Childhood Development

I grew up in the fabulous era of awesome cartoons. Fortunately for me, my world didn't need the glam, glitz and glitter of shows like Hannah Montana and Zoey 101 to satisfy my fix of afternoon television. No, I got the humbling satisfaction of watching shows like Hey Arnold, Pokemon, and Recess.

There's already a disconnect between the late 90s and the mid millenium generation. It seems that the different ways in which shows are conveyed to the masses now are affecting the way in which we behave and have outlooks on certain things.

So, I thought about how this might ring true for the youth who grew up in the pre and post era of the Berlin Wall. Surely the uses of media and even education must have differed on both sides of the wall, and therefore this brings up questions of what these differences were and what kind of impact it had on the Berlin youths.

It would be cool to perhaps look at some of the shows (if possible, hopefully YouTube might have some), or maybe view through grade school textbooks to see if any comparisons or contrasts lie within them to allow me a closer look into the childhood of an East and West Berliner.

After all, they say childhood is one of the most crucial time in a person's development. So, I want to examine the type of things that were playing a role in molding the lives of these youths, who, to my understanding, may as well have grown up on different sides of the world.

In class, after much thought about what my research question could possibly be about, the objects that I would put on my altar would be an East and West Berlin children's book, a popular toy memorabilia, a grade school teacher's lesson plan, and maybe even lyrics to a childhood nursery rhyme.