result of an accident. "Suppose," he suggests, "a bran ch broke o ff a tree and fell on a sharp rock in ju st the right way. So th ere you have legs." H e continúes: "T h en w inter carne and this piece of w ood froze and the ice split th e m outh open. T h ere's your m outh. T h e n m aybe one day a b ig hurricane to o k th at piece o f w ood and sent it tum bling down a rocky hill w ith little bushes, and it g ot bum ped and chipped and brushed and shaped this way and that." Slow ly Y ellow im agines accid ental events th at m igh t have accounted for all features of th eir co n stru ctio n — arms, fingers, toes, ears, and nostrils. For the origin of eyes he has several suggestions: "Eyes cou ld have been made by insects b o rin g it, or by w oodpeckers, m aybe even by hailstones o f ex actly th e righ t size h ittin g repeatedly in ju st th e right places." Pink is unimpressed. "H ow com e we can see out o f th ese holes th e w oodpecker made?" he wants to know. "Because that's w hat eyes are for, you dumm y," Y ellow replies. W h en Y ellow com p letes his speculative acco u n t of accidental origins, Pink springs on him a further difficulty. "Let's say you're

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right, ju st for th e sake o f conversation," he grants, amiably,- "do you m ean to tell m e all th ose odd things happened not on ly once, but tw ice, so th at there's tw o o f us?" Y ellow is unfazed. "W h y not?" he throw s th e question back to Pink: "In a m illion years, I didn't say five seconds, in a m illion years th e same thing could easily happen tw ice over." Lest his skeptical friend re je ct his suggestions to o quickly he adds: "A m il­ lion years takes a lo n g tim e. Branches do break, winds are always blow ing, there's always som e lightning, and som e hail, and so forth and so on." Finally a m ustachioed man sham bles up, exam ines Pink and Y ellow , and announces, w ith satisfaction, "N ice and dry." As th e m u stachioed man takes Pink and Y ellow away, tucked under his arm, Y ellow w hispers in Pink's ear, "W h o is this guy?" Pink doesn't know . A nd so the story ends. By m aking his figures w ooden, m arionette-type dolls, Steig deprives them o f th e g en etic m echanism s o f self-reproduction, and so o f th e possibilities o f D arw inian selection across generations. But in th at resp ect his speculative biolo g y is a little like th at of th e p re-S o cratic philosophers Em pedocles, D em ocritus, and Leucippus. T h e y , to o , co n jectu red that accid entally acquired characteristics m ight turn out to be functional; and they, to o , lacked a g en etic th eo ry to explain how a ch an ce m utation w ith adaptive valué m igh t b e able to pass on its genotype to later generations. Is it plausible to suppose th at all the clearly functional features o f living organism s are th e result o f an incredibly long period of evolutionary sele c tio n — from th e developm ent of unicellular organism s to th e evolution o f hig h er primates, including human beings? M an y people assume so, but few o f them cou ld give a detailed story o f how this m ight have com e about, perhaps not even a story th at is significantly m ore plausible than Yellow's accou n t.

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In Steig's story Y ellow and Pink fail to reco gn ize th eir creator. M ig h t it b e so w ith us, too?

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W illiam Steig, like A rnold Lobel, uses th e form at o f a story for children to tell a sort o f fable. T h e fable invites th e reader, w h eth er ch ild or adult, to reflect on a deeply philosophical and scientific question about how we human beings carne to be. N eith er Lobel's Frog and T oad Tocjether ñor Steig's Yellow and Pink is phony. Ñ o r are th eir authors manipulative. W ith great p oetic sim plicity these stories raise questions, including fascinating p h il­ osophical questions, th at are well w orth reflectin g on, w h ether one is a ch ild or an adult. In restricting my discussion to stories th at raise philosophical issues I do n o t mean to suggest that, w ithin th e broad field of children's literature, it is only th e philosophical ones th a t avoid being phony. T h a t is certainly n o t true. C hildren's stories can be authentic literature in m any, m any different ways. But at least one way that a story w ritten by an adult for children can m eet th e test o_f_authenticity is by raising hard questions w ith d irectness and sim plicity and also, ideally, w ith humor!

10 Child Art

W hen our you nger daughter was about four years oíd she painted a picture th at has b eco m e a family favorite. In crim son on a brown paper background, it depicts, in a simple, pyramidal form, the heads and shoulders o f three hum an figures. W e framed th e p ic­ ture m any years ago and have hung it, from tim e to tim e, in a bed room or fam ily room . D urin g a house m ove several years ago I carne across the p ain ting again and stopped to admire its elegance and bright brashness. T h o u g h we haven't y et hung it in our new house, I can certain ly im agine finding a g oo d place for it and thinking that, of th e various options open to us, hanging that particular painting w ould b e th e very best th in g we cou ld do w ith th at space. O f course th ere are personal reasons w hy m y fam ily and I like th at particular painting. It rem inds us o f our daughter, w hom we love very m uch. It recalls an interesting period in h er life, and in our lives. A nd b y now it is fam iliar to us in a way th at makes it rein force a sense o f co n tin u ity in our lives. Suppose, though, th at a friend o f ours w ho is a museum curator w ere to visit and to view th e painting. (Let's cali th e painting, w hich now has no ñame, Three Figures in Crimson.) Is it co n ceiv ab le th at a com p eten t art co lle cto r m igh t d ecid e th at Three Figures in Crimson is a significant work o f art, o n e w orth y to b e ex h ibited in, say, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts?

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O f course anyone w ho tried seriously to answer th at question m ight w ant m ore inform ation about Three Figures, or about my daughter, and m ight want to have a look at th e painting itself. But would one need to h a v e 'm o re inform ation, or to lo o k at the painting, to answer th e question? O r have I already said enough to make quite clear th at th e answer is no? T o put th e question the o th er way around, could it be a reasonable response for th e curator o f a m ajor art museum to say th at she would have to lo o k at the painting by a young ch ild to determ ine w h eth er it w ould b e suitable for th e museum's perm anent co llectio n ? O f course the Boston museum m igh t b e d oing a special c o lle c ­ tion to illustrate, so to speak, the natural history o f painting and drawing. T h e curator m ight w ant Three Figures in Crimson as a fine exam ple of som e reco gn izable style or stage o f developm ent in children's painting. I shall explore a little later w hat it m ight mean to say th at this or th at w ork w ould m ake a g oo d addition to a co llectio n of children's art. For th e m om ent, th ou gh , let's consider th e bigger question. Is it co n ceiv able th at Three Figures in Crimson m ight be a g ood addition to a general co lle ctio n o f art? In fact, curators don't go around co lle ctin g art irrespective of category. T h e y may find som ething th at w ould m ake a g o o d addi­ tion to th eir co llectio n o f Im pressionism , or Flem ish art, or Cubism , or Japanese w atercolors, or w hat have you. But th ey colle ct w ork in categories. So even if we don't im agine our friend the curator as m ounting an exh ibition o f children's art, we seem to have to think of h er as categ o rizin g Three Figures in Crimson in some way or other. Is there a reco gn ized categ o ry in w h ich a painting b y a four-year-old m ight excel? Again, th e obvious categ o ry for Three Figures in Crimson would be children's art. But, again, let's p ostp one discussing that. Is there som e o th er categ ory into w hich it m igh t fit? R ecapitulation th eories o f ch ild h o o d o f th e sort we discussed in C hap ter 1 suggest th at Three Figures m ight b e classified as primitive art. But w hich prim itive art? W e ll, suppose th e style were suggestive of som e of th e p reh istoric art o f O cea n ia , say som e of

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th e ro ck or bark art o f W estern Australia. Perhaps interesting com parisons and contrasts cou ld be made betw een Three Figures in Crimson and certain exam ples o f Australian ro ck art. Let's suppose th e affinities, as well as the points o f contrast, were strikingly interesting. Still, th at w ouldn't m ean that my daughter's ch ild h ood painting b elon gs in a museum's co lle ctio n of Australian rock art. It w ouldn't. Ñ o r w ould it fit into any o th er reco gn ized category o f 'prim itive' o r tribal art. And the reason is th at it isn't primitive o r tribal art, no m atter w hat the sim ilarities w ith such art, and no m atter how tem pting the idea is that o n to g en y recapitulates phylogeny. If it w ouldn't fit into a co lle ctio n o f tribal art, then perhaps it should go into a m odern co llectio n . O n e m ight note, for exam ple, sim ilarities b etw een Three Figures in Crimson and som e o f the abstrae tio n ist paintings Paul K lee did in th e 1930s. M aybe it should be added to th e museum's co lle ctio n o f abstract art. It is an im portant fact about K lee th at he was interested in children's art, including, at one point, th e drawings and paintings h e him self had produced as a child. Indeed, th e very first catalogue o f his own art begins w ith exam ples of art h e had produced as a child . A nd m any o f his later works, including especially, I should say, m any paintings from th e last decade of his life, are done in a style suggestive of ch ild art.1 It is quite conceivable th at one of th ese later w orks should b e strikingly similar to Three Figures in Crimson. D o es this m ean th at Three Figures m ight be added, appropriately, to th e museum's co lle ctio n of abstractionism ? N o t really. O f course our friend the curator m ight w ant to m ount a special exh ibition o f children's art in the com pany o f late K lee. T h e p oint m ight b e to help us appreciate the w ork of K lee done in a childlike style by laying it alongside real children's art. In a sim ilar spirit, one m ight put exam ples o f African tribal art alongside w orks b y Picasso th at w ere influenced by African art.2 Again, th e p oin t w ould b e to help us to appreciate Picasso by com p arin g his art w ith th e w ork th at influenced it. O f course it m ight w ork th e o th er way around, to o . Picasso

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m ight help us understand tribal art b etter, and K iee m igh t help us understand ch ild art better. Even so, a special exh ib itio n o f K lee and children's art would not tend to show th at a child's painting, such as Three Figures in Crimson, belongs in th e museum's perm anent co llectio n of tw entieth-centu ry abstractionism , any m ore than th e Picasso-A frican exh ibition would suggest th at early A frican a rt— or som e of it— belongs in, say, th e museum's co lle ctio n of Cubism. T h e basic reason Three Figures doesn't b elo n g in any o f th e co llection s established by m ainline art museums is th at th o se co lle ctions are defined historically and geographically. Strik in g as th e sim ilarities m ight b e betw een Three Figures and painting or drawing in som e categ orized period or reco gn ized m ovem ent, it w ouldn't really belo n g in a co lle ctio n o f th at art because it doesn't b elo n g to that period or m ovem ent. W h e th e r art should b e co lle cte d in som e radically different m anner is a question I shall n o t discuss. Suffice it to say that, as art is now co llected , Three Figures in Crimson wouldn't b elo n g in any co llectio n o f any established art museum. O n e simple alteration in museum co llectio n s w ould open up th e possibility of acquiring Three Figures in Crimson. It w ould b e to establish, as an addition, a perm anent co lle ctio n o f children's art. I turn now to the question o f w heth er it w ould b e appropriate to establish such a co llectio n and to th e broad er question o f how answering th e first question m ight help us b ette r understand the place o f children in our so ciety and culture. T h e re exist already, o f course, museums o f ch ild h ood . Such places nourish adult nostalgia, but th ey also serve th e m ore educational purpose of helping us to think about th e h istory, sociology, and anth ropology o f childh ood . Such a museum m ight reserve a w ing for children's art. But th e purpose o f ch ild art would be to rem ind us o f th e p henom enon o f children's drawing and painting, to exh ibit som eth ing of its cultural and historical diversity, and also, perhaps, som ething of its cross-cultural and histor­ ical universal ity.

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In asking w h eth er an art museum, indeed a good art museum, should have a perm anent co lle ctio n o f children's art we w ere, however, con sid erin g a different interest from any th at would be addressed prim arily by a museum o f child hood . W e are asking w h eth er ch ild art m ight b e appropriately celebrated as art, rather than m erely regarded as social and cultural artifact. O f course, d oin g on e o f th o se things doesn't necessarily exelude doing the oth er. T h e point, th ou gh, is th at doing one doesn't necessarily include d oing th e other. M o re d irectly relevant to m y question would be th e phenom en on o f museums o f ch ild art. In fact th ere is at least on e such institution, th e International M useum o f C hildren's Art in O slo, N orw ay. Y e t, even thou gh this museum has achieved som e renow n, its success doesn't settle as m uch as we m ight first think. Being a museum o f ch ild art, it raises in dram atic form, but does n o t answer, th e question about th e status and nature o f ch ild art. O n e m igh t thin k o f it as ju st a specialized art museum in th e way th a t a museum o f m odern art, o f w hich th ere are many, or a museum o f Im pressionist art, is a specialized museum. But one m igh t also think o f it as a museum o f artistic m em orabilia o f ch ild ­ h o o d . In th at case, th e existen ce o f such a museum would n ot im ply any particular ju d gm en t co n cern in g th e aesth etic valué of th e art it con tains. In fact, until general art museums of good repute co lle c t ch ild art in th e way th ey co lle ct m odern art or Im pressionist art, th ere will b e clearly no societal recogn ition of ch ild art as som ething w orthy o f co lle ctio n for its own aesth etic valué. O n e m ight have ex p ected to g et som e help in answ ering my question from th e persisting efforts o f philosophers o f art to answ er T o lsto y 's profoundly sim ply question 'W h at is art?' But a little reflection will reveal th at such an exp ectation would be unrealistic. W h e th e r we co m e to accep t th e Im itation T h e o ry of w hat art is, o r th e Expression T h e o ry , or th e Formal, or som e o th e r th eo ry, th ere can b e no serious question th at som e o f the

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drawings and paintings o f young children cou nt as art. Indeed, it should cou nt as a criterion o f adequacy on any th eo ry o f art th at it recognize at least som e drawings and paintings b y children as art. But that does n ot m ean any ch ild art is aesth etically w orthy of co llectio n by a m ajor museum. In a way th e question I am asking is a p olitical question. In a so ciety made up com p letely o f children, th e children m igh t decide for them selves w hether th ey w anted to celeb rate som e o f th e art produced by m em bers of th eir own "kind." In our so ciety, how ever, children do n o t have th e pow er to m ake such a decisión. In our so ciety it would have to be an adult d ecisió n — a decisión co n cern in g financial resources under adult co n tro l— w h eth er to co lle ct children's art for a m ajor museum. For us, then, th e question is w heth er we adults co n sid er it appropriate or w orthw hile to celebrate th e aesth etic sensibility and artistic achievem ent of artistically gifted child ren. T h is, in turn, raises political questions about exploitation and about w hich educational ideáis we ch o o se to im plem ent in our society. But it also raises th e issue o f w hether we as adults ca n re co g nize anyth in g of profound w orth in the w ork of a child , even a very sensitive and gifted child. In the aesthetic evaluation of children's art th ere are certainly enthusiasts as well as detractors. Aldous H u xley must b e cou nted am ong the m ost enthusiastic o f the enthusiasts. In his introduction to a pam phlet of children's drawings h e w rites th a t ''when left to them selves," children "display astonishing artistic talents." H e goes on: H ow sure is their sense of colour! I remember especially one landscape of a red-roofed house among dark trees and hills that possessed in its infantile way all the power and certainty of a Vlaminck . . . Many of these pastoral landscapes and scenes of war are composed— all unwittingly of course, and by instinct— according to the most severely elegant classical principies. Voids and masses are beautifully balanced about the central axis. Houses, trees, figures

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are placed exactly where the rule of the Golden Section demands that they should be placed.3

H u xley claim s th at 5 0 p ercent of children are "little geniuses in th e field o f pictorial art," but th at am ong adults the percentage goes down to one in a m illion. T h e detractors are perhaps even m ore easily found. I on ce approached th e curator o f painting and sculpture at a m ajor art museum (not, I should say, the Boston M useum o f Fine Arts) w ith th e suggestion th at h e m ount an exh ibition on the them e "Tw entieth -C en tu ry A rt and C hildren's A rt." I suggested he exh ib it some w ell-ch o sen children's art, b o th for its own sake and also for the relationship it w ould bear to the w ork of K lee, M iró, D ubuffet, v/ and o th e r tw entieth-centu ry artists w hose w ork was influenced by ch ild art, or at least seem s to show strong affinities w ith children's art. T h is curator agreed th at an exh ibition along such lines could have great d id actic valué. Indeed, he even nam ed museums— o th e r than his ow n— th at m ight be interested in such a show. But he assured m e th at no children's art would ever be shown in his museum as lo n g as h e was ch ief curator. H e would allow n othing to b e ex h ibited there, he said, th at was not first-rate art,- and no children's art, he insisted, was first-rate art. T h e re is an identifiable position about children and the goods o f ch ild h o o d from w hich it w ould follow th at this adam ant curator was righ t and H u xley w rong. I suspect th at som e rather vague versión o f this position is h eld b y m any people in our society, perhaps b y m ost people. It is given a clear statem ent and a straightforw ard defense b y M ich ael Slo te in his b o o k Goods and Virtues.4 S lo te thinks th at th e goods o f life are relative to th e period of one's life. H is claim is n o t ju st th at w hat can be reasonably pursued as a g oo d for ch ild hood , or for senescen ce, is different from w hat can b e reasonably pursued as a g ood for young adulthood, or for

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m iddle-age, though he also assumes th at to b e th e case. H is claim is th e m ore interesting on e th at th e goods o f ch ild h o o d and th e goods of oíd age are less valuable, indeed m uch less valuable, than th e goods available at the prim e o f life. T o dram atize his p oin t he asks us to w eigh the valué o f g ood dreams: In a way, our treatment of childhood . . . is interestingly similar to the way we regard what happens in dreams. Proust tells us (roughly) that we do not reckon the sufferings and pleasures of our dreams among the actual goods and evils of our lives . . . And just as dreams are discounted except as they affect (the waking portions of) our lives, what happens in childhood principally affects our view of total lives through the effects that childhood success or failure are supposed to have on mature individuáis. Thus in cases where an unhappy schoolboy career is followed by (or, as we sometimes like to think, helps to bring about) happy mature years, we think of the later years as compensating for childhood misery, even as wiping the slate clean. (14-15) In defense of this way o f th inking Slo te does several things. First, he tries to elicit from his readers the reco gn itio n th a t th ey share this view w ith him, even if th ey have n o t h ereto fo re given much thought, or even any thou ght, to the fact th at this is indeed their view. Secon d , h e tries to defend the view against th e o b jectio n th at it makes the goals, frustrations, successes, and failures of ch ild h o o d irrational or perverse m uch in th e w ay th a t th e goals and frustrations o f an addict, under th e influence o f th e addiction, are perverse or irrational. And finally, in response to th e o b jectio n th at this view fails to acco u n t for th e unity o f a hum an life, he sketches a co n cep tio n of, so to speak, th e co n tou r o f human life. T h e co n cep tio n is m eant to support th e idea th a t prim e-of-life goods are much m ore valuable than th o se o f any o th e r period and even, perhaps, th at child h o o d goods, thou gh th e y "have valué for, or in, ch ild hood ," do n o t have "valué überhaupt," th a t is, valué “from \the perspective of human life as a w hole" (1 7 ).

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It seem s to follow from this last p oint th at a child's painting, th ou gh it m ight have great valué for, or in, child h ood , would p robably n o t have valué überhaupt. Sin ce ch ild art hardly deserves to b e reco gn ized as a d istinct curatorial categ o ry in m ajor art museums unless som e o f it has valué überhaupt, I shall now say a little about th e d efensibility o f Slote's view. T h e devaluation o f th e goods of ch ild h o o d th at Slo te b o th d escribes and com m ends to us is em bodied, I think, in th e very structure o f our social institutions. It is adults, after all, and especially adults in th e prim e o f their lives, w ho determ ine th e reward structure o f our institutions and have the greatest influence in applying this structure to the individuáis w ho g et exhibitions, listings in Who's Wbo, positions on im portant boards, and so forth. T h e se structures do allow hom age to has-beens in their dotage,but, in general, m ost prizes go to achievers in the prime of life.

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As far as art is co n cern ed , our great museums em body the assessm ent th at th e celebratio n and appreciation of th e w ork of g reat artists are am ong life's greater goods. But th e treatm ent of children's art show s th at we think o f it as having only instrum ental and personal valué. It has personal valué to parents, teachers, and friends associated w ith th e ch ild artist. It has instrum ental valué insofar as producing it furthers th e general developm ent o f the ch ild and, in rare cases, th e further developm ent of som eone who V

will actually b eco m e an im portant artist. O therw ise, it has no valué. T o ju stify this sort o f assignm ent o f valúes S lo te appeals to w hat is essentially a b iolo gical view o f the nature and significance of ch ild h o o d and oíd age. H ere is part o f w hat he says: Consider how ordinary people and biologists tend to think of plants and animals over time. Within the life cycle of a given organism a distinction is typically drawn between periods of devel­ opment and periods of decay, and this distinction is partly marked by treating a certain period of maturity as representing the fullest development of the organism and other periods as leading "up to,"

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or "down from," it. In keeping with these distinctions, there is also a tendency to think of organisms as being most fully what they are (what they have it in them to be) during maturity, a tendency perhaps most clearly exemplified in the tradition of making general reference to organisms by their adult ñames rather than by ñames appropriate to other stages of their life cycle. (W e speak of the parts of a tree's life, not of a seed's or sapling's life, of the devel­ opment and decline, or oíd age, of a horse, but not of a colt.) (36) T h is biological profile suggests th at th e stretch o f an individual organism's life th at counts as m aturity for th at organism is also norm ative for it. G ood s and products from earlier on are devalued as immature, w hereas th o se th at co m e later are devalued as b elongin g to senescence. Applied to th e question at hand, the best reason one cou ld have, it may seem, for refusing to establish a perm anent co llectio n o f children's art in a m ajor museum is that such art would be, perforce, immature art, and th erefo re inappropriate for co llectio n alongside th e m ost mature artistic achievem ents o f our civilization. Perhaps th ere was a tim e w hen even th e b est tribal art o f Africa, O ceania, and N orth and Sou th A m erica was consid ered primitive and therefore, as civilizations go, immature. N o t m any people, at least n o t m any prom inent people, express th at attitude anym ore. Artists in tribal societies are now reco gn ized to have had traditions and apprenticeships th at m ake it possible to distinguish mature artists and mature o b jects of art in a given tribal style. M oreover, th e attitude tow ard a tribal culture em bod ied in th e supposition th at th e w hole culture is immature now strikes m ost o f us as both naive and m orally offensive. T ribal art, we now think, is not, as such, immature. W e cannot, th erefore, use th e exam ple o f tribal art, w hich is represented in the co llectio n s o f som e o f our m ost prestigious art museums, to question the assumption th at on ly m ature art deserves to b e co lle cted in m ajor museums. But we can question that assumption in o th er ways. W e cou ld begin by asking w hether M arcel D ucham p's notorious urinal, La Fontaine, or A ndy W arhol's

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co lle ctio n of soup cans, is mature art. T h e notion o f maturity doesn't seem to apply here. A n o th er relevant group of artists to consider are the so-called m odern prim itives. Is th e art of G randm a M oses or H enri Rous­ seau mature art? T h e question seems odd. G onsider Grandm a M oses. H e r art is u nschooled ; it is therefore a form of folk art. It also has about it a ch ild like naiveté. But, although Grandm a M oses painted for th e last quarter o f a century of her very lon g life, h er w ork did n o t m ove away from th at naiveté to anything one could desígnate, b y contrast, as mature art. T h e art o f a ten- or tw elve-year-old ch ild learning to draw in an art class m ay b e said to b e immature. Perhaps it is self-consciously d irected tow ard th e satisfaction o f prescribed norms and principies. M u ch less clear is w h ether th e art of, say, a four-yearold cou ld b e called immature. It is n o t produced in a self-conscious attem p t to satisfy norms or principies. But w hether or n o t it is im m ature, it certainly does not cou nt as mature art. M aybe it is ju st non-m ature art. D o e s th e lack o f m aturity in even the m ost aesthetically pleasing or ex citin g w ork o f a four- or five-year-old autom atically disqualify it from b ein g co lle cted alongside th e best art in our culture and th e o th er cultures we regularly celebrate? If we can assume th at m odern prim itivists like Grandm a M oses and H enri Rousseau and conceptual artists like M arcel D ucham p and Andy W a rh o l do deserve to b e co lle cted alongside th e best art of our culture, w e should conclu de, I suspect, th at m aturity is n o t a necessary co n d itio n for deserving th at status. Suppose lack o f m aturity fails to discjualify children's art from b ein g co lle cte d by a m ajor museum. W h a t would qualify it? T h a t is, even if we m ove away from th e biolo gically based co n cep tio n o f evaluation th at M ich ael Slo te relies on and allow th at som e of th e art o b je cts we w ant ex h ibited in even our m ost exalted exhib itio n halls can n o t b e called mature, we need a positive reason to select and c g le h ra te jn this w ay th e b est of c hildren's art. A t this p o in t it m ay b e useful to com pare ch ild art w ith ch ild

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philosophy. In C hap ter 1 I suggested th at m any young children naturally raise questions, make com m ents, and even engage in reasoning that professional philosophers can reco g n ize as p h ilo ­ sophical. N o t on ly do th ey do p hilosophy naturally, th ey do it w ith a freshness o f perspective and a sensitivity to puzzlem ent and conceptual m ism atch that are hard for adults to achieve. T h e adult must cultívate the naiveté th at is required for doing philosophy well,- to the ch ild such naiveté is entirely natural. I don't mean that children in general, or even som e children, are b etter philosophers than any adults are. T h a t isn't true. O th e r things besides a w illingness to question accep ted beliefs and puzzle over problem atic co n cep ts are im portant to d oing philos­ ophy well. But th ere is a freshness, an urgency, and a naturalness about ch ild philosophy th at b o th asks to be celeb rated for itself and can help us appreciate th e nature and significance o f adult philosophy— or better, o f philosophy itself. If on e focused exclusively on the adult phenom enon, one would have on ly a truncated co n cep tio n o f w hat it is th at moves people to ask and re-ask those age-old questions. M ig h t som ething analogous b e true o f ch ild art? M ig h t there b e in the best children's art som ething that b o th asks to b e c e le ­ brated in and for itself and also can help us appreciate th e nature and significance o f adult art, indeed, o f art in general? I think so. If I am right, then ch ild art needs to b e ex h ibited as m uch as child

J

philosophy needs to be recogn ized , and even published.5 Attem pts to co n ceive ch ild h o o d and to evalúate ch ild culture have tended to assume eith er th at children are m erely protopeople, to be ch erished and nurtured principally for th eir potential, or else that th ey are m odels o f in n o cen ce and insight to be em ulated by adults. N eith er assumption is satisfactory. xy

C hildren are people, fully w orthy of b o th th e m oral and the intellectual respect due persons. T h e y should b e respected for w hat they are, as well as for w hat th ey can beco m e. Indeed, we can learn from them and let them en rich our lives as, m uch more

Child Art

123

obviously, th ey learn from us and let us enrich th eir lives. T h e parent or teach er w ho is open to th e perspectives o f children and to th eir forms o f sensibility is blessed w ith gifts th at adult life otherw ise lacks. Y e t it is on ly in certain respects th at a child's perspective is valuable to adults. Adults' endeavors can have a rigor, a discipline, and a sense o f history th at th e correspond ing children's efforts are bound to lack. Adults' art can have a m astery o f technique and a sense o f style and o f its place in the history of art that is n ot open to ch ild art. T h e problem , then, is to learn how to celeb rate ch ild art for w hat it is and can legitim ately be, w ithout eith er con d e scen sion o r sentim entality. It is w orth n o tin g th at b o th ch ild art and ch ild philosophy should lead us to question M ich ael Slote's co n ten tio n th at only prim e-of-life goods have prim ary valué. Few children grow up to b eco m e m ature artists and even few er to beco m e mature philosophers. F or m any peop le th e art and philosophy o f th eir ch ild ­ h o o d is never equaled, let alone surpassed, by th e art or philos­ o p h y o f th e ir adult lives. If painting or doing philosophy has any non-instrum ental valué for them , it is th eir ch ild art and th eir child p h ilosop h y th at have such valué. So , should Three Figures in Crimson, or som e o th er w ork b y a fouryear-old , b e added to th e perm anent co lle ctio n o f th e Boston M useum o f Fine Arts? I think so. W ill it? T h a t is harder to say. W h e th e r children's art is ever co lle cted by our m ost famous art museums will depend, I suspect, on w heth er the currents of m odernism further discredit th e assum ption th at m aturity is a sine cjua non for an art o b ject's b ein g w orthy o f co lle ctio n by a m ajor art establishm ent. If th e "m aturity assumption" is w idely re je cted and children's art is co lle cte d seriously, th at developm ent will, no doubt, have interestin g and significant social and political consequences. For one th in g, our attitude tow ard children and tow ard the valué system j th a t system atically devalúes th eir thou ght, th eir sensibility, th eir

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\j experience, and the works o f their creation will also ch an ge. W ith such change will co m e changes in the roles we allow to children in our society. I hope I have said enough to suggest th a t these developm ents could constitute, n o t only a step tow ard children's liberation, but a significant step tow ard adult liberation as well.

Notes Acknowledgments Index

Notes

Introduction 1. See Philippe Aries, Centuries o f C hildhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).

2. Margaret Mead, "An Investigation of the Thought of Primitive Children, W ith Special Reference to Animism," in Personalities an d Cultures, ed. Robert C. Hunt (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1967), 2 1 3 -1 3 7 .

2. Theories and M odels of C hildhood 1. B a b y an d C hild Care, 3rd ed. (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1968); quotations from 4 5 7 , 242.

2. G. Stanley Hall, A dolescence (New York: D. Appleton, 1904). A splendidly readable history and critique of the recapitulationist theory is to be found in Stephen Jay Gould's O n tog en y an d P h y lo g en y (Cambridge: Harvard, 1977). 3. Florence Perry Heide, T h e Shrinking o f T reehom (New York: Dell, 1971). F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a similar idea in his short story "The Strange Tale of Benjamín Button." 4. Anthony Kenny, trans. and ed., D escartes: P h ilosop h ical Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 111. John Locke, An E ssa y Concem ing H um an U nderstanding, vol. 1, book 2 (New York: Dover, 1959), 1 2 1 -1 2 2 . 5. B. F. Skinner, Science an d H um an B eh av ior (New York: Free Press, 1953), 91. 6. Noam Chomsky, K n ow ledge o f L an gu age (New York, Praeger, 1986),

xxvi.

Notes to Pagcs 26—35

128

7. Some passages in Piaget sound unabashedly recapitulationist. Thus, speaking of his "genetic epistemology," he writes: "the most fruitful, most obvious field of study would be the reconstituting of human history— the history of human thinkjng in prehistoric man. Unfortunately, we are not very well informed in the psychology of primitive man, but there are children all around us, and it is in studying children that we have the best chance of studying the development of logical knowledge, mathematical knowledge, physical knowledge, and so forth." "Genetic Episte­ mology/' C olum bia Forum 12 (1969), 4. But Piaget also insists that experience is needed to trigger development (the experientialist model) and that development, for us as well as for our ancestors, proceeds according to "laws" of mental development. Here is an important passage on that last point: "For our part, we do not believe that the possible resemblances between the thought of the child and that of primitive man . . . are due to any kind of heredity. The permanence of the laws of mental devel­ opment suffice to explain these convergences . . 'T h e Mental Devel­ opment of the Child," in Jean Piaget, S ix P sy ch o lo g ica l Studies, ed. David Elkind (New York: Vintage, 1968), 27. 8. Stephen Jay Gould, in Ontoc/eny and PkyloQeny (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), esp. 156-161, has a good discussion of the importance of recapitulationism to Freud. He quotes a letter of 1915 to Sandor Ferenczi: "Anxiety hysteria— conversión hysteria— obsessional neurosis— dementia praecox— paranoia— melancholia— mania . . . This series seems to repeat phylogenetically an historical origin. W hat are now neuroses were once phases in human conditions'' (158). 9. In W . Andrew Collins, ed., Cbildren's Lan§uac)t an d Communication, Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, vol. 12 (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1979). 10. Patricia Kuhl et al., "Linguistic Experience Alters Phonetic Perception in Infants by 6 Months of Age," Science 255 (1992), 606-608. 11. John Macnamara, "Cognitive Basis of Language Learning in Infants," Psycholoc¡¡cal Review 79 (1972), 1-13. 12. C. G. Jung, P s y c h o lo g y an d E ducation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 134.

3. Piaget and Philosophy 1.

See especially Piaget's "Children's Philosophies," in A H an d b ook o f 2nd ed., ed. Cari Murchison (Worcester, Mass.: Clark

C hild P sy ch olog y ,

Notes to Papes 3 7 - 5 9

129

University Press, 1933), 534—547. “W e realize how interesting these explanations [offered by young children] are from the historical point of view. Indeed, they intimately recall the conceptions of Anaximandre, Anaximne, and other pre-Socratics . . . One sees how very readily the law of identification recalls the law of condensation and rarefaction belonging to the pre-Socratic school" (544). 2. Christa W olf, S tórfall: N achricbten eines T apes (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1987), 105-106. Hans-Ludwig Freese begins his delightful book K in der sind P hilosophen (Berlin: Quadriga Verlag, 1989) with this wonderful passage.

4. Piaget and Conservation 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. All page references in this chapter are to this book. 2. D e rerum natura I, 11, 35 8-368, trans. R. E. Latham, in T he N atu re o f the Universe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951), 38. 3. "A Perverse Creation of Science: Anti-Rubber,"N ew Y ork Times, April 14, 1987, C8.

5. M oral Developm ent 1. Martin L. Hoffman, "Empathy, Role Taking, Guilt, and Develop­ ment of Altruistic Motives," in M o r a l D evelopm ent an d B ehavior, ed. Thomas Lickona (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976), 129-130. 2. H iere are complications. Kohlberg and his associates carne to speak of heteronomous and autonomous substages for each of the regular stages and also of the possibility of a 'soft' Stage 7. At the same time they seemed to become less confident of Stage 6. See Lawrence Kohlberg, E ssa y s on M o r a l D evelopment, vol. 2: T h e P sy ch olocjy o f M o r a l Development: T he N atu re an d V alid ity o f M o r a l Stapes (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), chap. 3 and appendix C. 3. Ibid., 640. 4. "From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and G et Away with It in the Study of Moral Development," in Cognitive D evel­ opm ent an d E pistem olopy, ed. Theodore Mischel (New York: Academic Press, 1971), 165.

130

Motes to Pagis 59-73

5. For a time it seemed that there was indeed regression,- but refinement of the theory seems to have dealt with the problem. See Kohlberg, P s y c h o lo g y o j M o r a l Development, 437-438. 6. J. R. Snarey, "Cross-cultural Universality of Moral Development," P sy ch olog ical Bulletin 82 (1984), 226. 7. Kohlberg, "From Is to Ought," 164.

6. Children's Rights 1. See, for example, the splendidly clear and helpful survey article "Children under the Law," in T h e R ights o f Children, Harvard Educational Review Reprint Series, no. 9 (1974), 1-28. A favorite passage from this article for attack by conservative politicians and commentators was this one: 'T he basic rationale for depriving people of rights in a dependency relationship is that certain individuáis are incapable or undeserving of the right to take care of themselves and consequently need social insti­ tutions specifically designed to safe-guard their position. It is presumed that under the circumstances society is doing what is best for the indi­ viduáis. Along with the family, past and present examples of such arrangements include marriage, slavery, and the Indian reservation system" (7). Despite the, no doubt, deliberately provocative character of that last sentence, the stance of the article as a whole is moderate and measured. 2. Lewis Pitts, "Family Valúes?" Nailon, September 21, 1992, 268. 3. In the weak versión, the Paternalism Principie allows autonomy to be restricted to prevent harm to the agent; in the strong versión, it also allows autonomy to be restricted to benefit the agent. 4. N ew Y o rk Times, September 26, 1992, A5. 5. E scape fro m C hildhood (New York: Dutton, 1974), 18. 6. Howard Cohén, Ecjual R ights f o r Children (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1980), 45. 7. Bob Franklin, "Children's Political Rights," in T h e R ights o f Children, ed. Bob Franklin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 2 4 -5 3 . Shulamith Firestone, T h e D ialectic o f S ex (New York: Bantam, 1970), 118. 8. Laurence D. Houlgate, T he C hild an d the State.- A N o m a t iv e T h eo ry o f Juvenile R ights (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980). 9. Laura Purdy, In T heir Best Interest? T h e C ase A gain st E qu al R ights f o r Children (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1992), 214-215.

Notes to Papes 82—102

131

7. C hildhood Amnesia 1. An E ssa y Concerning H um an Understanding, Book II, ch. 27, sec. 10 (New York: Dover, 1959), 451. 2. W hat Locke says is actually "same man,” using 'man' generically. 3. Locke, E ssay , Book II, ch. 27, sec. 16, 458. 4. In the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 17, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1953), 174-175. 5. In trod u ctory Lectures on P sy c b o -A n a ly sis, in the Standard Edition, vol. 15 (London: Hogarth, 1963), 201. 6. Thomas Reid, E ssa y s on the Intellectual P ow ers o f M a n (1785), ch. 6, "O f Memory." 7. See John Perry's Introduction to P erson al Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley: University of California, 1975), 3-30. 8. Eve Emmanuel Perris, Nancy Angrist Myers, and Rachel Keen Clifton, "Long-Term Memory for a Single Infancy Experience," C hild D evelopm ent 6 í (1990), 1796-1807. 9. Katherine Nelson, 'T h e Psychological and Social Origins of Autobiographical Memory," P sy c h o lo g ica l Science 4 (1993), 7-14.

8. C hildhood and D eath 1. E. B. W hite, Charlotte's W eb (New York: Harper Collins, 1980). Natalie Babbitt, T u c k Everlasting (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975). 2 Myra Bluebond-Langner, T h e P rívate W orlds o f D y in g Children (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 186. 3. L. M. Kopelman and J. C. Moskop, eds., Children an d H ealth Care.M o r a l an d S o cia l Issues (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). 4. Susan Carey, C onceptual C hange in C hildhood (Cambridge, Mass.: M IT Press, 1985). 5. R. Nitschke et al., "Therapeutic Choices Made by Patients with Endstage Cáncer " J o u r n a l o f P ediatrics 101 (1982), 471—476.

9. Literature for Children 1. Jacqueline Rose, T h e C ase o f P eter P an (London: Macmillan, 1984).

Notes to PaQes ^0 3 - 1 2 2

132

2. W . H. Auden, Forew ords an d A fterw ords (New York: Random House, * 1973), 291. 3. Arnold Lobel, Frog an d T o a d T ogether (New York: Harper Collins, 1971), 18-29. ^ 4. William Steig, Y ellow an d P in k (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,, 1984). 10.

Child Art

1. The intriguing and complex story of Klee's relation to child art is very well told in the essay entitled "Klees kindliche Kunst," in O. K.. Werckmeister, Versucbe über P au l K lee (Frankfurt am Mein: Sundikat, 1981), 124-178. 2. As was done in the exhibition " 'Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, September 1984 to January 1985. 3. Aldous Huxley, T h e y Still D ratv Pictures (New York: Spanish Child Welfare Association of America, 1939), 3ff. I owe notice of this passage to George Boas, T he Cult o f C hildhood (London: Warburg Institute, 1966), 100. 4. Michael Slote, G oods an d Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 5. For a nice consideration of six child artists as artists, rather than as proto-artists, see Sheila Paine, S ix Children D ratv (London: Academic Press, 1981). My own books, P h ilo s o p h y an d the Young C hild and D ialogues tvith Children, are, among other things, attempts to publish child philos­ ophy.

Acknowledgments

I n w riting this b o o k I have drawn on articles in the philosophy o f ch ild h o o d I have already published in o th er forms. Thus C h a p ter 1 begins w ith material I published in "W h at D id the U niverse A ppear On?" Journal o f Thought 20, no. 2 (1 9 8 5 ), 1 4 -2 0 . C h a p ter 4 first appeared as "E gocen tric Phenom enalism and C o n ­ servation in Piaget," Behaviorism 17 (1 9 8 9 ), 1 1 9 -1 2 8 . C hap ter 5 first appeared as "C o n cep t Form ation and M oral D evelopm ent" in Philosophical Perspectives on Developmental Psychology, ed. Jam es Russell (O x fo rd : Blackw ell, 1987), 1 7 5 -1 9 0 . C hap ter 10 appeared as "C h ild A rt and the Place of C hildren in So ciety " in Children, Parents and Politics, ed. G eo ffrey Scarre (C am bridge: Cam bridge U niversity Press, 1 9 8 9 ), 1 5 7 -1 6 7 . C hap ter 3 is sch ed u led to be published in Philosophy, Democracy and Children, ed. Jo h n P. Portelli and Ron R eed (C algary: D etselig Enterprises, forthcom in g). I wish to thank th e respective editors and publishers for perm ission to use those articles and chapters in this book.

Index

Anaximander, 15, 35 Anaximines, 15, 35 Aquinas, Thomas, 2, 3, 13-14 Aries, Philippe, 125nl Aristotle, 13 Auden, W . H., 103, 130n2 Augustine, 13 Autonomy principie, 69-71 Babbitt, Natalie, 89, 104, 129nl Bates, Elizabeth, 26 "Big bang" theory, 10 Bluebond-Langner, Myra, 92, 98-100, 129n2 Bravery, 106-107 Bush, George, 69 Carey, Susan, 95-9 6 , 129n4 Causality, 105—106 Chomsky, Noam, 24—25, 125n6 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 69, 128nl Cohén, Howard, 72, 128n6 Cosmological argument, 1-3 Democritus, 46, 52, 109 Derrida, Jacques, 35 Descartes, René, 3, 5, 18, 24, 39, 125n4

Dialogues with Children (Matthews), 6, 34,

130n5 Dreams, 118 Dubuffet, Jean, 117 Duchamps, Marcel, 120-121 Egocentrism, 47-50 Empedocles, 109 Engels, Friedrich, 20 Euthanasia, 28-29 "Euthyphro problem," 75—77 Experientialism, 24—27 Firestone, Shulamith, 72, 128n7 Franklin, Bob, 72, 128n7 Freud, Sigmund, 20, 83-84, 88, 126n8, 129nn4,5 Habermas, Jürgen, 35 Haeckel, Ernst, 20 Hall, G. Stanley, 20, 125n2 Hoffman, Martin L., 57, 127nl Holt, John, 72-73, 128n5 Houlgate, Lawrence, 73, 128n8 Huxley, Aldous, 116-117, 130n3 Inhelder, Barbel, ch. 4 Innatism, 24—27

Index

136 Jung, Cari Gustav, 27, 126n6 Kant, Immanuel, 27 Kingsley, Gregory, 68-71, 77-79 Klee, Paul, 113-114, 117, 130nl Kohlberg, Lawrence, 28-29, 58-62, 65, 127nn2,3,4, 128nn5,7 Koppelman, Loretta M., 93-94, 129n3 Kripke, Saúl, 35 Ladd, Rosalind Ekman, 93-94 Leucippus, 46, 52, 109 Lipman, Matthew, 3, 7, 9, 34 Leibniz, G. W. F., 39 Lobel, Arnold, 4, 104, 110, 130n3 Locke, John, 24, 81-83, 85-86, 125n4, 129nnl,2,3 Lucretius, 46-47, 127n2 Macnamara, John, 27, 126nl 1 Marx, Karl, 20 Mead, Margaret, 8, 125n2 Memory, ch. 7 Miró, Joan, 117 Moses, Grandma, 121 Parmenides, 15, 35 Paternalism principie, 69-71, 128n3 Phenomenalism, 4 7 -5 0 Philosophy and the Young Child (Matthews), 4, 17, 33, 38-39, 130n5 Piaget, Jean, 2, 8, 20, 28, chs. 3 and 4, 99, 126n7, 126-127nl Picasso, Pablo, 113-114

Plato, 5, 11-12, 25, 35, 48, 6 2-63, 74-75, 94-95 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, 105 Protagoras, 48 Purdy, Laura, 73-74, 77 Quine, W . V., 35 Recapitulationism, 20, 25-27, 29, 112­ 113, 125n2 Reid, Thomas, 85—86, 129n6 Rose, Jacqueline, 102—103, 129nl Rousseau, Henri, 121 Skinner, B. F., 24, 125n5 Slote, Michael, 117—119, 121, 123, 130n4 Sócrates, Socratic, 62—63, 74—75, 106­ 107 Spock, Benjamín, 19—22, 26, 34, 125nl Steig, William, 107, 109-110, 130n4 Steinberg, Saúl, 12 Thales, 15, 35 Theological rationalism, 76 Theological voluntarism, 76 Thurber, James, 3 Time, 10, 13 Tolstoy, Leo, 115 Universe, 10-12 Warhol, Andy, 120—121 White, E. B., 89, 92, 94, 104, 129nl Wolf, Christa, 37, 127n2