Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Moral Life of Babies

"A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be."


The idea of "what we adults would want it to be" is ever-present in what we choose for our children. Perhaps we have a "right" a "duty" to explicitly choose. I think we do...but why?

Here's where I think this argument of children and nature is rooted in:
We want to (re)connect children to nature. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of connection to nature; it's because the sense of connection that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be...

Why do we want to connect children to nature?

How do we want the connection to be different than what they already naturally possess?

Is it necessary to "teach" children how to be in nature?

What will be lost if children don't connect to nature in the way that---
we adults would want it to be?

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