Ivan v. Johnny

One measure of a society, says Cornell Psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, is the way it raises its young: "The concern of one generation for the next." In his new book, Two Worlds of Childhood, he outlines the child-rearing practices of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which he has visited nine times since 1960. Although the Russian system has its limitations, Bronfenbrenner finds it more efficient than the American approach in achieving its goals.

Bronfenbrenner sees the U.S. system as perilously deficient: "If the current trend persists, we can anticipate increased alienation, indifference, antagonism and violence on the part of the younger generation in all segments of our society--middle-class children as well as the disadvantaged." While the two countries' child-raising goals are obviously different, Bronfenbrenner thinks the U.S. could do worse than to borrow selectively from Soviet techniques.

Goody-Goodies. Soviet children are members of collectives--nurseries, schools, camps, youth programs--that emphasize obedience, self-discipline and, above all, subordination of self to group. The bright student, for example, wins praise for his class or school; the slacker betrays his group. Each phase of collective upbringing stresses vospitanie, character education designed to inculcate "Communist morality," the ultimate goal. Teachers, peers, older children--all exert friendly but firm pressure on the individual to conform.

Typically, Russian children are well-mannered, industrious and attentive. Moreover, "instances of aggressiveness, violations of rules and other antisocial behavior are genuinely rare." But conformity exacts its toll. "Russian children are goody-goodies," says Bronfenbrenner. "They are Victorians." They also lack the spontaneity and expressiveness--the independence--of their American counterparts.

Antisocial Peers. In collective upbringing, the family plays a decidedly secondary role. The relative significance of parents is the root difference between American and Russian child-raising. Traditionally, Americans have had the moral and legal responsibility for their children's "socialization"--"the way in which a child born into a society becomes a member of that society." But, says Bronfenbrenner, for all their talk about leading child-oriented lives, U.S. parents are spending less time than ever with their children, and are giving them less physical affection and simple companionship. The reasons include urbanization, commuting, the mesmerizing power of TV and parental permissiveness ("which means in practice, 'Leave them alone' ").

While the church's role in moral upbringing "has withered," says Bronfenbrenner, the American public school concentrates on factual knowledge. "Training for action consistent with social responsibility and human dignity is at best an extracurricular activity." So American children turn to two surrogate character builders: TV--much of it violent--and their peers. Unlike the Soviet child's peer group, the American's "is relatively autonomous, cut off from the adult world. The trouble is," says Bronfenbrenner, "kids have little to teach each other." But they do intensify one another's antisocial bents, such as playing hooky, lying or teasing other children. He cites as well founded William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a chilling novel about a group of schoolboys who are stranded on an island, have only their own company to keep and fall into savagery.

Adult Models. How to stem the trend toward increased alienation of the young? Bronfenbrenner says that U.S. parents must reinvolve themselves in their children's lives, must reclaim their status as the "most contagious" models of behavior. In the schools, teachers should take renewed interest in the development of their charges. Classrooms should generate healthy "group competition and organized patterns of mutual help"; older classes might adopt the Soviet plan of taking on younger grades as "ward classes." Bronfenbrenner, one of the founders of Head Start, feels that neighborhood programs--especially those involving parents and other adult models--are indispensable in helping to form or reform proper modes of behavior. Without such "radical innovations," he concludes, "it will be all children who will be culturally deprived--not of cognitive stimulation, but of their humanity."

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