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There was much hoopla earlier in the week about the “whiny kids grow up to be conservatives” study conducted by left-wing UC Berkeley prof Jack Block. Michelle Malkin received this from one of her readers!
I know exactly which “nursery school” was used as the basis of this study. It is not mentioned anywhere in the text of the 16-page pdf you provided for downloading, but I know because — well, because I know people who were some of the subjects of this study (and of other similar studies). And an extremely important fact about this school renders the entire study false.
The nursery school cited is actually the “Harold E. Jones Child Study Center,” on Atherton St. in Berkeley. It used to have a different name if I remember — I think it used to be called the “Atherton Child Study Center.”Go to this URL to see their Web site.
If you want proof that this is indeed the school used for the study, go to this URL.
This page is part of the “Institute for Human Development,” which is the department at Cal which runs the school. It is part of and connected to the Child Study Center site link above. About halfway down on this page (search for “Jack Block”) you’ll see that they mention that the data gathering part of this study was done at the Center:
“A renowned longitudinal study of development originated by Jeanne and Jack Block began with children at three and followed them at 4, 5, 7, 11, 14 18, and 23 years of age.”
Compare that to this text from the final study (in the pdf):
Pre-school children subsequently relatively conservative at age 23
What is so significant about this? Well, the Harold E. Jones Child Study Center is only open to children of U.C. Berkeley faculty and staff:
The University Preschool offers full-day developmental child care for preschool-aged children of UCB faculty and staff.
(The “Preschool” is a subset of the “Child Study Center.”)
In other words, ALL of the children in that study were the offspring of U.C. Berkeley professors, lecturers, and staff members.
The reason the Child Study Center is so popular is that they offer free/cheap child care/nursery schooling in exchange for the parents allowing their kids to be “studied” by psychologists all day every day.
And here’s the clincher (you probably already saw it coming):
UC Berkeley faculty was rated the most left-wing in the country: 91% of teachers there were classified as liberal:
“University of California, Berkeley (91 percent liberal).”
So, we have documented proof that the “whiny babies” in this study were basically ALL the children of liberal parents.
With this fact in hand, we can completely turn the study around:
Firstly, it was the liberal parents that made their kids whiny to begin with.
Secondly, it could just as easily be argued that, even at a very early age, some kids don’t get along with their parents, and so become “whiny.” Then, when those kids grow older, they rebel against their parents, as a way of disassociating themselves from their parents’ influence. And if your parents are liberal (as they all were in this study), then you rebel by becoming a conservative!
That’s it for the documented-facts part of the scoop. But on a more informal, anecdotal level: I have personally witnessed what goes on at the Child Study Center (or what went on there several years ago - I’m sure it’s the same today, as its mission has not changed):
Toddlers and young children (generally aged between 2 and 5) frolic around and do activities as in any day care/nursery school/kindergarten setting. But the difference is there are adult researchers (some even with the proverbial clipboards) hovering around at all times, monitoring the kids, “observing” their behavior, writing down little notes and filling out charts about the kids’ personalities and activities and so on.
And here’s the key, from my personal observation: the researchers get it all wrong! They often have some esoteric psychological/behavioral academic fad they’re trying to prove, so they ascribe the most bizarre and ludicrous motivations for the kids’ actions, scribbling notes about “ego resilience” and “crypto-sexual manifestations” and blah blah blah. It would be comical if if wasn’t taken so seriously. I can assure you that whatever data they gathered in the ’60s or ’70s about how “whiny” these kids were was totally bogus and off-the-mark.
Maybe they were whiny because they were more intellectually developed than the other kids and were frustrated in an overly infantile environment. Maybe they were whiny because the “counselors” detected early indications of independent thought and action in these kids, and forced them to conform to their Socialist ideals, causing the future conservatives to feel resentful.
March 24, 2006 - 12:22 PM on March 24th, 2006
It’s unfortunate that Michelle Malkin knows nothing about statistical inference. Posting that message just makes her look ignorant.
The only thing the original poster succeeded in inferring was that the original Berkely study was profoundly flawed and that the results are, at best, inconclusive. Giving this flawed study any more attention just attempts to extract more bad information from an unreliable source.
Yes, it’s fun to beat on Berkely and other bastions of liberalism, but piling on to the same ‘ole dead horse is too easy and makes you look weak and unimaginative.
..Chuck..
March 24, 2006 - 12:53 PM on March 24th, 2006
it’s not the same ‘ole dead horse, Chuck.
An average 18 year old freshman at virtually any university in america may spend 4 years and NEVER be taught by a conservative..never hear a conservative viewpoint.
Aren’t libs supposed to be in favor of diversity? I guess not.
March 24, 2006 - 01:11 PM on March 24th, 2006
I guess that wasn’t my experience. My college campus (a very large university in the state of Washington in the mid to late ’90’s) had a very diverse climate. I personally witnessed many instances of liberal hippie types engaging conservative professors and conservative students engaging liberal professors. When the arguments stuck to the facts and didn’t get emotional, it was very interesting to watch the point/counterpoint.
As a result, I can point to several key viewpoints that I had going into college that clearly shifted to the right and none that shifted further to the left. I would have definitely defined myself as a far left liberal going in. After graduating, I wasn’t even close to that. My college eduction definitely shifted me rightward.
March 24, 2006 - 01:34 PM on March 24th, 2006
Chuck
I don’t dispute your experience, but it’s purely anecdotal.
Survey after survey after survey states the obvious.
Liberals outnumber conservatives 18 to one at Brown University. At Cornell University, the number is even higher, with liberals outnumbering conservatives more than 26 times. Penn State displayed a bit more balance, with the ratio of liberals to conservatives being six to one. Even the smallest disparity, at the University of Houston, had a ratio of three liberals to one conservative.
Of the 166 professors examined at Cornell University, only six were conservatives, with no conservatives at all in the fields of history and sociology. There were likewise no conservatives in these fields at Brown University.
Some of the largest disparities were found in the University of California system. UCLA, for instance, has only nine conservatives for 141 liberals. UC-Santa Barbara had only one conservative professor in the 73 examined. At the four UC schools surveyed, there were only five conservative political science professors compared to 90 liberals.
At UC-Berkeley, only seven of the 66 professors noted were conservatives, with none in the department of sociology.
March 24, 2006 - 01:44 PM on March 24th, 2006
Those are very interesting numbers. What inferences do you draw from them? Do we need “affirmative action” for conservatives?
March 24, 2006 - 03:04 PM on March 24th, 2006
It’s interesting…why do you suppose the number of conservative students at universities is so low? If we’re not careful in quoting those numbers, Mike kilo, some liberals lacking a solid argument might use those numbers to state an untruth that conservatives are less educated.
March 24, 2006 - 03:52 PM on March 24th, 2006
6. Alyssa..those are TEACHERS, not students.
No, we don’t need affirmative action for conservatives, we need common sense people to realize that having a campus full of professors who all think alike politically is not fertile ground for intellectual curiosity.
Liberals say that they are in favor of diversity…let’s see them practice it and start having newsrooms and universities where there is real diversity of opinion.
March 24, 2006 - 03:54 PM on March 24th, 2006
Pauline Kael, movie editor for the New Yorker magazine. In 1972, when Richard Nixon won an overwhelming and historic victory in the Presidential election, carrying every single State except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, Pauline Kael was terribly surprised. She said when commenting on this: Nixon can’t possibly have won. I don’t know a single person who voted for him.
There you go… What does it tell you when these New York Media types, or Stanford Professors can go months, years, without ever coming into contact with someone who disagrees with them.
March 24, 2006 - 05:02 PM on March 24th, 2006
Oops, Mike kilo, I misunderstood what you were saying. I reread it and I know what you mean now.
March 24, 2006 - 05:09 PM on March 24th, 2006
I don’t really put much stock into studies like these, no matter what the subject is about. Basically, if you’re good, you can make the outcome be anything you want it to be. It’s not ethical, but it happens. And any outcome can also be based on a number of variants.
The research is laughable. As the reader who wrote the letter in Peejz’s post showed, you can interpret things in a number of ways. Also, if the researcher is IN the room with the children and “hovering” around, the children are going to act differently.
March 26, 2006 - 12:23 AM on March 26th, 2006
A friend took a college statistics course where the text was titled “How to Lie with Statistics”
March 26, 2006 - 02:31 PM on March 26th, 2006
Berkeley the place where terrorists get educations and diplomas:lol: