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."New knowledge either extends or outmodes the old.In either case it compels those forwhom it is relevant to reorganize their store of images.It forces them to relearn today whatthey thought they knew yesterday.Thus Lord James, vice-chancellor of the University ofYork, says, "I took my first degree in chemistry at Oxford in 1931." Looking at the questionsasked in chemistry exams at Oxford today, he continues, "I realize that not only can I not dothem, but that I never could have done them, since at least two-thirds of the questions involveknowledge that simply did not exist when I graduated." And Dr.Robert Hilliard, the topeducational broadcasting specialist for the Federal Communications Commission, presses thepoint further: "At the rate at which knowledge is growing, by the time the child born todaygraduates from college, the amount of knowledge in the world will be four times as great.Bythe time that same child is fifty years old, it will be thirty-two times as great, and 97 percentof everything known in the world will have been learned since the time he was born."Granting that definitions of "knowledge" are vague and that such statistics arenecessarily hazardous, there still can be no question that the rising tide of new knowledgeforces us into ever-narrower specialization and drives us to revise our inner images of realityat ever-faster rates.Nor does this refer merely to abstruse scientific information aboutphysical particles or genetic structure.It applies with equal force to various categories ofknowledge that closely affect the everyday life of millions.THE FREUDIAN WAVEMuch new knowledge is admittedly remote from the immediate interests of the ordinary manin the street.He is not intrigued or impressed by the fact that a noble gas like xenon can formcompounds something that until recently most chemists swore was impossible.While eventhis knowledge may have an impact on him when it is embodied in new technology, untilthen, he can afford to ignore it.A good bit of new knowledge, on the other hand, is directlyrelated to his immediate concerns, his job, his politics, his family life, even his sexualbehavior.A poignant example is the dilemma that parents find themselves in today as aconsequence of successive radical changes in the image of the child in society and in ourtheories of childrearing.At the turn of the century in the United States, for example, the dominant theoryreflected the prevailing scientific belief in the primacy of heredity in determining behavior.Mothers who had never heard of Darwin or Spencer raised their babies in ways consistentwith the world views of these thinkers.Vulgarized and simplified, passed from person toperson, these world views were reflected in the conviction of millions of ordinary people that"bad children are a result of bad stock," that "crime is hereditary," etc.In the early decades of the century, these attitudes fell back before the advance ofenvironmentalism.The belief that environment shapes personality, and that the early yearsare the most important, created a new image of the child.The work of Watson and Pavlovbegan to creep into the public ken.Mothers reflected the new behaviorism, refusing to feedinfants on demand, refusing to pick them up when they cried, weaning them early to avoidprolonged dependency.A study by Martha Wolfenstein has compared the advice offered parents in sevensuccessive editions of Infant Care, a handbook issued by the United States Children's Bureaubetween 1914 and 1951.She found distinct shifts in the preferred methods for dealing withweaning, thumb-sucking, masturbation, bowel and bladder training.It is clear from this studythat by the late thirties still another image of the child had gained ascendancy.Freudianconcepts swept in like a wave and revolutionized childrearing practices.Suddenly, mothersbegan to hear about "the rights of infants" and the need for "oral gratification."Permissiveness became the order of the day
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