Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Lifespan Development

TAKING SIDES: CLASHING VIEWS IN LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor’s manual with testing material is available for each volume. USING TAKING SIDES IN THE CLASSROOM is also an excellent instructor resource with practical suggestions on incorporating this effective approach in the classroom. Each TAKING SIDES reader features an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites and is supported by our student website, www.dushkin.com/online.

PART 1. General Issues in the Study of Life Span Development

ISSUE 1. Does Culture and Environment Influence Human Development More Than Our Genes?

YES: Paul Ehrlich and Marcus Feldman, from “Genes and Cultures: What Creates Our Behavioral Phenome?” Current Anthropology (February 2003)

NO: Gary Marcus, from “Making the Mind: Why We’ve Misunderstood the Nature-Nurture Debate,” Boston Review (December 2003/January 2004)

Stanford University professors of biology Paul Ehrlich and Marcus Feldman argue that human behavior exhibits such complexity that genetic programs simply can’t explain the way people develop. Psychologist and researcher Gary Marcus asserts that research clearly demonstrates how a relatively small number of genes influence our environmental learning by "cascading" to determine the paths of our behavioral development.

ISSUE 2. Are Peers More Important than Parents During the Process of Development?

YES: Judith Rich Harris, from “How to Succeed in Childhood,” The Wilson Quarterly (Winter 1999)

NO: Howard Gardner, from “Do Parents Count?” The New York Review of Books (November 5, 1998)

Developmental psychology writer Judith Rich Harris presents a strong and provocative argument suggesting that parents do not influence child development to any significant degree, while peers and social groups have a primary influence. Harvard psychologist Howard Gardener reviews Harris’ work and suggests her argument is overstated and misleading—parents do matter.

ISSUE 3. Do Significant Innate Differences Influence the Success of Males and Females?

YES: Steven Pinker, from “Sex Ed: The Science of Difference,” The New Republic (February 14, 2005)

NO: Cynthia Russett, from “All About Eve: What Men Have Thought About Women Thinking,” The American Scholar (vol. 74, 2005)

Cognitive psychologist and author Steven Pinker considers the loud response to the suggestion of Harvard president Lawrence Summers that differences between the numbers of men and women in science might be partly related to innate abilities. Pinker asserts that this possibility is well grounded in research, but provokes reactions based on flawed assumptions of gender equality. Cynthia Russett, a professor at Yale, argues that harmful assumptions of innate deficiencies in woman have a long, and significantly flawed, historical precedent without basis in fact.

PART 2. Prenatal Development

ISSUE 4. Does Prenatal Exposure to Drugs Such as Cocaine Create "Crack Babies" With Special Developmental Concerns?

YES: Sherri McCarthy and Thomas Franklin Waters, from “A Crack Kid Grows Up: A Clinical Case Report,” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation (vol. 37, 2003)

NO: Mariah Blake, from “The Damage Done: Crack Babies Talk Back,” Columbia Journalism Review (September/October 2004)

Sherri McCarthy and Thomas F. Waters, educational psychology and criminal justice professors at Northern Arizona University, review the research on "crack babies" suggesting a link between pre-natal cocaine exposure and serious physical, socioemotional, and cognitive effects requiring special care and attention. Journalist and editor Mariah Blake contends that the idea of "crack babies" with special needs is more a media creation than a medical fact; her investigation does not support the popular idea that prenatal exposure to cocaine determines permanent negative developmental effects.

ISSUE 5. Is a Natural Childbirth, Without Pain Medication, Best for Development?

YES: Lennart Righard, from “Making Childbirth a Normal Process,” Birth (March 2001)

NO: Gilbert J. Grant, from Enjoy Your Labor: A New Approach to Pain Relief for Childbirth (Russell Hasting Press, 2005)

Pediatrician and professor Lennart Righard draws from research and from his experience attending to natural childbirth in Sweden to assert that natural childbirth is vastly preferable to the artificial interventions of medical technology. Obstetric anesthesiologist Dr. Gilbert Grant asserts that social pressure toward natural childbirth and misplaced anxiety about risks to the baby lead many pregnant women to unnecessarily suffer through the birthing experience.

PART 3. Infancy

ISSUE 6. Is There a "Myth of the First Three Years"?

YES: Gwen J. Broude, from “Scatterbrained Child Rearing,” Reason (December 2000)

NO: Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, from “Zero to Three: Response to the Myth of the First Three Years,”

Gwen J. Broude, who teaches developmental psychology and cognitive science at Vassar College, reviews, supports, and augments John Bruer’s idea that a "myth of the first three years" has falsely used neuroscience to claim that infancy is the only critical developmental period. Zero to Three, a national organization devoted to promoting healthy infant development, contradicts Bruer’s idea by asserting that a great deal of diverse research supports the idea that the first three years are critical to development and success in adulthood.

ISSUE 7. Are Infants Born With an Innate Ability to Make Symbolic Mental Representations of Objects?

YES: Elizabeth S. Spelke, from “Core Knowledge,” American Psychologist (November 2000)

NO: Bruce Hood, from “When Do Infants Know About Objects?” Perception (vol. 30, 2001)

Harvard professor Elizabeth Spelke draws on a large quantity of infant research to suggest infants have an innate understanding of the properties of objects, which is part of what she considers core knowledge systems that are the foundation of thought. Developmental psychologist Bruce Hood points out that the type of research Spelke relies upon is controversial—learning what infants are thinking requires potentially unfair assumptions.

PART 4. Early Childhood

ISSUE 8. Does Exposure to Music, including Mozart, During Early Childhood Have a Special Capacity to Enhance Development?

YES: Gordon L. Shaw, from Keeping Mozart in Mind (Academic Press, 2000)

NO: Michael Linton, from “The Mozart Effect,” First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life (March 1999)

Neuroscientist Gordon L. Shaw, who published a famous research paper about the positive influence of Mozart on brain functioning, acknowledges that the effect of Mozart on infants is not yet known but argues that the generally positive effect of music on spatial-temporal reasoning supports efforts to endorse music for children. Michael Linton, professor of music at Middle Tennessee State University, asserts that the idea of music having special brain-enhancing powers has been recycled historically and consistently proven an inaccurate myth.

ISSUE 9. Does Emphasizing Academic Skills Help At-Risk Preschool Children?

YES: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from Strengthening Head Start: What the Evidence Shows (June 2003)

NO: C. Cybele Raver and Edward F. Zigler, from “Another Step Back? Assessing Readiness in Head Start,” Young Children (January 2004)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for Head Start—a preschool program for at-risk children—argues that preschool programs can most help young children by emphasizing academic and cognitive skills. Professors C. Cybele Raver and Edward F. Zigler (a founder of Head Start in the 1960s) respond by arguing that overemphasizing academic and cognitive skills at the expense of social, emotional, and physical well-being is a mistake dependent on misguided efforts to make the entire educational system focused on concrete assessment.

PART 5. Middle Childhood

ISSUE 10. Has Promoting Self-Esteem Failed to Improve the Education of School-Age Children?

YES: Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger, and Kathleen D. Vohs, from “Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?” Psychological Science in the Public Interest (May 2003)

NO: Neil Humphrey, from “The Death of the Feel-Good Factor? Self-Esteem in the Educational Context,” School Psychology International (vol. 25, 2004)

Social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues engaged in an extensive review of research on the popular idea that self-esteem produces academic achievement and conclude that it does nothing of the sort. Educational psychologist Neil Humphrey asserts that reviews concluding self-esteem does not contribute to achievement are not definitive because they ignore the contextual nature of self-esteem and its importance in creating a generally healthy learning environment.

ISSUE 11. Is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD) a Legitimate Medical Condition That Affects Childhood Behavior?

YES: Michael Fumento, from “Trick Question,” The New Republic (February 3, 2003)

NO: Jonathan Leo, from “Attention Deficit Disorde r: Good Science or Good Marketing?” Skeptic (vol. 8, no. 1, 2000)

Science journalist and writer Michael Fumento suggests that despite the extensive political controversy, it is clear that ADHD is a legitim...