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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

I remember the process of learning, but I don't remember at any time ever not being involved in this process.

In fact, that was what my mother -- and this may be just then selective memory, but my whole earliest experiences were dominated by this process of being taught, either to read, or to memorize something which my mother and Mrs. Husbands thought that I should be able to recite before Sunday School or the group. And it is clear to me that I was younger than five. I mean, I had to be younger than five, because I was here in America when I was five.

And the other memories, earliest memories, had I guess naturally, then, therefore, to do with words. I remember very vividly playing with some of my toys, while my mother and some of her friends were talking on the porch, and obviously they weren't paying very much attention to me, but I was listening to their conversation. And one of the first intellectual problems that I recall being involved in was trying to differentiate between “friend” and “wife.”

Now, this must have been suggested by something about their conversation. But I kept thinking, “Now, friend? Wife? What is the relationship between these two words?”

For some reason, I didn't ask anyone. But I kept worrying about this, or trying to decide for myself the relationship between these things.

It's interesting -- I don't recall, in my early infancy or beginning childhood stages, involvement in play or,...

I started to say that my early childhood, you know, that period between three and five, looking back on it, I don't remember it as a period that was dominated, or -- dominated by what the expects in





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