THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CHILDHOOD AS AN ACADEMIC COURSE (PART OF THE TEACHING SPECIALIZATION)

Abstract

The article presents the theme which is connected with programme and syllabus of the department of teacher education and create a question what place the anthropology of child and childhood may take in Polish studies of the 21st century. After many years of laborious research on children’s culture, children’s folklore, ethnography of childhood, sociology of childhood, and children’s pedagogy and psychology, after the discussions about “childhood reinvented” and many “breakthroughs” in studies about the interdisciplinary nature of such research (from Ellen Key’s work, to Janusz Korczak, to Philippe Ariés and Paul Hazard), knowledge of children and youth’s literature and of children’s culture, eventually became a part of Polish studies’ programmes at the university level. In modern times, an additional source of materials are journals and memoirs, which help understand both traumatic and ludic experiences of the child better. Traumatic experiences often appear to be taboo. A special place is reserved for children’s reports of the Holocaust. Our times, which bring many threats to the young (crisis of family, drugs, sexual abuse, child prostitution, homelessness, religious sects, exploitation at work, excessive consumerism, Internet addiction, etc.), are a domain for sociology of childhood and adolescence. Therefore, it seems that a new field of knowledge about childhood is needed, a field that takes into consideration the following, previously neglected aspects: historical, sociological, political-scientific, and ethnographic with the context of children’s folklore, also indeterminacy of child’s social role.