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 by the

The author's argument that interview-centered methods are better than observation-centered methods inorder to study the child rearing practices on the island of Tertia, may seem logical at the first glance. The author's recommendations could be correct if their premises were to be true. However,in his argument the author has made assumptions for which there is no supporting evidence and used terms which lack definition.

First of all,the author has assumed that the observation-centered approach of anthropological study regarding child rearing practices in the island of Tertia will provide the same conclusion today as Dr Field provided twenty years ago. Using observation-centered methods to study Tertain culture, Dr Field had concluded that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. His research had taken place twenty years ago. Recently Dr Karp used interview based approach for the same and found that the childremn in Tertia and surounding islands talk more about their biological parents than other adults in the village. The author has failed to take into account that the society and culture of Teria may have shifted towards smaller families in twenty years, where biological parents have entire responsibility of their children. The interview based study which concludes that children in Tertia are raised by their biological parents rather than entire village based on the fact that the children spend much more time talking about their biological parents. However, this does not prove that by using observation based methods used by Dr Field to survey the area covered by Dr Karp, an anthropologist will not arrive at the same conclusion as Dr Karp. If the author were to provide some evidence suggesting that an observation based survey conducted recently across Teria and neighbouring island, the conclusion reached regarding child rearing practices of Tertians differs considerably from Dr Karp's conclusion, it would have given a lot of support to his argument.

The author has not given any evidence regarding the extent of children's inclination in spending time for talking their biological parents than other village adults. Is this inclination similar to the other societies where children are fully raised by their biological parents or not? If the degree of inclination were to differ considerably between islands around Tertia and other such societies, then the conclusion reached by interview based methods will again be highly questionable. Here again, the author fails to define the extent of inclination quantatively.

Summing up,the author may be correct in his conclusion that to obtain accurate information on Tertian child-rearing practices, future research on the subject should be conducted via the interview-centered method. However, in presenting his arguemnt he has made use of certain assumptions for which there is no conclusive evidence in the passage. As a result, his recommendation of using interview based methods to study Tertian child raring practice for more accurate results, can not be taken at the strength of his current arguments.