In this wide-ranging work, David Kennedy undertakes a philosophically grounded analysis of the history of childhood, the history of adulthood, and their interrelationship. Using themes and perspectives from the history of childhood, mythology, psychoanalysis, art, literature, philosophy, and education, the author locates the experience of childhood across all stages of the human life cycle, and thereby weighs its transformative potential for human culture. He offers a nuanced approach to child study that raises issues about how adults see children and how children see themselves, which could lead to a qualitatively different system of teacher preparation—a system that views the child as participant rather than object in the structure of social reproduction. This sweeping review of conceptions of and approaches to childhood yields a profound vision of what schooling should be like.
Author(s): David Kennedy
Series: Early Childhood Education: Inquiries and Insights
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 235
The Well of Being......Page 4
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Whose Child?......Page 14
Which Adult?......Page 18
The Western Construction of Childhood......Page 21
Theorizing Childhood......Page 26
Adult-Child Dialogue......Page 27
The Child Before Us: Education, Parenting, and the Evolution of Subjectivity......Page 34
The Divine Child......Page 40
The Romantic Child......Page 57
Romanticism, Education, and the New Humanity......Page 69
Adultism and Models of the Self......Page 76
The Evolution of Adulthood/Childhood......Page 88
The Evolution of the Adult-Child Relationship......Page 98
Boundary Work......Page 118
The Ego Dethroned......Page 129
The Emergence of the Intersubject......Page 133
Psychogenic Theory of History and the Present Age......Page 145
The Dialectics of Reason and Desire......Page 149
The Privileged Stranger......Page 155
The Purposes of Schooling......Page 164
The Space of Dialogue......Page 171
The School as Laboratory of the Third Way of Living......Page 178
The Dark and the Light......Page 196
Notes......Page 200
Bibliography......Page 224
B......Page 242
C......Page 243
E......Page 244
J......Page 245
P......Page 246
S......Page 247
Z......Page 248
