NUMBER 95 • 27 AUGUST 2002 • RITES OF PASSAGE
INDEX OF QUOTES
Of particular interest in this paper, it seems to me, is a consideration of the place of the spiritual in human development. By spiritual I mean that aspect of development that includes the formation of qualities and character that shape values, ethics, religious beliefs, and relationships to community and environment. This aspect of human development, so critical a factor in rites of passage, is excluded in most existing models of development. If, as Westerhoff claims, formation, particularly spiritual formation, takes place through participation, what are the implications of a formational process in the practice of our culture? What values are being imprinted on us by culture at a formational level? What wisdom and insight might be gleaned from rites of passage processes to assist us in understanding how children and youth are being shaped by cultural processes?
… The strongest emphasis in Western theories of human development has been that of the development of mental or thinking capacities. It is rational skills and ability that mark someone as adult: the more rational, the more adult. The central and distinguishing feature of the human being in our cultural context is assumed to be intelligence. We have focused our attention on cognitive development and on writers who have considered this aspect of personality as primary 2 …
2 [the footnote] Consider the titles of one of the most influential writers in the field of human development, Jean Piaget: The Child’s Conception of Time, The Child’s Conception of Movement and Speed, The Language and Thought of the Child, Logic and Psychology, The Mechanisms of Perception, The Psychology of Intelligence, and To Understand Is to Invent. Morris Berman comments in a footnote in Coming to Our Senses about the work of Henri Wallon, a contemporary of Piaget: “It is interesting to note that most of Wallon’s work remains untranslated, and that Wallon, unlike his contemporary Jean Piaget, is virtually unknown. There are reasons for this, ones that reflect Western cultural biases. Piaget was interested in the development of cognitive and intellectual skills, which are so valued in a society organized around achievement and technical mastery. Wallon was interested in ontological development, and tried to integrate cognitive development with affective development. That Piaget was uninterested in feelings, and became famous, and that Wallon was interested, and died in obscurity, is no accident” (1990, 346–47).
DANIEL SCOTT
Scott, D.G. (1998). Rites of passage in adolescent development: A reappreciation. Child and Youth Care Forum, Vol.25 No.5, pp.317-335References
Berman, M. (1990) Coming to our senses. New York & Toronto: Bantam Books