Argument36 习作请多拍！

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第一次传习作上来，请多指教！谢谢大家！:)

36."Twenty years ago Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This research proves that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture is false, and thus that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid. Because they are using the interview-centered method, my team of graduate students working in Tertia will establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other island cultures."


The article claims that the recent interviews with the children living in the group of islands that Tertian is included in show that these children spend much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults, indicating that Dr. Field’s conclusion that children in Tertian were reared by the entire village not their own parents is false, and also showing that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is not valid. However, from my perspective, this conclusion is not convincing.

First of all, Dr. Field made the conclusion about 20 years ago, and at that time, the observation-centered approach may be the best way to study cultures, the situation perhaps did not allow the interview-centered method. People lived in Tertia may be shy and did not want to talk to a stranger who want to find some information on them. So the method Dr. Field used cannot be treated as invalid.

Secondly, the excerpt ignores a problem that the group of islands which includes Tertia is not equal to the only Tertia village. And there is one thing that we really need to take into consideration that maybe children who were living on other islands spent much more time on talking about their biological parents but Tertia kids did not. As a result, the conclusion that Dr. Field made cannot be denied so careless.

Finally, there are not details about what questions had been asked during the interview. If the journalists put the focal point on biological parents, it is not strange that the children talked about other adults on the island with less time. And we all know that blood is thicker than water. People will always spend much more time on observing or talking about the ones they love, so do the children. They love their parents, rely on them, and also spend more time on them. Maybe they are also raised by other adults in the village, but as they do not give as much love to them as to their parents, the time they spend on other adults is absolutely less. So the length of the taking time cannot present that they are not reared by the entire village. Dr. Field’s conclusion can still be correct.

There are also some other loopholes in the argument, for instance, how long that the interview-centered study lasted, maybe the situation occurred in children’s talk is temporary. So from my point of view, the conclusion made in the argument that Dr. Field’s summing-up is wrong and the observation-centered method is invalid is just unreasonable.