Shaping Children in A 'New Parents' Era

In 1690, philosopher John Locke posited the idea of the blank slate - tabula rasa - that humans are born without any linguistic information. This idea of having no 'preconceived notions' was extended to all knowledge systems, including morality (right and wrong), biases (a roster of -isms), and beliefs and tastes (culture). For Locke, 'experience' - through interactions radiating from the circles of family and society - over time alone moulded and made a person. Some 300 years later, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in his 2002 book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, challenged aspects of this 'nurture over nature' theory, arguing that biology also shapes our behaviours and personalities a great deal. In his 1959 review of B F Skinner's 1957 work, 'Verbal Behavior', Noam Chomsky - in his core avatar as the 'father of modern linguistics', rather than the political activist he is known as today - placed 'learning' somewhere in between. For Chomsky, language is innate, and is simply developed. To put it in computer lingo, humans come with a preloaded OS, picking up and 'running' programs along the way.

In this context, 'development' of an infant into a final 'product' has undergone a drastic change. The earlier functions of family members like parents or grandparents as Jedi-like guides are being replaced by easy and better sources of knowledge and experience-generators. In a globalised, tech-plugged world, the notion of 'mother tongue' - a language one first picks up from closest influencers - makes little sense, since today's young come in close regular verbal contact with variegated sources, offline or online, from a very early age. Human agency, thus, begins far earlier than it did before.

For a child, all languages sound the same, in the same way she or he remains ignorant of biases and -isms until latching on to some later. Which makes new 'experience' pathways like Google or ChatGPT the new 'parents'. The 'traditional' parents' job now is what a government's should be: to only provide opportunity and access.