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By Dan Nonte, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-4314
Posted 10-1-09
GREENSBORO, N.C. — Jonathan Tudge, a professor in UNCG’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies, will deliver the university’s second Friends and Faculty lecture – “The Everyday Life of Children in Greensboro and Beyond” – at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, in Claxton Room, Elliott University Center.
Started by the Friends of the UNCG Libraries in the spring, the Friends and Faculty Lecture Series, provides community members, as well as staff, faculty and students, the opportunity to learn about faculty research. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Tudge will discuss his 20-year study of preschool-aged children in several countries, and what the “everyday” lives of children can tell us about the cultures in which the children live. He reported the study’s findings in a 2008 book, “The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies.”
As Tudge wrote, “when children are young … it is relatively easy to see the ways in which parents and other people attempt to ensure that they become skilled in the practices that are considered important and to learn the values, concepts, and ways of behaving that are valued in the culture in which the children are situated.”
While his study extends to children in Kenya and Korea, he also looked at children in his own backyard. A number of Greensboro families were included in the research.
Interestingly, class differences were often as revealing as society differences. He found, for instance, that working-class children, of any of the cities examined, were more often taught to follow the rules than their middle-class counterparts.