La identiddad de la infancia desde el siglo XX hasta hoy. Ideología, holocausto Judío (Shoá) y nuevos derechos

Abstract

Pedagogical speculation in the twentieth century appears to have identified infancy as a stage of life having importance in its own right, and not as an imitation of adult life. Similarly, it seemed that the legal recognition of infancy as a holder of rights having priority over other social groups — the outcome of a protracted and complex historical process in western society — was well under way at the start of the century. With the rise to power of fascism, on the other hand, this same process was stalled and sent into reverse. Infancy was deprived of its basic rights, and moreover, subjected to ideological manipulation in the context of a culture of hatred and death that resulted in the lives of children and adolescents being sacrificed in favour of the State. Following the historical crimes of the Shoah and the horrors of the Holocaust, attempts were made to redeem infancy through a fruitful circularity between pedagogy and a children's bill of rights. This bodes well for the design of educational pathways able to foster respect, development and well-being for children in the 21st century; by the same token, however, one cannot ignore the reappearance of problems in our current times, regarding new forms of disavowal and disappearance of infancy, which pedagogy is duty bound to denounce and seek to eliminate.