ES3217: Loss of Childhood

Assignment 1

Return to module outline.

Last updated 14.10.10.

Locke - Rousseau

Stick to the two simplified accounts of their perspectives, but identify quotes from their respective texts supporting these.

In very crude form from Locke you have the priority of sensation that requires intervention so as to lead to experience and understanding - but if one gets the education process 'right' almost anything can be achieved.

Similarly, from Rousseau you have the opposite notion that the child is not only capable of organising its sensations into coherent experiences and understandings, but that this is a process that will occur naturally - so long as the environment is conducive to this auto-didactivism and the tutor, etc. does not corrupt or distort the child's natural pathway to adult understanding. For the purposes of this essay most of the useful parts of Locke come in the first half of 'Some Thoughts', while for Rouuseau the first two 'books' will probably be found most helpful. Certainly you are unlikely to need anything beyond book 2 unless you really want to folow an idea through into adolescence..

Identify three topics that come from this list:-

N.B. I have deliberately stuck to the assessment title on the module outline that restricts you to content from the first two weeks. If, after you have looked at the additional notes for week 3, you want to tackle one of the topics mentioned there - please e-mail me first to check what you are doing.

Week 1:

Darwin - his notion of the 'science of man'.

Yerkes: primate observations and experiments.

Week 2

Planned Parenthood - the technological aspects of how we do what we do and the consequences we a) recognise, and b) generate but probably don't talk about, e.g. delay or prevent parenthood, select appropriate forms of parenthood, assist otherwise impossible forms of parenthood, etc.

Cloning - why and for what intended results - and again the consequences if we get it wrong e.g. the 'saviour sibling' that objects to having been dragged into the world not because he or she was wanted as such, but as a means to save the life of their sick brother/sister, etc.

It would also be legitimate to include from both of the above topics the assumption of genetic determinism, and how either author might react to the responsibility we will soon face of really being able to 'build' 'designer' babies.

E-mail questions and answers:-

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