PSYC-223 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Tabula Rasa, Philosophical Perspectives, Natural Selection
21 Sep 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC 223
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Chapter 1: The Science of Child Development
Historical Views
Plato (428 -347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote about ideal forms of government
and believed that schools and parents were responsible for teaching children the self-
control that would make them effective citizens.
The main debates of the time centred around the following issues:
-Are children inherently good or bad?
-Is development nature-driven or a product of the environment?
-Are children actively involved in development or are they passive?
3 Philosophical Perspectives
Hobbes’ (1651) doctrine of original sin
-Children are inherently selfish and are egoists
-They should be restrained
Rousseau’s (1762) doctrine of innate purity
-Children are born with an intuitive sense of right and wrong
-As they grow they become corrupted by society
-“noble savages”
Locke’s (1690) idea of the “tabula rasa”
-Children are like a blank slate when they are born
-They have no inborn tendencies at all
Darwin: Forefather of Scientific Child Study
-Natural selection & survival of the fittest
!1
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
