CHILDHOODS AROUND THE WORLD COMPLETE LECTURE AND CLASS NOTES includes notes on films watched in class all of professor s lectures PowerPoint notes and summarizations of required articles What is a child What is childhood Why should anthropology be interested in children and 1 12 2016 childhood Anthropology the study of humans there are many disciplines to study humans anthropos human logos word study of anthropology looks at the holistic study of humans it studies them through economics political science psychology relationships etc it s a comparison across time and space Ex anatomy some anthropologists study the bones and remnants of humanness and relate them back to the relationships between humans comparisons between different human groups compare how we are different and the same comparisons across time and space and across species Ex chimpanzees how we are different and the same anthropology is used as a means to compare and study what humans are about and the relationships they have with each other Human there are many versions of humans and humanness a child is a version of a human versions of human can be sorted into stages there are distinctions between an infant and an adult human childhood part of a sequence of stages that occur over the lifespan of all humans Are humans the only species to experience childhood it all depends the word child is reserved for humans childhood is reserved for the human version a young giraffe would not be called a child a child is a member of our species other species can also be very different from infancy to adulthood Ex pandas dogs cats others do not have stages in their lives Ex paramecium a one stage system organism species vary in the number of life stages species vary in the duration of life stages How do we know one when we see one How are children different from adults and adolescents body size and proportions expressive behavior voice quality higher pitch speed of speech body movements big dreams for the future vs acceptance of limitation children project things that we as adults know are not going to happen Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man The Up Series Michael Apted Interviewed 14 kids and interviewed them at 7 year intervals starting in 1964 the same individual was looked at over and over as the individuals aged the individuals were looked at and studied as their lives unfolded some of the individuals come from very elite backgrounds the film series shows the passing down of eliteness through the individuals lives and the power hierarchy in Britain Tony jockey to cab driver Suzi chain smoker to happy mother Bruce sensitive teacher Paul from children s home to Australia and bricklaying John barrister courtroom lawyer Andrew solicitor people s lawyer Charles BBC producer 1 14 2016 Understand what a child is A child is a version of humanness As part of this enterprise we look at the documentary 28 up an account of people from the It s not an the adult version it s something different age of 7 14 21 and 48 It was used to ask questions of what a child is how it s different from an adult and how it s different from an adolescent 28 up gives both the child and adult version giving us the difference in the accounts of the same people from when they were 7 to when they were adults It gives us a record of humans who were born in 1956 and how they lived and grew in their life Suzi also comes from an elite background like Bruce and we ask the question do we see any continuity between the Suzi we see at 7 years old and the Suzi we see later on when she is a mother Tony is from a economically deprived background but he was a real go getter who wanted to be a jockey but ended up being a taxi driver and went on to have a reasonable middle class life he was able to have a house own a taxi and support a family Bruce came from a very elite background he was working in a public school system in Great Britain it s called a state system and he went on to being very interested in teaching children in a more general way despite his elite background and getting away from his background The constant reference to public school by people of elite backgrounds they are not referring to free public education They are referring to a system that is privately funded and very selective prestigious and often a boarding school When we met Suzi we see that she was just 9 years old when she went off to boarding to school and her husband Rupert was 8 when he went to boarding school Bruce at age 7 was already at boarding school for a year What we see is that children in Great Britain who are from an elite background are often separated from their families in order to continue their education In the interviews the children would predict what prep school they were going to go to when they got older school was something that was constantly on their minds Later on we see interviews of three women who come from the East end of London a more economically depressed area and they go on to a state supported education One of them Lynn attends something called a grammar school Grammar school is a selective admission school that you could only get into if you got really good exam grades Michael Apted talks to the other two women and asks why they too didn t go to grammar school they went to comprehensive school which is the school that is similar to our public education system in which everybody goes and everyone can get in not just the elite We also saw that Apted has repetitive questions that he asks people he often asks them about some other social class he ll ask the elite children what they think of the poor and vice versa and tries to pull out of them that Britain has a class system and there s a great deal of precision of consciousness He also asks them about relationships planning for their future and their education and where they would like to be in 7 years Cast of 28 Up Charles BBC producer declined last interview Suzi chain smoker to happy mother Paul from children s home to Australia bricklaying John barrister courtroom lawyer declined last interview Tony jockey to cab driver Bruce sensitive teacher Andrew solicitor people s lawyer 1 19 2016 TopHat question True of false In Great Britain a grammar school is a state funded selective admission secondary school A public school is a privately funded selective admission secondary school boarding school is a norm for economically privileged people in England children were sent off to