infants, ages 1 to 5

[R_P_A_S]

they say that this is the prime age range to shape a human being. It has a great deal as to how that person might turn out... The brain is a sponge just waiting to suck in as much as information as possible and this is the time to do it. Thats why parents are encourage to read to their kids, talk to them a lot and enroll them in pre-school.

Im watching some show on how some infants were raised by animals in the wild. some rare cases.
these kids were ages 2 to 6.. and due to spending those prime years away from human contact and society they never developed any speech ability or are able to understand human language or have a hard time adjusting to human costumes.

For example these 2 children could never speak properly after being rescued. because that prime age range for their brain to develop language had closed. hmm..

what does this tell you about human nature.. and our first 5 years under capitalism? what we watch on TV, what we hear our parents talking about, school, etc etc?

[Political_Chucky]

Hmm that might explain why my personality reflects me as being kind of generous and calm. I would play old DOS computer games( the learning ones) all day haha.

This is rather interesting though. Maybe if encouraging learning at thise age is attempted, more people would gain a better intellect as the grow older as they are use to the habit of trying to learn.

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 05:51 am
Hmm that might explain why my personality reflects me as being kind of generous and calm. I would play old DOS computer games( the learning ones) all day haha.

This is rather interesting though. Maybe if encouraging learning at thise age is attempted, more people would gain a better intellect as the grow older as they are use to the habit of trying to learn.
think about all those damn commercials for toys on saturday mornings!!!

[Raúl Duke]

commercial for children mostly concentrate of illiciting feelings and such instead of thinking about the product itself. Childrens commercials use nice colors, playful music, etc...This is so to associate those happy feelings and such to the advetised product.

If you seen Super Size Me, they mention a part on how Mickey Ds start advertising to kids early on and if you noticed micky ds also follows a similar color scheme that children might like and their are usually play places in the place. Also, have you seen their re-designed mascots? they look more "children friendly". They want children to get happy feelings there and to associate "MacDonalds=Happy Place to eat".

[RNK]

I have a kid who will be 7 months old in a little over a week.. I've thought about how I should raise him. It's a very important and very challenging question. Afterall, I'd like him to develop a sense of responsibility and intelligence, but raising children is such a difficult and unpredictable thing -- I may try to imprint socialist values on him, only to have him "rebel" and become a damned right-winger... so I've decided I'll just raise him exactly how I was raised.

[R_P_A_S]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 09:32 am
I have a kid who will be 7 months old in a little over a week.. I've thought about how I should raise him. It's a very important and very challenging question. Afterall, I'd like him to develop a sense of responsibility and intelligence, but raising children is such a difficult and unpredictable thing -- I may try to imprint socialist values on him, only to have him "rebel" and become a damned right-winger... so I've decided I'll just raise him exactly how I was raised.
I've rarely seen that happen though. some of my socialist homies were raised that way...

[Angry Young Man]

Do you think people might become the way they are as a reaction to their upbringing?

Also, I have this book called Fast-Food Nation which mentions about how McDonalds and Disney deliberately set out to aim business at children. I actually felt quite disgusted.
Also, gender roles in toy ads. I know it's a parody, but if you see the "log" sketch in Ren & Stimpy, that epitomises children's advertising.
Like Rousseau said: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." The reason humanity is in chains is because of the state's hegemony over society starting at childhood. Everywhere you could teach them of the evils of capitalism you run into dilemmas: you tell them that they can't eat McDonald's and they say "But *insert child's friend's name* is allowed to go; you show them pictures of war and Guantanamo and dire poverty and they have nightmares etc, etc.
I did History last year and we did about Hitler. We looked at a program for propaganda which said "We start indoctrination as young as possible. As soon as they start to think for themselves we give them a little flag." For contemporary N. America and Western Europe, change "little flag" to "happy meal".
Probs best wait until they're a little more aware of the world to introduce them to socialism. Alot of people have their parents politics anyway. It's not very likely that you'll work in a dock yard and vote tory.

[Janus]

what does this tell you about human nature..
That in human development there is a critical threshold for language acquisition as well as critical stages for various other behaviors.


and our first 5 years under capitalism?
Well, there really is no threshold stage for changing one's political opinion (though it definitely is harder as time passes) as opposed to those for more critical development.

[jaycee]

I think that on a directly political level the effect of childhood while important are more easily changed than the sub conscious effects of capitalism.

One example I've been thinking about is cars, everyone I speak to including myself had a lot of nighmares about cars when they were around this age. I think this shows that we often repress how much cars and things of that nature frighten us.

But also simple things like, the existence of private property. This has all sorts of effects on us from a very early age and can be more difficult to change than we presume. For example Marx spoke about how private property "has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital. "

"In the place of all physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses, the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world. "

alienation is not only felt when we work, but also in everyday life because of the way in which private property teaches us to view the world. It teaches us to view it as something alien to us and as dead until it becomes a commodity.

[TC]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 03:51 am
they say that this is the prime age range to shape a human being. It has a great deal as to how that person might turn out... The brain is a sponge just waiting to suck in as much as information as possible and this is the time to do it. Thats why parents are encourage to read to their kids, talk to them a lot and enroll them in pre-school.

...

what does this tell you about human nature.. and our first 5 years under capitalism? what we watch on TV, what we hear our parents talking about, school, etc etc?
Yah i know they say a lot of bullshit that people just assume is true without any scientific data to prove it.

A lot of the efforts to convince people that its so terribly important to read to their kids, breast feed their infants, give total attention and never think of sticking their kids in day care or using a nanny or baby sitter, and that they're somehow neglectin their kids if they aren't there for them all the time, has the affect of perpetuating patriarchal family structures with domestic labor divided along gender lines (out of necessity cause two parents can't both work part time in a capitalist society unless they're very wealthy).


The fact is that children, even young children, don't need their parents, reactionary social forces need their parents to think their kids need them. Reading to kids isn't better than having them watch tv, it just has the affect of occupying a parents time and supervising what content the kid gets to watch, something thats has the affect of controlling both parents and children and restricting their behavior.