David Elkind > Quotes

“Shift from modern nuclear family to the postmodern permeable family.”
― David Elkind

“The transition is well explained by futurologist Alvin Toffler: “As work shifted out of the fields and the home, children had to be prepared for factory life. If young people could be prefitted in the industrial system, it would vastly ease the problems of industrial discipline later on. The result was another central structure of all [modern] societies: mass education.”2”
― David Elkind, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon

“In the United States, the negative legacy of humanism and the reliance on books, recitation, and role learning have been difficult to overcome.”
― David Elkind, Giants in the Nursery: A Biographical History of Developmentally Appropriate Practice

“It is next to impossible to learn a complex skill by observation alone. One does not learn to play the violin by watching Heifitz or the piano by observing Rubenstein.”
― David Elkind, Child Development and Education: A Piagetian Perspective

“The conception of child competence is much too functional for it to be given up just because the research, clinical experience, and expert opinion concur that it is both incorrect and unhealthy.”
― David Elkind, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon