
Are kids helpful and, if so why? - barry-cotter
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/campaigns/childhood-and-youth/lancy-on-the-helpfulness-of-children
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barry-cotter
If you want to learn more about this David F. Lancy's book, The Anthropology
of Childhood, is excellent.

Very short version Children everywhere desperately want to be helpful, to be
productive members of society with a useful role. They learn what to do and
how to do it with very, very little in the way of explicit instruction and for
almost all skills in almost all societies none.

Schools and formal instruction are a product of literate societies and
schooling, both teaching and learning are unnatural behaviours that absolutely
have to be taught.

[https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Childhood-Cherubs-
Chatte...](https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Childhood-Cherubs-Chattel-
Changelings/dp/1107420989)

~~~
johnchristopher
> They learn what to do and how to do it with very, very little in the way of
> explicit instruction [..]

> [..] both teaching and learning are unnatural behaviour that absolutely have
> to be taught.

Something isn't right.

~~~
barry-cotter
Teaching and learning in a classroom environment. Lessons. Children and people
more generally learn by observation, making attempts at relatively simple
tasks and increasing the range of tasks they’re competent at and can do well.
Learning how to do things in practice with bugger all theory.

~~~
johnchristopher
> Teaching and learning in a classroom environment. Lessons.

My bad.

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teddyh
_Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal_ covered this:

[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-fundamental-equation](https://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/the-fundamental-equation)

~~~
wodenokoto
I don't get the punchline about the y-axis starting at negative 10 billion

~~~
Doxin
the joke there is that the utility of children is a) constant over their
lifespan and b) negative 10 billion to start with.

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watwut
14-30month old want to help, but are not useful. You doing it alone goes much
faster then you doing it with kid. Also, they loose attention quick and change
activity. 3 years old wI'll pick apples and will loose attention in 10 minutes
or sooner. So you can't really use them.

They also loose natural interest in activity (cleaning) pretty much when they
learned it enough to be useful. It is interesting as long as it is challenge I
guess.

Kids learn simple activities this way, but they won't learn complicated ones.
That is why all larger civilizations had tutors or schools for those expected
to do non-simple work (read not poor).

~~~
barry-cotter
Indeed, that’s why no one ever learned how to hunt, gather, smith, knapp flint
or make pottery before the rise of literate civilisations.

The first appearance of anything resembling schools in the historical record
are for scribes in Mesopotamia, about 5,000 years ago. Many very complicated
things have been and continue to be taught through the apprenticeship model,
otherwise known as be useful to me or get out. It doesn’t make sense to take
an apprentice unless you’re going to get some advantage from it so the
learning generally proceeded slower than it could have if instruction was the
sole aim.

Activities as complicated as architecture, engineering sufficient to build
cathedrals and aqueducts and painting and sculpture sufficient for the
renaissance were taught in this manner.

~~~
watwut
They did not learned to to hunt, gather, smith, knapp flint at the age of
three nor sooner. They learned that at later age, when they could be actually
useful. The article is about small kids. My comment is about small kids too.

Also, parents or elders would explicitely teach you, even if you was aprentice
of something more complicated explicitely teaching was there. It was not based
merely on observasion and wish to be useful alone.

Moreover, it make sense to take apprentice that is not useful - when his
parents pay you.

~~~
barry-cotter
> Kids learn simple activities this way, but they won't learn complicated
> ones. That is why all larger civilizations had tutors or schools for those
> expected to do non-simple work (read not poor).

No reference to age, claims that all non simple skills were learned from
tutors or schools.

If you read _Anthropology of Childhood_ hunter gatherers really don’t do
explicit instruction in anything resembling structured lesssons, ever.
Children and adolescents watch, imitate, beg to be left to do things and
occasionally get maybe five minutes of an explanation that amounts to “That’s
wrong, do it like this.” And that’s really, really rare. Farming is very far
from being simple or easy work and no peasants taught their children how to
farm, they got them to be useful where they could, as they could.

There’s a certain amount of explicit instruction in apprenticeship but there’s
a hell of a lot more practice and observation than explicit and deliberate
information or skill transfer.

~~~
watwut
Peasants did taught their children to farm and craft to the extend that was
possible. There is a lot of knowledge captured in sayings (at least in my
language) that rhyme for better recall. When literacy started in region,
farming advice and hints written into book are first usages of it. It is that
useful. Writing changed farming, effectively.

This kind of learning had definitive limits. Great example of it is Russia
which had feudalism longer then west and had large illiteracy rates. When
literacy started to be a bit more common, before WWI essentially, the way they
farmed became way more effective - they used much less effective methods
before. The style of learning you describe happen to coincide with low
effectivity, poverty and social problems.

The reason apprenticeship learning could be based on observation only is that
the amount of knowledge to learn was smaller. Landlords and aristocrats had
tutors and teachers - because you won't learn that by observation only. You
don't learn history or math or chemistry either.

You don't learn reading like that (there are only few exceptions).

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dash2
There are some very cute videos of some of the "kids helping" research:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eU5xZW7cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eU5xZW7cU)

