Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia. Using an observation-centered approach to studying Tertian culture, he concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than

The author of the article, Dr. Karp, concludes that Dr. Field's conclusion on children of the Tertia island—be reared by the entire village and not just their biological parents—and his approach—observation-centered approach—is not valid. To justify this conclusion, Dr. Karp points out the results of his recent interviews with children of several islands, including Tertia. He also poits out that his approach—interview-centered method—is more accurate for investigating traditions of raising children in different islands. Close scrutiny of these facts, however, reveals that none of them lend credible support to the author's assertion.

To begin with, the argument fails to consider that the interview with bunch of children from different islands might not be representative of Tertia's rearing-traditions as a whole. Although the author assumes that the characteristics of all children, their environment, and their society are alike, it supplies no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this assumption. The general results of the interview might show that children are mostly under the influence of their parents. However, this fact accomplishes nothing toward bolstering the inaccurateness of Dr. Field's conclusion in that the contribution of Terita's children in overall number of interviewees might be insignificant. Thus, I would need to know the exact number of interviewees and the portion of statistical sample used for interview with respect to the whole community of Terita's children before I can either accept or reject the proposed conclusion.

Even if it turns out that the statistical sample substantiate the foregoing assumption, it is unfair to assume that the interview methodology is not problematic inasmuch as the very used questionnaire might provide tainted results. Perhaps Dr. Krab's interviewers used only questions which encompass the parent-related matters. As a result, the children were enforced to talk more about their parents. Or perhaps children were questioned in front of their parents and therefore they provided responses that might they believed would approve of their parents. Moreover, the interviewers overlooks the fact that children are more likely talk about people whose name and character are known for them, and that the children might observe many behaviors unconsciously, yet cannot remember it when it comes to scrutinize them. Without ruling out these and other reasons why children might not provide correct answers in their interview, the author cannot convince me to accept the conclusion.

As for the conclusion that interview-centered method is more accurate than observation-centered approach, the author assumes that his conclusion is sufficient to repudiate other approaches. The mere fact that the children talk about their parents hardly reflects the prevailing conditions governed the child-bearing traditions. In other words, an interview with a child is not suffice to reach to reliable results owing to the fact that children are not able to apprehend every possible factors affected their understanding, and very often they mix their imagination with the reality. Therefore, the results cannot be used as a merit to approve of the interview-centered method. Even if the child's responses is sufficient to refute the observation-centered approach, the author has not shown that in what ways his approach is more accurate than the former one. For all we know, Dr. Field's conclusion was based on an observation done twenty years ago, and it is unfair to assume that all conditions bearing on rearing traditions in Tertia have remained unchanged over the past twenty years. Accordingly, in order to determine whether interview-centered method portend a more accurate approach than observation-centered one, I would need to know better measures in which the two approaches could be compared.

In sum, the argument is a dubious one that relies on what amount to an unrepresentative sample, tainted results, as well as sweeping conclusion about effectiveness and accuracy of the author's approach. As a result, without additional information indicated above, I find the argument unconvincing at best.