Recently, while in a book store looking for some reading material for our grandchildren I noticed a number of books for young children dealing with everything from divorce to homosexuality and AIDS. It reminded me of how our thinking is always colored by wrong intuitions about both the physical and psychological worlds.

For example for thousands of years we believed that the earth was flat and that if you walked to the end you would fall off. With the advent of science we learned from the shadow of the earth on the moon and the disappearance of ships on the horizon, that indeed the earth was round. In a similar way we believed that the sun revolved around the earth, until Copernicus demonstrated how many phenomena (e.g. the relative brightness of the planets) could best by explained by assuming that the earth revolved about the sun.

We also have a number of psychological intuitions that are also incorrect. This is particularly true with respect to children. Some of these intuitions are dormant until they are activated by a particular concept. The Head Start program is a case in point. The program was conceived at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and was meant to give low income the kind of educational experience that would prepare them to succeed in the public schools. Head Start is a great overall child care program which was never meant to raise IQ’s but merely to give low income children a level playing field. The term Head Start, however, elicited a dormant intuition to the effect that education is a race and that the sooner you start, the sooner and the better you finish. This false intuition has given rise to much of the academic hurrying that is so pervasive in our schools today. Yet education is not a race, and there is no evidence to show that an early academic start has any lasting advantages. Indeed, all of the evidence is to the contrary. But psychological intuitions are as hard to overcome as the physical ones. Hopefully it will not take us centuries to overcome this one.

An equally pernicious intuition about children is the idea that a bad experience is the best preparation for a good one. It is this erroneous belief that explains why I found books for young children dealing with divorce, homosexuality, Aids and child abuse. Certainly for children who are dealing with these issues in their lives, some level of discussion may be in order. But most of the children who read, or who have these books read to them, will never have to confront these stressful experiences. Why put them at risk for no purpose?

The truth is that, a bad experience is the worst preparation for a bad experience. This was demonstrated by a recent study of children who were directly affected by the events of 9/11, that is, those who had either lost a loved one, or witnessed the events directly. While all of the children showed stress symptoms, only those who had a prior seriously stressful experience showed clinically significant symptoms.(Chemtob 2008) So contrary to this intuition, the best preparation for a bad experience is a good experience. And the more good experiences children have the better they will be prepared for whatever bad ones they will encounter later.

Wrong Intuitions (part 2)

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Chemtob, C. (2008). "Impact of Conjoint Exposure to the World Trade Center Attacks and to other Traumatic Events on the behavioral Problems of Preschool Children." Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 162: 126--33.