Quote

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

Alison Gopnik

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alison Gopnik
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: June 16
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
A. Gopnik
A Gopnik
Gopnik
Gopnik A
Gopnik A.
Young
Production
Human
Productions
Humans
Marketing
Children
Grown
Like
Species
Research
Baby
Babies
Development
Division

More quotes by Alison Gopnik

Image
Preschool kids learn best when exploring, but kids in school learn best when they do things, interacting with a master. Unfortunately, our schools don't do much of either. Also, kids do need to learn how to deal with technology, and online education and otherwise using electronic devices as learning tools facilitates that.
Alison Gopnik
Image
One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.
Alison Gopnik
Image
The brain is highly structured, but it is also extremely flexible. It's not a blank slate, but it isn't written in stone, either.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.
Alison Gopnik
Image
The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.
Alison Gopnik
Image
To support the people we care about is intrinsic, it is not instrumental. It's not something we do because we're hoping to get some other outcome.
Alison Gopnik
Image
If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
Alison Gopnik
Image
It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways.
Alison Gopnik
Image
What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.
Alison Gopnik
Image
The largest and most powerful computers are still no match for the smallest and weakest humans.
Alison Gopnik
Image
Some people say that parents don't matter, and that's not true at all. The irony is that we pay attention to all these things that don't matter, and not to what does matter, such as parents having enough resources to provide an environment where their children have both security and freedom.
Alison Gopnik
Image
If you just got enough expertise and enough special techniques and read up enough, then you could shape a child into the kind of adult you wanted. There's almost this kind of competitive enterprise. That picture is the picture I think people often imply when they use the word parenting.
Alison Gopnik
Image
There is a tension between our desire to get our kids to turn out a particular way versus letting them develop to be their own person. If there were a pill that would make my child turn out the way I wanted, I'm not sure I'd take it.
Alison Gopnik
Image
The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
Alison Gopnik