Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975 Page: 10
68 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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If your Cubs are
old enough to
take orders
from you, they're
old enough to
take orders
from Tom-Wat
Showcases!
Forget about age. It doesn't count for
anything. Enthusiasm counts. And eager-
ness and energy and pride. And especially
leadership.
They're everything in Cubbing. And
they're everything in fund raising.
Don't get us wrong. We won't tell you
it's as easy to conduct a Tom-Wat project
as it is to sell a few boxes of candy, or a
handful of candles.
But we will tell you this. If you're ready to
instruct and guide and watch over your
Cubs, we're ready to help raise all the mon-
ey they need for an entire year's activities.
We'll give you all the instructive materi-
als and selling aids you need. We'll watch
over you while you're watching over your
Cubs. And we'll fill your Show; Cases with
16 of the highest quality, most-wanted,
most reasonably priced fund-raising prod-
ucts available.
If your Cubs need money, forget about
their age. Just remember that the very first
scouting group to ever conduct a Tom-
Wat Show Case project was a Cub pack.
And Cubs are still among our most enthu-
siastic, eager, energetic, proud and
successful Tom-Wat fund raisers.
Use the Show Case Order Card on
the facing page to get Show -j Cases for
all your Cubs, plus a fabulous Free Gift
for yourself.
You can use the same Card to order
a Sample Show Case.
Or you can call our Toll-Free Number
800-243-9250. In Connecticut, call 384-
0771 collect.
>
0
LAFAYETTE PLAZA TOWER
BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT 06601
hood itself. Isn't it important to ask
ourselves how many of these deci-
sions are influenced by stylish opin-
ions, garbled information and unsea-
soned advice absorbed from the
media?
If experts say that very young chil-
dren flourish in group care, then why
not plan on returning to work soon af-
ter the baby's birth? If today's kids are
as fantastically mature as the special-
ists report, they really don't have
much need or use for the outmoded
guidance we could give, do they? If
studies indicate that there are no bad
effects from frequent moves to differ-
ent towns, it's OK to put career ad-
vancement first and forget about fam-
ily roots and all that jazz. Researchers
announce that 2-year-olds can and
should learn to read? Great, we can
skip the messy water play bit and set-
tle the toddler down with a primer.
It's true that a firsthand look at the
research studies behind these and
other current opinions and conclu-
sions probably wouldn't be of much
help to parents. In most research pa-
pers, English has been supplanted by
impenetrable professional jargon. But
the danger of the media versions is
that research findings are seldom pre-
sented accurately, objectively and in
their historical context.
Still worse, there is rarely any indi-
cation that at this very moment there
are other equally impressive and rep-
utable study findings by other equally
distinguished researchers that direct-
ly contradict or negate the currently
fashionable point of view.
Driven by their chronic hunger for
new and provocative material, news-
papers, magazines, TV and radio fre-
quently act as a distribution belt for
poorly-conceived, inadequately-test-
ed theories and programs. Many of
these are adopted in homes and
schools after they have already been
abandoned at the site of the original
experiment because they didn't work!
The public doesn't hear about the fail-
ures — it just continues to live with
them, unknowingly.
As Dr. Edward Zigler of Yale Univer-
sity, the former director of the Office
of Child Development, Department of
Health, Education and Welfare, once
noted in Human Behavior: "What par-
ents do not realize is that much of the
so-called information about children
presented in the popular press is often
no more than a journalist's interpreta-
tion of a tentative hypothesis, a scien-
tist's value judgment, or an unverified
hunch. . . . The parent who is not famil-
iar with the thousands of studies on
child development, nor trained in sci-
entific inquiry, can easily be steam
rollered into believing a point of view
which is little more than a passing
fad."
Parents should also be aware that
research is not necessarily under-
taken in the areas where more knowl-
edge of children is most needed. Re-
searchers quite naturally tend to put
their work where the money is — the
government funding and foundation
grants and businesses which under-
write careers as well as studies.
In fact, the needs of children have
not been major forces in shaping child
development research, observes Dr.
Willard Hartup of the University of Min-
nesota. For example, "Such critical
subjects as the effects of wars and
social changes on children have lower
priorities as subjects for study than
projects emerging from changes in
theory and practice in the various pro-
fessional sectors."
Dr. Hartup's startling message: "The
directions child research has taken
over the past 30 years have not been
determined by the urgencies and re-
alities in children's lives, but rather re-
flect evolutions and revolutions within
the child development professions
themselves."
In early education, where theories
and programs have been blooming and
withering in bewildering succession,
"a meditation break" is long overdue,
in the opinion of Dr. Bernard Spodek of
the University of Illinois. Early child-
hood researchers have been locked
into a state of continuous response to
society's demands for quick answers
to the social needs of the times, he
points out. This ceaseless response
and the urgency that fueled it have of-
ten been accompanied by a lack of re-
flection about the values and ideolo-
gies underlying programs developed
under stress.
Actually, the well guarded secret of
the child development professions is
that not very much is yet known for
sure about the ways healthy children
develop, learn and mature. The major-
ity of theories on how children learn
are based on research experiments on
rats. Most of the theories on children's
personality development are derived
from work with pathological (sick, dis-
turbed) individuals.
"Professionals with relatively little
experience with normal parents and
kids may look on the doubts, anxieties,
confusions and regrets expressed by
parents as (continued on page 56)
10
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 63, Number 1, January-February 1975, periodical, January 1975; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353656/m1/10/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.