Marfo – knowledge is complex

There are people for whom knowledge is objective.  We know the things we know because we have studied them scientifically.  Or it is possible to know everything we need to know.  You know that’s one perspective.  People might call it an objectivist perspective.  Reality is out there.  We can find it.  That’s one philosophical perspective.   

There are others who also look at knowledge as something that is not just an isolated, independent thing floating out there.  That actually we affect knowledge even as we create it.  That knowledge is actually something we construct.  And if you believe in knowledge as something that we construct, then actually the idea that we would know the same things for all people doesn’t make sense anymore.  So all of a sudden knowledge becomes a bit more complex.   

Coming back to the field of child development, I think more and more people are understanding that actually knowledge itself is a system.  It’s no longer the objective, you know, sort of set of ideas that most of us thought you know from one perspective, that something makes sense because of the way you look at it.  So what does that mean for the field of child development especially for those of us who are interested in ensuring that we can tap in to the best of thinking, the best of evidence throughout the world.  We want to tap in to everything that is wonderful out there.  You know we don’t ignore something because it doesn’t come from our local environment.  We need to be more universal, more cosmopolitan.  We want to tap in to the best.  But we also want to see how well the best that we can tap in to from any part of the world also has relevance and has meaning in the context in which we do our work.    

There are parts of the world where we have taken it for granted that actually the best is elsewhere.  The best of what we need is not with us and so we need to go outside to find it.  And my message is no there’s a lot of wonderful stuff outside but there’s a lot of wonderful stuff inside.  And if we’re going to grow children who will be able to take care of their own societies, become critical parts of what we need to do fundamentally differently to move our countries forward.  It has to be children who understand and have faith in their own societies and have faith in what they do as a people and their cultural traditions. 

So finding our way to this place where I’m calling you know, context is really, really very important and encouraging people to look at their conceptions of human development not just in terms of what I’ve been giving them from outside the culture but also in terms of what they understand about what takes place within their own culture.  It’s one of the critical challenges of the field.