More broadly speaking, the milieus in which children spend their early years exert a very strong impact on the standards by which they subsequently j… - Howard Gardner

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More broadly speaking, the milieus in which children spend their early years exert a very strong impact on the standards by which they subsequently judge the world around them. Whether in relation to fashion, food, geographical environment, or manner of speaking, models initially encountered by children continue to affect their tastes and preferences indefinitely, and these preferences prove very difficult to change. Closely related to standards of taste are an emerging set of beliefs about which behaviors are good and which values are the be cherished. In most cases, these standards initially reflect quite faithfully the value system encountered at home, at church, and at preschool or elementary school. Values with respect to behavior (you should not steal, you should salute the flag) and sets of beliefs (my country, right or wrong, all mommies are perfect, God is monitoring all of your actions) often exert a very powerful effect on children's actions and reactions. In some cultures, a line is drawn early between the moral sphere, where violations merit severe sanctions, and the conventional sphere, where practices are evaluated along a single dimension of morality. Even — and perhaps especially — when children are not conscious of the source and of the controversy surrounding these beliefs and values, unfortunate clashes may occur when they meet others raised with a contrasting set of values. It is assuredly no accident that Lenin and the Jesuits agreed on one precept: Let me have a child until the age of seven, and I will have that child for life.

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About Howard Gardner

Howard Earl Gardner (born July 11, 1943) is an American developmental psychologist and the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

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Alternative Names: Howard Earl Gardner
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It is important for leaders to know their stories; to get them straight; to communicate them effectively, particularly to those who are in the thrall of rival stories; and, above all, to embody in their lives the stories that they tell.

To begin with, the child of five, six, or seven is in many ways an extremely competent individual. Not only can she use skillfully a raft of symbolic forms, but she has evolved a galaxy of robust theories that prove quite serviceable for most purposes and can even be extended in generative fashion to provide cogent accounts of unfamiliar materials or processes. The child is also capable of intensive and extensive involvement in cognitive activities, ranging from experimenting with fluids in the bathtub to building complex block structures and mastering board games, card games, and sports. While some of these creations are derivative, at least a few of them may exhibit genuine creativity and originality. And quite frequently in at least one area, the young child has achieved the competence expected from much older children. Such precocity is particularly likely when youngsters have pursued a special passion, like dinosaurs, dolls, or guns, or when there is a strain of special talent in areas like mathematics, music, or chess or simply a flexibility, a willingness to try new things.

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"Children not only think better as they mature; they also become capable of thinking about their own mental processes. Memory capacity may not expand in any real sense, but children (and adults) learn how to boost their recall by various strategies, ranging from the ways in which they group or store things to the kinds of tally systems they utilize on paper or in their heads. Children also learn to think about their own problem-solving activities: How can I best handle a new challenge? Which system or which tool would be useful? Who can I turn to for help? What is relevant and what is irrelevant to a problem I am trying to solve or a principle I am seeking to discover or master? Often these lessons are learned by watching others reflect on their memories or their thinking processes, by mastering practices common in the culture, or by following oft-repeated adages; even left pretty much to their own devices, however, in seems reasonable to assume that nearly all youngsters will improve somewhat in the "metacognitive" areas between the age of seven and adulthood (which itself begins at markedly different ages across cultures)."

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