ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY
 HUMANIST GALAXY
OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS
ALISON GOPNIK
September 15, 2020

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Book #3
 GARDENER AND THE CARPENTER:
 What the New Science of Child Development
Tells Us About the Relationship
Between Parents and Children
 by Alison Gopnik.
Avery, 2017 (344 pages)

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BOOK OUTLINE
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note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages

 INTRODUCTION --- The parent paradoxes (1-20)
    [1] From parenting to being a parent (8-10)

    [2] The paradoxes (11)

    [3] The paradoxes of love (11-13)

    [4] The paradoxes of learning (13-16)

    [5] The uniqueness of childhood (16-17)

    [6] The child garden (18-20)
1) AGAINST PARENTING (21-36)
    [1] In praise of mess (26-29)

    [2] The ideas that die in our stead (29-30)

    [3] Exploring vs. Exploiting (30-35)
    [4] Protective Parenting (35-36)
note ="The caregiver's job is not just to give children a protected space in which to explore, learn, and make a mess. It is also to guide the child's transition from this exploratory disorder into a new kind of control --- a new variety of order that comes with a new set of adult competences. But we cannot precisely anticipate what that new order will be; that is the whole point of the generational human reboot." (page 36)

2) THE EVOLUTION OF CHILDHOOD (37-56)
    [1] Two pictures (38-42)

    [2] Beyond just-so stories (42-45)

    [3] The paradox of immaturity (45-51)

    [4] Learning, culture, and feedback loops (51-54)

    [5] Variability: the unknown unknowns (54-55)

    [6] Back to parenting (55-56)
3) THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE (57-87)
    [1] Pair-bonding: it's complicated (60-67)

    note = Humans organize our sex lives in a wide variety of ways (62-63)

    note = human babies have a special long childhood (65-67)

    [2] Varieties of love (68-70)

    [5 Grandmothers (71-74)

    [6] Alloparents (74-76)

    [7] The commitment puzzle (76-82)

    [8] The roots of commitment (83-84)

    [9] The costs of commitment (85-86)

    [10] Love and parenting (86-87)
4) LEARNING THROUGH LOOKING (88-114)
    [1] The little actors (90-92)

    [2] The myth of mirror neurons (92-96)

    [3] The birth of imitation (96-97)

    [4] Learning about the world (97-102)

    [5] When children are better than adults (102-104)

    [6] Overimitation (105-107)

    [7] Rituals (107-111)

    [8] Imitation across cultures (111-112)

    ]9] Doing things together (112-114)

    note = "The key to love in practice is doing things together." (114)

    note = Use dance explanation, observation and imitation (114)
5) LEARNING THROUGH LISTENING (115-147)
    [1] Learning from Listening (117-119)

    [2] Being sure of yourself (119-120)

    [3] Who you gonna believe? (120-123)

    [4] Telling stories (123-130)

    [5] Questions and explanations (130-133)

    [6] Why ask why? (134-137)

    [7] The essential question (137-144)

    [8] Letting the dude figure it out (144-146)
6) THE WORK OF PLAY (148-178)
    [1] Rough-and-tumble rats (151-154)

    [2] Getting into everything (154-158)

    [3] Pop-beads and popper (158-161)

    [4] Making believe (161-163)

    [5] Bayesian babies (163-167)

    [6] Kinds of minds (168-170)

    [7] Dacing robots (170-173)

    [8] Beyond miss havisham (173-178)

    note = Guided play by parents and teachers gives a "scaffolding" to a child; it describes how adults can build knowledge for children (176-177)

    note = Puritanism vs play (176-178)
7) GROWING UP (179-210)
    [1] Apprenticeship (184-187)

    [2] Scholastic skills (187-190)

    [3] Thinking differently (190-193)

    [4] Attention deficit disorder (193-196)

    [5] Schooling and learning (196-197)

    [6] The people in the playground (197-201)

    [7] The two systems of adolescence (201-210)
8) THE FUTURE AND THE PAST: Children and technology (211-232)
    [1] The reading brain (216-221)

    note = Socrates feared that reading and writing would undermine critical face to face argumentation (220)
    note = Also Socrates thought that writing would undermine the capacity for memory (220-221)

    [2] The world of screens (222-223)

    note = "the new generation of plastic baby brains reshaped by the new digital enviornment" (222-223)

    [3] Eden and mad max (223-225]

    [4] The technological ratchet (225-228)

    [5] The city of the web (229-230)

    [6] What to do? (230-232)
9) THE VALUE OF CHILDREN (233-254)
    note = classical vs. modern educastion (224-240)

    [1] Private ties and public policy (240-241)

    [2] Finding the money (241-247)

    [3] The old and the young (247-249)

    [4] Work, play, art, science (250-252)

    [5] Conclusion (252-254)
NOTES (255-264)

BIBLIOGRAPHY (265-287)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (289-290)

INDEX (291-302)
    Adolescence
    Aging
    Agriculture
    Altruism
    Animals
    Attachment
    Attention
    Attention disorders
    Babies
    Birds
    Brain
    Caregiving, caregivers
    Categories
    Cause and effect
    Change
    Childhood: apprenticeship in
    Children: adolescent
    Confirmation bias
    Consciousness
    Cooking
    Cooperation
    Cooperative breeding
    Counterfactual thinking
    Creativity
    Culture
    Dancing
    Decision-making
    Dependence and independence
    Dyslexia
    Education and schools
    Environment
    Evolution
    Evolvability
    Experiments
    Exploration
    Exploratory play
    Families
    Fathers
    Feedback loops
    Fiction
    Foraging foragers
    Fossil record
    Gadget experiments
    Genes
    Grandparents
    Imitation
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alison Gopnik (unpaged at end of book)

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AUTHOR NOTES, SUMMARY,
AND BOOK DESCRIPTION
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 AUTHOR NOTES = Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and an affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the study of children's learning and development. She writes the Mind and Matter column for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of The Philosophical Baby and coauthor of The Scientist in the Crib. She has three sons and lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Alvy Ray Smith.

SUMMARY = One of the world's leading child psychologists, Alison Gopnik, shatters the myth of "good parenting." Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way.

BOOK DESCRIPTION = Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the multibillion dollar industry surrounding it have transformed child care into obsessive, controlling, and goal-oriented labor intended to create a particular kind of child and therefore a particular kind of adult. In the book, the pioneering developmental psychologist and philosopher argues that the familiar 21st-century picture of parents and children is wrong. It is not just based on bad science, it is bad for kids and parents, too!

Gopnik explains that children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other. The variability and flexibility of childhood lets them innovate, create, and survive in an unpredictable world. "Parenting" won't make children learn: but caring parents can let children learn by creating a secure, loving environment.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY REVIEW = What a relief to find a book that takes a stand against the practice of "helicopter parenting" so prevalent today. Developmental psychologist Gopnik (The Philosophical Baby) provides comfort for parents who want their children to experience a free-form childhood where they can spread their wings and grow up into well-rounded, responsible adults.

Her book not only dispels the myth of a single best model for good parenting but also backs up its proposals with real-life examples and research studies. Gopnik argues that the modern notion of parenting as a kind of avocation or career is "fundamentally misguided, from a scientific, philosophical, and political point of view, as well as a personal one." Employing the two titular professions as metaphors for opposing approaches to parenting, she maintains that parents should not try to shape their children like a carpenter, but rather provide them with room to grow, like a gardener, into creative thinkers and problem solvers.

"Being a parent is simply about loving children," Gopnik states, except that "love is never simple." This book will provide helpful inspiration for parents and may prompt some to rethink their strategies. An extensive bibliography of further recommended reading is included. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

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