| Popis: |
In Stability and Change in Human Characteristics , Bloom (1964) described the environment as ‘the conditions, force, and external stimuli which … surround, engulf, and play upon the individual ’ (p. 187). When there is a high probability that all members of a group will come under its influences, an environment may be said to be ‘powerful’ and the distributions of susceptible traits will shift in accordance with its pressures. It is this powerful environment that comprises the urban disadvantage of the Third World urban poor. Given its potential for exerting major negative effects on child development, for increasing the risks to the young of morbidity and mortality, and for reducing their capacity as adults to generate capital, the first step in alleviating the effects of powerful environments is to determine how they affect physical growth and cognitive development. This presentation focuses on these issues using, as an example, an ongoing study of children of a socioeconomically marginal community on the periphery of Guatemala City. The study and its setting In 1978–9, a team of investigators from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala and the University of Pennsylvania designed a study aimed at examining the effects of the environment on the physical growth, cognitive development, and academic achievement of the children of El Progreso, a community located on the outskirts of urban Guatemala City. With a population at the time of approximately 7500 inhabitants, El Progreso had been formed to help house those made homeless by the devastating earthquake of 1976. |
