CHYS -1000 pt1 Flashcards
What is a child
It depends on historical, cultural and social context, Also depends on the theoretical perspectives
What does discourse mean?
A set of ideas which represent a particular view of the world, or an understanding of how the world works. Implies a representation of the social construct in question. Often shaped by culture, history and dynamics around power
What did Phillipe Aries offer?
o offered that the idea of childhood did not exist in medieval society
o Gave rise to the idea that childhood is a construction, that is, that the ideas about what childhood is, or what it should be, change over time and for specific reasons.
- What is childhood?
o Childhood is a distinct time period (different from adults), a separate safe space
- What are the three common western historical discourses?
Puritan View of Childhood,Children as Blank Slates,Inherently Innocent: The Romantic View of Childhood
o What is the Puritan View of Childhood?
strict English and American Protestants of the 16th and 17th centuries) , rather a shorthand for viewing children as inherently evil
Need discipline children- potential offenders, inherently evil-Child have the potential for evil if not corrected
Child rearing based on the view that child are inherently wicked or evil
Idea largely shared by Christians throughout Europe and Americans
A “godly’ household was an essential requirement for order
Not to be interpreted children were unloved – discipline =love
o What is the Children as Blank Slates? (The Enlightenment)
John Locke (1632-1704)
Rejected the idea of innate goodness or original sin
At birth Mind is a blank slate or tabula rasa
Character (good or bad) emerged from experience - Advocated for a system of rewards and punishments
o What is the Inherently Innocent: The Romantic View of Childhood?
According to Jean-Jacques Rosseau (18th Century Romantic philosopher):
Important to consider a child as a child
Children innocent at birth, rather than tainted with original sin
World corrupts children and children should be protected - Inherently Innocent: The Romantic View of Childhood
Childhood is a time of innocence. Artists in this period began to depict childhood as innocent.
o Childhood in Victorian England and In Colonial Canada
Industrial Revolution: 1760-1850, a period in which Europe and US moved to a more industrial way of life ( e.g., from boats to trains)
Industrialization and urbanization brought several issues to the forefront in relation to childhood
Poor working-class families moved to the city for work
Children seen as angelic in some sectors – (e.g., middle class)
Children from poor families were working in cotton mills and being sent up to sweep chimneys – some died
- What were the two social reformers for children and childhood?
o 1) child labour, and 2) compulsory schooling
- Elementsts of family life in classical times ?
o Was patriarchal (i.e., the father was the head of the household)
o head of household had power over life and death of all family members, ,For example, a father might decide at birth whether to allow the infant to live or whether to abandon it)
o . If a child was born weak or abnormal, it might be drowned, Abortion, infanticide, and abandonment were early forms of family planning.
- How in Classical Times did sex and social class take place?
o Children experienced childhood differently depending on social class and on gender – as they do today
o Girl infants were more likely to be victims of infanticide or abandonment than boys
o Girls were viewed as a potential future drain on family wealth whereas boys could contribute as they grew older,
o Girls were less likely to be well-nourished or educated than did boys.
o Girls seen as a strain on the family
- Elements of Sex and Social Class Differences?-
o Should not be interpreted to mean that children were not important – children who survived were loved and protected
o Gender roles - ‘men were born to rule and women to obey’
o Viewed the child as something to be moulded into an adult, who progressed through the stages of infancy, boyhood, and adolescence.
o Children were viewed as inherently impressionable
o Children’s play was seen as something natural to childhood as a means of learning and (for boys) of encouraging competition
- Elements of Children and Childhood in Historical Religious Thought?
o practices of infanticide and abandonment of children were common in Classical times, however with the advent of religious thought, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all opposed these practices
o In these early concepts of childhood we find the foundations for the modern child – child as a valued human individual
- How were poor children’s childhoods shaped/ started?
o Working at a young age
- What did Thomas Hobbes believe about children?
o In Hobbes’s view, the child was subject to the parent
o Child to a parent as a slave to a master.
o Children lacked reason: not necessarily as born with original sin but no more valuable than beasts.
- What did Thomas Hobbes believe about children?
o In Hobbes’s view, the child was subject to the parent
o Child to a parent as a slave to a master.
o Children lacked reason: not necessarily as born with original sin but no more valuable than beasts.
- What was the Modern Institutionalization Of Children: The Schoolchild ?
o Concerns about child labour during the Industrial Revolution were related to the moral development of child workers.
o Concerns for the health (mental, physical and emotional)- Campaign to remove children from factories began
- What were the elements of Early Reform and Canada?
o Social reformers of this era were concerned with: 1) child labour, and 2) compulsory schooling
o Provincial legislation regulating child labour in factories and mines began to pass in the 1870s and 1880s
o By 1929 illegal to hire children under 14 to work in factories or mines in most provinces
o Early 1870s to mid-1920s all provinces enacted legislation requiring school attendance
o In 1921 , increased the age of compulsory school to 16
- What is Compulsory Schooling?
o Adopts both the romantic and blank slate discourses of childhood
o Childhood a time of dependence – children completely reliant on parents and the state
o “At no other time in history has the experience of being a child undergone such transformation” p. 23
o the parents became dependent on the children
- What is the dominant paradigm ?
o (i.e. grounded in psychological developmental theory and traditional socialization theory) (Wyness, 2011)
- What is the ‘New’ paradigm?
o social study of childhood
- What is Cognitive Growth?
o The terms ‘assimilation’(knowledge by practicing something) and ‘accommodation’ are important Piagetian terms (1967).
o A child is assimilating knowledge by practicing or repeating something learnt.
o When that knowledge has changed the existing schemata, then that knowledge has been accommodated.
o Adaptation: two processes assimilation and accommodation
- What is Assimilation?
o Existing schemes used to interpret novel information
o New info absorbed into existing scheme
o Using the environment so the is can be places into preexisting cognitive structures
- What is Accommodation?
o Accommodation: changes cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment
o creation of new scheme or alteration of existing scheme to copes with information
- What is Equilibration?
o Biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment
- What was the new way of looking at childhood and at children in society?
o James and Prout (1997) mapped out what an emerging paradigm of the social study of childhood might look like
o Children were worthy of study in their own right
o Paradigm shift – a new way of thinking about children
- Why did the new Paradigm shift happen?
o Rejects a view of children as passive incompetent becomings
o Highlights the socially constructed nature of childhood
o Moves away from a conception of childhood as an age-bound develop-mental process
o Moves away from a view of children as passive recipients of socialization
o Moves toward seeing childhood as a time of competence and agency
- Why was the new paradigm influential ?
o Highlights the historical construction of childhood
o Focus on children’s present rather than children’s future roles
o Documenting the cultural and social and historical construction of childhood
o Social construction theory allows us to see that there are multiple constructions and representations of childhood that vary between and within cultures
- What are three childhood as a structure assumptions?
o Childhood is a particular structural form
o Childhood is exposed to the same societal forces as adulthood
o Children themselves are co-constructors of childhood and of society (Qvortrup, 1994)
- How is childhood constructed on four levels?
o 1) in transactions and interactions between children and adults;
o 2) in group transactions, for example between teachers and pupils;
o 3) in the individual relations between people born at different points in history; and
o 4) in social policies (Mayall 2002: 35)
- What is the Darwin approach to child study?
o Darwin: first to apply methods of the natural world to understand childhood
o Darwin kept extensive notes (diaries) of his children
o Humans subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals.
o Darwinian approach led to mass measurement and observations of children
o Production of charts outlining “normal” percentiles