"The whole question of ages of onsets of capabilities,
so widespread in developmental psychology and in U.S. institutions generally, is a cultural product. Not until the last half of the 1800's in the U.S. and some other nations, did age become a criterion for organizing life. Efforts to systematize human services (
especially education) accompanied industrialization, and age became a
measure of development and a way to sort people. Developmental psychology and pediatrics arose at this time and schooling became age-graded. Before then in the U.S. (and still in many places), people rarely knew their chronological age, and instruction was organized around level of understanding rather than age-batches.
Increasing segregation of children from the range of activities of their community came along with age-grading, as schooling became obligatory and ordered by age, and industrialization separated workplace from home.
Instead of being part of their community, children spent increasing time in child-focused institutions. The means of organizing teaching and learning in these specialized institutions became quite different than what was possible when children could learn the skills of life through
direct observation and participation...the childrearing practices of middle-class families of the late 1900's and early 2000's are closely connected with age-grading and segregation of children, and with the organization of school practices.
These practices are also reflected in the 'norms' that developmental psychology has often promoted as characterizing childhood and parenting, not recognizing the cultural and historical basis of these practices."
-Barbara Rogoff, The Cultural Nature of Human Development, 2003.Rogoff, B., Paradise, R.,
Arauz, R. M., Correa-Chávez, M., & Angelillo, C. (2003). Firsthand
learning through intent participation. Annual review of psychology, 54(1), 175-203.
Gutiérrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational researcher, 32(5), 19-25.
"This biopsychosocial perspective demands not only that we look at the immediate parenting environment but also that we look at the broader social picture - which by the way is why we have such a problem accepting it, because it's much easier to blame individuals for their behavior than to look at the broader social picture. It's much easier to look at genes and say that they are the problem than to look at the broader social picture; as an American writer put it: 'It's all in the genes is an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are'."
-Gabor Maté
