The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist. “Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village ra

In the given argument the author points out to the superiority of interview-centered approach to studying cultures rather than observation based approach citing an example.

The assertion hinges on the assumption that since the children were talking more about their biological parents hence they are reared primerily by them. The arguments looks convincing but has some hidden flaws. In the argument it was never made clear what kind of questions were asked while interviewing the children. If the questions were biased to reveal more inforation on biological parents then the response of the children will be affected.

Also the interview covers just one aspect of children-guardian relationship i.e. the children. The interviewer must also cover the adults of the village and evaluate the response before making a conclusion.

Child-rearing involves a spectum of activities. It may be possible that biological parents may be involved in certain specific activities like feeding providing shelter but there may be others like teaching and field or professional training which may be a community responsibility. The argument must incorporate more information on these and how much done by whom before concluding.

Hence we can effectively say that the argument presented here lies weak in the face of scruitny. The argument lack the data required to sufficiently establish that the children in the village were reared by the biological parents. Also the extrapolation of this specific example to prove inferiority of observation based approach is not tenable.