Childism and minority cultures in school

Abstract

While inequality between children and adults characterizes practically every aspect of contemporary society, school is considered a paradigmatic site of adult domination. Childist critiques tend to point to school as a place where adultism is not only conspicuous but also (re)produced. In this article, however, it is argued that the public school, obviously founded by adults for adult purposes, has an important childist dimension. Although it is based on a clear distinction between adult teachers and child students, school can problematize key adultist norms and promote a more age-equal society. This does not imply that exiting schools are necessarily childist, but rather that a certain understanding of the school, which emphasizes its social-democratic significance, can uncover its childist aspects and build on them when reimagining public education. The conception of the school in which the article focuses is presented in Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’ 2013 book In Defence of the School: A Public Issue. Although the authors do not refer directly to childism (or child equality), and are clearly writing from an adultist perspective, I argue that the public school they describe does have a childist dimension: it challenges one of the root causes of adultism: considering children the property of their parents. Nevertheless, Masschelein and Simons’ conception of the school raises a problem of its own, which also has a childist aspect: the concern that uniform schooling supervised by the state will be detrimental to minority and indigenous groups, imposing a culture and identity determined by adults. The second part of this article addresses this concern, arguing that genuine school education can be key not only to preserving but also to revitalizing minority cultures and identities by allowing the students to bring their “newness” into the encounter with the cultures and identities of their families.