Future Of Childhood Research Articles

Environmental dystopias: Margaret Atwood and the monstrous child

ABSTRACTThe future of childhood is often described in terms of utopian thinking. Here, the turn is towards dystopia as a fertile source of wild imaginings about the future. The dystopian literary fictions featured here act as a message and are projections of an uneasy future requiring a reader to see the present differently. Such projections make reading dangerous as they create an alternative world often disorderly and dismissive of contexts that are familiar and safe. In these scenarios, the child is often a key figure. In the work by Atwood (Oryx and Crake; The Year of the Flood; MaddAddam), the world is an environmental nightmare. The focus is on MaddAddam, in which the child is an object of desire and both monstrous and redemptive. A reading of MaddAddam as a posthuman text is undertaken and it is argued that Atwood's dystopia creates a discourse of monstrosity (both weird and beautiful) that contaminates thoughts about the child/children/childhood and the future.

“Closer to God”: Child Death in Historical Perspective

Those working within the sub-field of the modern history of childhood have rarely taken the dead child as their starting point. However, in a secularising, post-Enlightenment world, elites pursuing “progress” contemporaneously, and very publicly, reinterpreted death in relation to redefinitions of childhood as evidence of the divine. Dead children featured prominently within public modern mourning practices until, late in the nineteenth century scientific explorations of child death drove societies to occlude the presence of dead children. As infant mortality rates fell, perceptions of children as a dangerous, unstable presence, and a threat to the nation grew. New spaces emerged to receive and conceal dead children. New literary and visual cultures recast living children’s relationship with death. And in the early twentieth century accidental deaths in commercial space, in reformatories, and within the home inspired powerful debates over the future of childhood and society. This article surveys recent literature, raises key themes, and introduces the articles featured in this special issue on the relatively underresearched theme of child death.

Policy Utopias, Sci-Fi Dystopias, and Contemporary Contests Over Childhood in Education Reform in the UK

Educational policy and children's science fiction literature provide two distinct visions of the future for children and corresponding representations of the future of childhood. By refracting the literary and the political through a sociological critique, this article scrutinizes how such texts construct ideas about childhood and thus motivate an impetus for social and economic change, especially in the context of children's digital media use and the reform of children's services. In particular, I focus on the way literary studies scholars represent childhood in their readings of science fiction texts, and on the political construction of childhood in policy texts such as reports to the public and in high-profile media campaigns including teacher recruitment advertisements displayed in the UK between 2006 and 2008. The analysis suggests there are intertextual associations as well as disassociations in the discourses of childhood found in sci-fi and educational policy.

The future wellbeing of childhood

Our children are being exposed to unprecedented levels of media intrusion into their lives, passively accepting and internalising often inappropriate visual experiences. The future of childhood is at stake.

Agents of Reform?: Children’s Literature and Philosophy

Children’s literature was first published in the eighteenth century at a time when the philosophical ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education and childhood were being discussed. Ironically, however, the first generation of children’s literature (by Maria Edgeworth et al) was incongruous with Rousseau’s ideas since the works were didactic, constraining and demanded passive acceptance from their readers. This instigated a deficit or reductionist model to represent childhood and children’s literature as simple and uncomplicated and led to children’s literature being overlooked and its contribution to philosophical discussions being undermined. Although Rousseau advocates freeing the child to develop, he does not feel that reading fiction promotes child development, which is a weakness in an otherwise strong argument for educational reform. Yet, rather ironically, the second generation of children’s writers, from Lewis Carroll onwards, more truly embraced Rousseau’s broader philosophical ideas on education and childhood than their predecessors, encouraging and freeing readers to imagine, reflect and actively engage in ontological enquiry. The emphasis had changed with the child being embraced in education and society as active participant rather than passive or disengaged recipient. Works deemed to be seminal to the canon of children’s literature such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia challenge readers to work through conflicts many of which can be identified retrospectively as exhibiting postmodern characteristics. By exploring moral and spiritual dilemmas in their writing, Carroll, Barrie and Lewis’s works can be regarded as contributing to discussions on theodical postmodernism. The successes of The Lord of the Rings and Narnia films suggest that there is an interest in exploring moral dilemmas, fulfilling a need (perhaps for tolerance and understanding) in society at large. Children’s literature has an almost divine power to restore, to repair and to heal, all characteristics of theodical postmodernism but differing from the more widely held conception of postmodernism which pulls apart, exacerbates and exposes. Children’s literature therefore offers a healthy and constructive approach to working through moral dilemmas. In their deconstruction of childhood, these authors have brought children’s literature closer to aspects of enquiry traditionally found in the domain of adult mainstream literature. As the boundaries between childhood and adulthood become more fluid, less certain, debate is centring around whether the canon of children’s literature itself has become redundant or meaningless since there are no longer any restrictions on which subjects can be treated in children’s literature. Despite the fact that children’s literature clearly engages with difficult issues, it continues to be left out of the critical equation, not given serious attention, disregarded as simplistic and ignored in contemporary philosophical discussions concerning morality, postmodernism and the future of childhood. With children’s literature coming closer to mainstream literature, and exhibiting prominent features of postmodernism, however, it is only a matter of time before philosophical discussions actively engage with children’s literature and recognise its contribution to the resolution and reconciliation of ontological dilemmas. When this occurs, philosophy and children’s literature will re-engage, enriching contemporary investigations of existence, ethics and knowledge and fruitfully developing thought in these areas. This paper aims to contribute to this process.

The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children

The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children

The future of childhood

The future of childhood

Early childhood education, children's peer cultures, and the future of childhood

SUMMARY This paper presents my theoretical perspective of interpretive reproduction which focuses on the importance of children's production of and participation in their own peer cultures for their evolving membership in society. I describe the main themes of communal sharing and control in children's peer culture and present examples of peer routines and activities which demonstrate these themes. I discuss the importance of children's peer culture for early childhood education policy, programs, and curricula. Finally, I discuss the importance of social and economic investments in young children and families in modern societies, most especially in child care and early education. Here I stress how changing demographic patterns in modern societies (most especially the increase of the proportion of elderly as compared to the very young) have crucial implications for the future of children and childhood.

Reviews

AbstractAbstractTeaching and Learning Argument, by Richard Andrews CassellCompeting and Consensual Voices: The Theory and Practice of Argument, edited by Patrick J.M. Costello and Sally MitchellWriting the Future: English and the Making of a Culture of lnnovation, by Gunther Kress NATETowards 2000: The Future of Childhood, Literacy and Schooling, edited by Ed Marum FalmerPathways to Literacy: Children, Teachers and Learning, by Trevor H. CairneyFamily Involvement in Literacy: Effective Partnerships in Education, edited by Sheila Wolfendale and Keith Topping