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Chapter 4: Action, Voice, and Identity in Children’s Lives
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Action, Voice, and Identity 69 69 MANY READERS WILL FIND the concepts of action (or agency) and voice to be unremarkable. Parents and teachers commonly describe two-year-olds as assertive , four-year-olds as stubborn or unpredictable, middle-school children as passionate for sports or music or literature, and adolescents as having a direction or mission in life. Thus the purpose of this chapter is not to make the case for action and voice, which are widely accepted, but rather to show that there are different kinds of action and voice. When we describe children’s lives, we implicitly draw on four primary metaphors: the metaphors of essence, organism, machine, and historical context. Each has the power to frame and guide how we describe children’s lives and how we define the concepts of action and voice. If we don’t distinguish among these metaphors, then we will not be speaking, writing, and communicating clearly. The challenge is to know which metaphor has been adopted and so which meaning of action and voice is intended. Heredity, Environment, and Children’s Actions Most discussions of children’s development turn, sooner or later, to a consideration of causes, determinants, factors, or influences in development. Typically, only two categories of causes are considered: heredity, nature, biology, maturation , or internal influences, on the one hand; and environment, nurture, culture (including socialization and education), or external influences, on the other. This notion leads to the question, Which is more important in children’s development , heredity or environment? Unfortunately, this question is badly phrased and, by neglecting the role of action in development, can never lead to a correct answer. Parents, teachers, and child-development professionals frequently note the Action, Voice, and Identity in Children’s Lives Chapter 4 JACK A. MEACHAM 70 JACK A. MEACHAM importance of children’s actions in furthering their own development. They refer to children’s actions and developmental processes with terms such as selfreflection , being aware, and seeking insight; self-organization, coordination, and self-regulation; behaving, having goals and plans, and self-control; and interpreting , constructing identities, and making commitments. Early in life, these processes become functionally autonomous from and at least as powerful as heredity or environment in children’s development. If these processes—which can be included together (along with agency) under the general term action—are of such significance as developmental causes, why are children’s actions often neglected when we consider the lives of children? One answer, explored in the following paragraphs, is historical, social, and cultural: neglecting the role of action in children’s lives and emphasizing merely heredity and environment serve to maintain social inequalities associated with differences in race, gender, and social class (Meacham 1981). People often ask whether children’s characteristics have their basis in heredity or environment. The answers typically given, both incomplete and incorrect , reflect either biological determinism or cultural determinism and neglect three important principles for children’s development. First, neither heredity nor environment can be a sole determinant of development, for both are always essential (principle 1) (Carmichael 1925; Meacham 1981). Second, because genes and environments always interact, children’s genetic backgrounds cannot be evaluated as “good” or “bad” in isolation, without specification of the environments within which these genes are functioning. Similarly, environments cannot be evaluated as “good” or “bad” without specification of the genetic factors through which the environmental influences are mediated (principle 2). Third, the possibilities for change—for modifying the course of development and improving children’s lives—are independent of whether heredity or environment is the major influence in the interactive process of development (principle 3). The two notions, that modifying the course of development must be difficult if heredity is a major influence in development and that modifying the course of development must be relatively easy if the environment is a major influence , are both based in the erroneous belief that either heredity or environment alone can influence the course of development (violating principle 1). Unfortunately, the implication that heredity alone could be a cause of children’s problems has been taken to imply that some children’s heredity must be “bad” (violating principle 2) and thus modification and improvement of children’s prospects for development are not possible (violating principle 3). This false reasoning lets society incorrectly assume that it is relieved of responsibility for developing policies and committing resources for preventing and remediating children’s problems. Legal and ethical reasons are cited in the case of prevention of “hereditary...