Stories of Childhood: Shifting Agendas of Child Concern

Abstract

The authors of this book argue that science, no less than traditional wisdom, draws its knowledge of the child from the culture in which both are embedded. Far from providing objective truths about childhood, child concern disciplines covertly provide a mandate which continues to allow the adult world to treat the young as alien subjects - a state in which they remain disenfranchised and dehumanized. For the last two hundred years children have been caught up in these shifting sands of child-knowledge. Stories of Childhood examines alternative ways of understanding the young. In looking at the storied nature of childhood, the authors draw material not just from academic or professional sources, but also popular literature and the mass media. Placing the emphasis upon the language of child knowledge, they point to discourses not just of entrapment but also of emancipation - those which allow us to deconstruct our previously taken-for-granted understandings and to look afresh at both the practical and the analytic position of the child within the stories of childhood we tell. Only if positioned to confront doubts about the nature of childhood, contend Rex and Wendy Stainton Rogers, can we begin to reflect upon and change our conduct towards children.

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