Children Never Were What They Were: Paul Duncum

I thought this article raised a lot of very interesting questions. I never really thought of myself as protecting children from being exposed to harsh realities for selfish reasons, but it did make me think.

From a psychological perspective:

"Adults feel pressure to preserve childhood for their own children while, for their own sakes, they seek to preserve a sense of their own early life. Childhood becomes an homage to the imagery, a rich depository for all the qualities adults desire but believe they cannot indulge in for themselves."

From a developmental perspective:

"A clear separation helps us define ourselves as adults."

From an institutional perspective:

"Routines help ensure control and reduce confusion but also teach both teachers and children that control and efficiency are important."

From a contemporary cultural perspective:

"Childhood as a time of happy innocence and openness to learning was foundational to modernism where childhood embodied hope in a seemingly unlimited future."

(I have more of a modernist view)

"Postmodernism has replaced that hope has at best been replaced by a cautious optimism at

worst by a deep skepticism of the future."

In the end of the article it gives you ideas about how to deal with children today:

1) Children are processing fragmented identities. Remember that they are constructing their understanding of things every day, every hour.

2) Examine images of other children, and dealing with pictures of children's deepest concern- themselves.

3)Extend lessons to the media- what does it mean to them that they are being targeted to? Compare media images and art images. I like this one because instead of saying that they are too young or immature to understand a certain thing you are giving them the opportunity to discover it and decide for themselves, analyze and understand.

4) Explore how children are visually represented in contemporary society.

I believe that children should be given a lot more credit then they are and though I am conservative about how much they should be exposed to certain violence in movies and video games, I think that they should be given access to knowledge and treated with respect as individuals able to analyze and form their own opinions.

What do you think?