neverland

NeverLand

Imagine the world, as you know it, being identical to the small island of Neverland from Peter Pan. On Neverland, Peter Pan spends his “never-ending childhood” interacting with mermaids, Indians, fairies, pirates, and even children from the world outside of Neverland. Picture our world, just a little less magical, but nevertheless, with people spending their “never-ending childhoods”. As our economy transforms from “an agricultural and manufacturing economy” to a more “information economy”, Alice Gopnik, a psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, believes that this will ultimately lead to our society remaining “children forever – or at least for much longer” ("Never-Ending Childhood"). In her response to the Edge.org’s question of the year for 2009: “What Will Change Everything?” Gopnik suggests that with the changing economy, people will have to learn substantially more information and they will learn it during the early years of childhood, because that is when we learn the most. She also indicates that the prolonged learning during childhood is possible because of the understanding of “neural plasticity,” which basically “refers to the strengthening or weakening of nerve connections” and is mainly responsible for learning, amongst other things ("What Is Neural Plasticity?"). Along with neural plasticity, she believes “the global spread of schooling” will make increased learning during childhood more likely as well (Gopnik). Although, less schooling puts us at a competitive disadvantage, with countries like Japan, South Korea, England, France, and etc., I agree with Gopnik because if society has to endure longer schooling, with added information, in this ever-changing econom...

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...y” is the most beneficial, disregarding all new evidence of neural plasticity in adults, they force us to learn tons of information, leaving out the things we need the most which are REAL WORLD EXPERIENCES. The right balance of both learning processes, independence, differentiated learning, and allowing children to retain their native brilliance as they grow up is what can reverse this change. Just think about these two questions posed by Alice Gopnik, in her Edge.org response, “When we are all babies forever, who will be the parents? When we’re all children who will be the grown-ups?” (Gopnik) I believe if we don’t incorporate more opportunities for independence and continually support neural plasticity studies to prove that we can continually learn without having to force information inside our heads, we all will be babies and other countries will be the parents.