We need to consider our ideas of childhood as teacher librarians, because we will be struck by conflict within ourselves and in our school contexts when it comes to 1. curation of resources, and 2. 21st century pedagogical approaches such as curriculum and behavioural ideologies. As stated in my teaching philosophy, I support the view, based on Piaget’s theories, that ‘childhood’ is a social construct and that human beings are, across the world, simply at varying stages of our physical, mental and social development. In terms of nature vs nurture (sometimes referred to as Locke vs Rousseau) I prefer Rousseau’s view of childhood as something curious, charming and valuable…something to nurture.
What is a child / Why as the question? “Events such as the development of mandated curriculum for the non-compulsory years, the implementation of diagnostic tools and assessment regimes in the first years of school, and moral panic of paedophilia are all under pinned by certain views of the child and ideals of childhood” … “(Thus,) it might be timely to re-examine our understandings of children and childhood” (Woodrow, 1999).
What is a child / Then and now / Plurality: “Ever since JOHANN AMOS COMENIUS (1592–1670) published his Didactica Magna (1649) and JOHN LOCKE (1632–1704) produced his treatise Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), observers of children have been occupied with attempting to understand, document, and comment on what it is and what it means to be a child. … A child has been defined as any person below a notional age of majority, but this has been variously interpreted and there have been many differences throughout history in the ways that societies have come to recognise the exact beginning and end of childhood. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has for its purposes identified childhood as that stage of life experienced by any person between birth and fifteen years. Article 1 of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a child is any person under the age of eighteen. … The eighteenth-century philosopher JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), in constructing an ideal childhood, described what he termed the “age of nature” as occurring between birth and twelve years. For the Austrian-born philosopher RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925), childhood was a state of physical and spiritual being roughly between the ages of seven and fourteen years, indicated initially by certain physiological changes such as the loss of the milk teeth. … Biological-anthropologists, taking a bio-cultural perspective, regard childhood as a stage in development unique to humans, the function of which is the preparation for adulthood. However, advocates of a new sociology of childhood such as sociologist Alison James have pointed out that: ‘chronological age is sometimes of little use when comparing childhood across very different cultures and societies. A ten year old may be a school child in one society, the head of a household in another. As such, the new sociology of childhood prefers to identify a “plurality of childhoods” rather than one structural conditional term’‘ (Bourke, 2008-emphasis added).
What is a child / Plurality in the law: “This plurality, it has been argued, is partly reflected through the prism of children’s own definition of themselves. … The age at which a person can be considered capable of moral reflection upon their actions has altered over time according to changes in the understanding of childhood. Thus, for example, according to nineteenth-century English common law, it became established that children should be exempt from criminal liability under the age of seven. This was raised to age eight in 1933 and to ten in 1963.” (Bourke, 2008).
What is a child / Then and now: “…proper perspective is something that is sorely missing in debates about the state of children and childhood today. It is easy to forget, for example, that only a few hundred years ago, children could not even be said to have a childhood” (Guldberg, 2009, p.46-47). “Whether or how much parents in medieval times could be said to love their children, today’s separation of a distinct world of childhood with its own clothes, games, entertainment, literature and education is undoubtedly modern. Over the past century or so the family has become increasingly focused emotionally and financially on the welfare of the child in ways that would have been unrecognisable to people in previous centuries” (Guldberg, 2009, p.48). “The modern view of childhood is understood to have been built upon the ideas of two great philosophers, JOHN LOCKE and JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU. Locke’s idea of a tabula rasa – the mind as a blank slate at birth – presents adults with the responsibility for ‘what is eventually written on the mind,’ writes Postman (1994, p.57). From the ‘Locke-an’ conception comes the view of the child as an ‘unformed person who through literacy, education, reason, self-control, and shame may be made into a civilised adult’ (Postman, 1994, p.59). Rousseau, on the other hand, put forward the Romantic view of the child – highlighting the charm and value of children, arousing ‘a curiosity about the nature of childhood that persists to this present day’ (Postman, 1994, p.58)” (Guldberg, 2009, p.50). “Only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the drastic decline in child labour and the advent and extension of compulsory schooling, could childhood really be said to exist in the modern sense. It was not until the 1870 Education Act, which gave rise to a national system of state education, that schooling became a priority in the UK” (Guldberg, 2009, p.51). “In the distant past, people had no choice but to treat children as little adults. Now that we have a more advanced society, it is up to us to protect childhood as an important stage of development rather than ‘pathologising’ it as a dangerous, unhappy time; and to help children on their way into adulthood, rather than seeking to keep them infantile for ever” (Guldberg, 2009, p.56-emphasis added).
What is a child / Children’s rights: “A ‘right’ here is defined as a claim to treatment, according to law or policy; a ‘child’ is defined as a person under the age of 18 years, as per the Children Act 1989” (Daniels, 2000, p.8).
What is a child? “Socially, the child is receptive to the different biases of the culture (they are) born into, and the particular ways in which these are transmitted to (them) by (their) parents or caregivers. Because of this, any search for the ‘natural child,’ over and above the minimum common ground, faces difficulties.” … “ Receptivity to a prevailing culture is itself a constant characteristic of all childhood” (Tucker, 1977, p.99). “The dividing line between ‘childish’ and ‘adult’ behaviour is constantly being redrawn both in minor and major ways, so emphasising the essentially relative and social nature of these terms.” … “In the early nineteenth century…the audience for Punch and Judy shows would consist of people of all ages; it was only by the end of the nineteenth century that children would make up practically the whole crowd” (Tucker, 1977, p.103). “At the same time, typically childish clothes—the sailor suits and frilly dresses of affluent children in former times—are giving way to more adult fashions at increasingly early stages in a child’s life. Soon it may only be the baby in the first year who has his own distinctive outfit” (Tucker, 1977, p.107). To quote PIAGET (in Tucker 1977, p.114-115-emphasis added): “With regard to mental functioning, the child is in fact identical with the adult; like the adult, he is an active being whose action, controlled by the law of interest or need, is incapable of working at full stretch if no appeal is made to the autonomous motive forces of that activity. Just as the tadpole already breathes, though with different organs from those of the frog, so the child acts like the adult, but employing a mentality whose structure varies according to the stages of its development.”
What is a child? / A socially constructed stage of life: Viewing the child as existing through its relations with others and always in a particular context…there are may children and many childhoods, each constructed by our ‘understandings of childhood and what children are and should be’ (Dahlberg, 1999, p.43). “Childhood is understood not as a preparatory or marginal stage, but as a component of the structure of society—a social institution—and important in its own right as one stage of the life course, no more or less important than other stages” (Dahlberg, 1999, p.49-emphasis added).
References
Burke, C. (2008). Theories in childhood. In Encyclopaedia of children and childhood in history and society. Retrieved from http://www.faqs.org/childhood/So-Th/Theories-of-Childhood.html
Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. & Pence, A. (1999). Constructing early childhood: What do we think it is? Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: Postmodern Perspectives. Falmer Press.
Guldberg, H. (2009). Reclaiming childhood: Freedom and play in an age of fear. Proquest Ebook Central.
Tucker, N. (1977). Summing up: what is a child? In What is a child? London: Fontana/Open Books.
Woodrow, C. (1999). Revisiting images of the child in early childhood education: Reflections and considerations. In Australian Journal of Early Childhood, Vol 24, (4).