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How do theories help to understand child development
Developmental theories psychology
Developmental theories psychology
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John Locke was an English philosopher and physician in the 1600s and is considered to be one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers. His theories and philosophies are still remembered today by many. One of his most famous theories is, “A child is a blank state that is formed only through experience.” Locke believed that children have not developed personalities yet because they become who they are from their experiences growing up. John Locke’s theory about humans being shaped by experience is true because there is evidence proving a child is formed by their upbringing, observations they make, and traumatic experiences they have had. A child’s personality is easily formed by their upbringing and how they have been raised because …show more content…
Psychology expert, Kendra Cherry researched development in children as well and found that, “Kids can learn a great deal simply from watching their parents, peers and siblings. Even the behaviors they observe on television, video games and the Internet can impact their own thoughts and actions. Because observational learning is so powerful, it is important to ensure that kids are observing the right kind of behaviors”(Cherry). Cherry’s research states that a child’s personality is greatly impacted by observations all around them. Even things as simple as television and video games can play a role in person’s individuality. She also claims, “Genetics play an important role in development, but experiences are equally important. For example, genetics may influence how a child 's brain is wired from birth, but learning and experience that will literally shape how that child 's brain grows and develops”(Cherry). Despite her assertion about genetics playing a role in development, she also believes that experiences or observations are equally important. Of course a child’s genes will play a part in development, but considering that everything a child experiences and observes plays an equally large role, personality maturation is clearly constituted from observations. Based on Kendra Cherry’s research, a child is not born with any set personality but, develops it by observing everything around …show more content…
Heather Larkin researched this and states, “It is important to understand the way in which adverse childhood experiences, commonly known as ACEs, or childhood traumas, have the potential to influence the developing child and derail healthy developmental processes”(Larkin). Based on Larkin’s research, traumas that occur during one’s childhood can significantly affect who someone is. It would make sense that a traumatizing experience would make an impact in someone’s life and stick with them forever. This idea is also seen in Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, once more. When the creation awakes he is like a child in the sense that he is innocent and unknowledgeable about life. He soon experiences a series of unfortunate events, which end up making him an angry, killing monster. In the novel, the creature tells his story to Victor and says, “The whole village was roused: some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel”(Shelley). Victor’s creation started out oblivious and optimistic but soon learned that he was a hideous monster. Everyone’s negative reactions and even abuse, traumatized the being and he became a bitter killer. Therefore, negative experiences or traumatizing events hugely affect the growth and development of someone’s personality, based
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein the protagonist Victor Frankenstein creates a monster. The monster in the novel is deprived of a normal life due to his appearance. Like the creature, some serial killers today are killers due to the same rejection. In the novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns that a childhood of abuse and neglect will often result in evil actions.
There is also corruption within the lack of relationship between Victor and his creation that leads to death, revenge and internal hatred surrounding them. Being there for a child or creation at birth and throughout their childhood is another critical responsibility of being a parent or creator. At the time of the monster’s creation, Victor abandons him and leaves him alone to suffer the first moments he is experiencing the world, which causes the monster to feel very empty and outcast from the start, without even knowing he is a “monster”: . “It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were, instinctively, finding myself so desolate.” (87). Mary Shelley’s use of the word “desolate” really captures the exact emotion
An increasingly popular way of thinking in today’s society is to evaluate the upbringing of someone in order to condone or at least understand their behavior. Along the same lines, one popular view of the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is to be sympathetic towards the creature due to his poor upbringing and lack of a friends or a traditional father figure. Regardless of these unfortunate circumstances, however, the fact remains that the creature is still a cold-hearted wretch bent on ruining the life of Victor, through being the master of Victor’s life and existence, almost in a slave and master sense, who feels remorse yet kills anyway and is therefore deserving of the title "monster".
John Locke was born on August 29, 1632 in Wrington, England as a son of a lawyer and a small landowner. Although he was born into a time of political turbulence, he received a great deal of education while growing up (“John Locke”). At the age of 14, he entered into one of Britain’s most prominent independent school, known as The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster. Consequently, in 1652 he was accepted into Christ Church, Oxford which led to him being elected to a senior studentship in 1659 (“John Locke”). As Locke tutored at the college for several years, he sparked an interest in experimental science. Evidently, he was nominated as a mem...
Locke considers the basis of knowledge to be the acquiring of ideas, rather than an innate understanding of a topic. He states that knowledge can only be learned either through physical sensation or by the mind “reflecting on its own operations within itself” (6). In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke also explains an effective manner of learning, describing that his own ideas are “not the product of some superficial thoughts, or much reading; but the effect of experience and observation” (9). A teacher, according to Locke, can take a student so far, but “no body ever went far in knowledge, or became eminent in any of the sciences, by the discipline and constraint of a master” (10). Essentially, the majority of a student’s learning occurs outside the classroom, as long as it is a topic the student feels motivated to pursue beyond school. That being said, Locke also points out that “our education fits us rather for the university than the world” (11). Taking all of this into consideration, Locke seems to believe the purpose of education is to teach students about topics they
In Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, readers get to take an inside look at Victor’s (the protagonist) life compared to the monster’s life after he is brought to life. In Frankenstein, the bad parenting theme is quite apparent. There are very few “good” parents in the midst of what seems to be quite a few “bad” parents, including Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the monster. Victor comes from a loving and caring family, while Frankenstein is left alone with no one to care for him. If one is left isolated with no one to care for him and talk to him, he will get frustrated and will want to get revenge from society, which may mean becoming evil.
In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke proposes an idealized state of nature in which men are self-sufficient and content. The implications of his idealized population lead him to derive the existence of government from its own theoretical roots: Locke proposes government as a naturally occurring consequence of his state of nature. This derivation is founded on the injustice of man in his natural state: it is the imperfections found in the state of nature that necessitate government. This paper aims to show why the inequality caused by the existence of a market economy is an intentional and necessary path from Locke’s state of nature to the existence of the commonwealth. It will first argue that unequal possession is an inevitable consequence of property as defined by Locke. It will then show why this inequality is a necessary transition out of the state of nature for mankind. It will finally argue that each man’s consent to currency, and the injustice it brings, is the foundation for the overall consent to the commonwealth. The existence of inequality is naturally introduced and maintained throughout Locke’s argument. Hobbes successfully defends that economic inequality is both a natural and crucial part of political society; both the inequality of human ability and the resulting economic inequality precede the existence of an ideal state.
John Locke is a philosopher who discovered many theories. His philosophy states, “humans begin as blank and gradually acquire knowledge through experience” (Locke). This means that it is the experiences that determine who you are. They can determine if someone is a good person or a bad person. Positive experiences can make someone a good person; bad experiences determine if someone is a bad person, and the same can be said for the monster in Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein.
John Locke, born on Aug. 29, 1632, in Somerset, England, was an English philosopher and political theorist. Locke was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he followed the traditional classical curriculum and then turned to the study of medicine and science, receiving a medical degree, but his interest in philosophy was reawakened by the study of Descartes. He then joined the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the earl of Shaftesbury, as a personal physician at first, becoming a close friend and advisor. Shaftesbury secured for Locke a series of minor government appointments. In 1669, in one of his official capacities, Locke wrote a constitution for the proprietors of the Carolina Colony in North America, but it was never put into effect. In 1671 Locke began to write his greatest work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which took nearly twenty years to complete since he was deeply engaged in Shaftesbury's political affairs. In 1675, after the liberal Shaftesbury had fallen from favor, Locke went to France. In 1679 he returned to England, but in view of his opposition to the Roman Catholicism favored by the English monarchy at that time, he soon found it expedient to return to the Continent. From 1683 to 1688 he lived in Holland, and following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the restoration of Protestantism to favor, Locke returned once more to England. The new king, William III, appointed Locke to the Board of Trade in 1696, a position from which he resigned because of ill health in 1700. He died in Oates on October 28, 1704.
Locke firmly denies Filmer's theory that it is morally permissible for parents to treat their children however they please: " They who allege the Practice of Mankind, for exposing or selling their Children, as a Proof of their Power over them, are with Sir Rob. happy Arguers, and cannot but recommend their Opinion by founding it on the most shameful Action, and most unnatural Murder, humane Nature is capable of." (First Treatise, sec.56) Rather, Locke argues that children have the same moral rights as any other person, though the child's inadequate mental faculties make it permissible for his parents to rule over him to a limited degree. "Thus we are born Free, as we are born Rational; not that we have actually the Exercise of either: Age that brings one, brings with it the other too."
In this essay I will be discussing my concept of childhood and how it compares to my understanding of the theories and concepts of John Locke and John Wesley. I have chosen to look at these two theorists as although they lived in similar times their theories and concepts on children were influenced by very different factors and so differ greatly from each other and in most respects differ from my own concepts. My concept of childhood is influenced by personal experience and the views of my parent.
The monster's 'child-hood' is of great contrast to Victor's but not of Mary Shelley's, who had a traumatic up-bringing, her mother died at an early age, and her step-mother neglected and abused her. Victor's was one of happy memories and fun, he was never pressured into doing anything, this shows the necessity of a good up-bringing, but it begs the question, are some people inherently bad?
In his “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” John Locke discusses personal identity where he tries to show that personal identity depends on our memories. Locke also discuses some of the changes that are possible in our constitution that still result in the same personal identity. However, I think that Locke fails to account for certain aspects of memory that effect personal identity which leads me to think personal identity may not be what Locke proposes it to be.
So the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and is informed only by “experience,” that is, by sense experience and acts of reflection. Locke built from this an epistemology beginning with a pair of distinctions: one between SIMPLE and COMPLEX ideas and another between PRIMARY and SECONDARY qualities. Simple ideas originate in any one sense (though some of them, like “motion,” can derive either from the sense of sight or the sense of touch). These ideas are simple in the sense that they cannot be further broken down into yet simpler entities. (If a person does not understand the idea of “yellow,” you can’t explain it to him. All you can do is point to a sample and say, yellow.) These simple ideas are Locke’s primary data, his psychological atoms. All knowledge is in one way or another built up out of them.
John Locke talks of the gradual opening of conscious mind which according to him is initially empty (a tabula rasa). This empty mind, a tabula rasa, is shaped by sensations and reflections or experiences in general. In some thoughts concerning education, Locke expressed his belief on the importance of education in development of man. He says that the extent of their goodness and usefulness boils down to their education (Piel, 2002). The impressions that the mind gets in childhood are lasting and form the basis of self. He expressed this in his “associations of ideas” and his views on this later came to be known as “assocationism”. Associationism as a theory was very influential and warned parents from allowing their children have to develop negative associations.