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Posted on 03/23/2006 5:29:48 PM PST by Presbyterian Reporter
An anonymous tipster sends some intriguing information about the "whiny kids grow up to be conservatives" study conducted by left-wing UC Berkeley prof Jack Block.
Wondering where the nursery school kids who were the subjects of the study came from? Check this out:
I know exactly which "nursery school" was used as the basis of this study. It is not mentioned anywhere in the text of the 16-page pdf you provided for downloading, but I know because -- well, because I know people who were some of the subjects of this study (and of other similar studies). And an extremely important fact about this school renders the entire study false. The nursery school cited is actually the "Harold E. Jones Child Study Center," on Atherton St. in Berkeley. It used to have a different name if I remember -- I think it used to be called the "Atherton Child Study Center."
Go to this URL to see their Web site.
If you want proof that this is indeed the school used for the study, go to this URL.
This page is part of the "Institute for Human Development," which is the department at Cal which runs the school. It is part of and connected to the Child Study Center site link above. About halfway down on this page (search for "Jack Block") you'll see that they mention that the data gathering part of this study was done at the Center:
"A renowned longitudinal study of development originated by Jeanne and Jack Block began with children at three and followed them at 4, 5, 7, 11, 14 18, and 23 years of age."
Compare that to this text from the final study (in the pdf):
Pre-school children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23
What is so significant about this? Well, the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center is only open to children of U.C. Berkeley faculty and staff:
The University Preschool offers full-day developmental child care for preschool-aged children of UCB faculty and staff.
(The "Preschool" is a subset of the "Child Study Center.")
In other words, ALL of the children in that study were the offspring of U.C. Berkeley professors, lecturers, and staff members.
The reason the Child Study Center is so popular is that they offer free/cheap child care/nursery schooling in exchange for the parents allowing their kids to be "studied" by psychologists all day every day.
And here's the clincher (you probably already saw it coming):
UC Berkeley faculty was rated the most left-wing in the country: 91% of teachers there were classified as liberal:
"University of California, Berkeley (91 percent liberal)."
So, we have documented proof that the "whiny babies" in this study were basically ALL the children of liberal parents.
With this fact in hand, we can completely turn the study around:
Firstly, it was the liberal parents that made their kids whiny to begin with.
Secondly, it could just as easily be argued that, even at a very early age, some kids don't get along with their parents, and so become "whiny." Then, when those kids grow older, they rebel against their parents, as a way of disassociating themselves from their parents' influence. And if your parents are liberal (as they all were in this study), then you rebel by becoming a conservative!
That's it for the documented-facts part of the scoop. But on a more informal, anecdotal level: I have personally witnessed what goes on at the Child Study Center (or what went on there several years ago - I'm sure it's the same today, as its mission has not changed):
Toddlers and young children (generally aged between 2 and 5) frolic around and do activities as in any day care/nursery school/kindergarten setting. But the difference is there are adult researchers (some even with the proverbial clipboards) hovering around at all times, monitoring the kids, "observing" their behavior, writing down little notes and filling out charts about the kids' personalities and activities and so on.
And here's the key, from my personal observation: the researchers get it all wrong! They often have some esoteric psychological/behavioral academic fad they're trying to prove, so they ascribe the most bizarre and ludicrous motivations for the kids' actions, scribbling notes about "ego resilience" and "crypto-sexual manifestations" and blah blah blah. It would be comical if if wasn't taken so seriously. I can assure you that whatever data they gathered in the '60s or '70s about how "whiny" these kids were was totally bogus and off-the-mark.
Maybe they were whiny because they were more intellectually developed than the other kids and were frustrated in an overly infantile environment. Maybe they were whiny because the "counselors" detected early indications of independent thought and action in these kids, and forced them to conform to their Socialist ideals, causing the future conservatives to feel resentful.
Related thread from earlier today.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601500/posts
Great work by Michelle.
Another researcher proves to be a left wing crank with no real grasp of scientific methodology. I think I just described almost every sociology dept in the country (sorry, Herr Weber, it has come to this).
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Unlike the MSM, it looks like our babe Michelle actually does some REAL journalism.
"In other words, ALL of the children in that study were the offspring of U.C. Berkeley professors, lecturers, and staff members."
Moreover, if these kids are only 23 now, it's a bit too soon to say how they "turned out." At 23 I was quite the strutting little leftie, just brimming with sneering superiority toward all the evil rich and the stupid country folk who voted Republican. I didn't start learning about actual conservative philosophy till I came to Free Republic. And I was 33 then.
It's incredible that the professor didn't get it, but emotions usually rule when professors talk about politics. This sort of research is pretty worthless, because how we should act politically depends a lot on practical circumstances, rather than abstract ideas or personality types.
Though ideologues like to deny it, there are times, if only once in a generation, when the sort of person one doesn't like may well get it right about some issue, so writing off one set of emotions or reactions or ideas or personality traits entirely is foolish.
So now you're...
carry the two...
OMG
=)
One can certainly tell the difference between a conservative raised by conservatives vs. the "new conservatives" raised by libs. Worlds apart in my estimation and, sadly, they have the megaphone for the time being.
Not me. I was born conservative.
But sometimes a "convert" is more passionate. Consider the ex-smoker.....
She's a sweety for sure. What is her ethnic background?
What conservative kid wouldn't be whining if they were stuck with radical Berkley leftist parents?
Yeah, if these kids came from liberal parents and are showing signs of conservatism in their early twenties, we are making some serious progress!
There are days that I thank God for Michelle Malkin. This day and artice is one of them.
artice = article...
Duh!
"There are days that I thank God for Michelle Malkin. This day and artice is one of them."
The real scary thought is all the garbage spewed by the mainstream media prior to blogs and free republic.
Not to undermine Malkin's piece, but I have to ask this: were Berkeley's faculty members in the 1960s and 1970s were as liberal as they are today, or --comparatively-- more conservative? The 90% liberals, was it also applied to the past? I know about the students movement there during that period, but am not sure about the professors/staff.
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