References
- National Commission on Excellence in Education , A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform ( Washington , D.C. : U.S. Governmemt Printing Office , 1983 ); Task Force on Education for Economic Growth, Action for Excellence: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Our Nation's Schools (Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1983); College Board, Academic Preparation for College: What Students Need to Know and Be Able to Do (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1983); Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Policy, Making the Grade (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1983); National Science Foundation, Educating Americans for the 21st Century (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1983).
- Throughout this essay such terms as “childhood ,” “children” and “youth” refer to the period of an individual's life prior to the attainment of legal adult status, i.e., from birth through age 18 or 21.
- Phillipe Aries , Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life ( New York : Alfred A. Knopf , 1962 ); Elise Boulding, Children's Rights and the Wheel of Life (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1979); John Cleverly and D.C. Phillips, Visions of Childhood: Influential Models from Locke to Spock (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986); Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment (New York: Natural History Press/Doubleday, 1970); Mary Ellen Goodman, The Culture of Childhood (New York: Teachers College Press, 1970); John and Beatrice Whiting, Children of Six Cultures (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975).
- Prevailing assumptions concerning the nature of childhood are now challenged by a growing body of research. There is evidence to suggest that children's experiences and actions are misrepresented and misinterpreted in light of (a) adult's political and economic interests [e.g., Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child ; James S. Coleman, ed., Youth: Transition to Adulthood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Youth in the 1980s (Paris: Presses Centrales de Lausanne, 1981)] and of (b) age, gender, class, cultural, and epistemological biases [e.g., Barrie Thorne, “Re-Visioning Women and Social Change: Where Are the Children?,” Gender & Society 1 (March 1987): pp. 85–109; Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982); Mary Field Belenky, Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule, Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986); William Kessen, “The American Child and Other Cultural Inventions,” American Psychologist 34 (October 1974): 815–820; Jerome Kagan, The Nature of the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Matthew Speier, “The Adult Ideological Viewpoint in Studies of Childhood, in Rethinking Childhood, ed. Arlene Skolnick (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), pp. 168–186; Goodman, The Culture of Childhood; Ashley Montagu, Growing Young (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); Gareth Matthews, Dialogues with Children (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), and Philosophy and the Young Child (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980)].
- Thorne , “Re-Visioning Women and Social Change.”
- David Elkind , The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon (Reading , Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1981 ); Vance Packard, Our Endangered Children (Boston: Little Brown, 1983); Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982); Valerie Suransky, The Erosion of Childhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Marie Winn, Children without Childhood (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981).
- Zelizer , Pricing the Priceless Child.
- Elkind , The Hurried Child.
- See, e.g., Zelizer , Pricing the Priceless Child ; Coleman, Youth; Christopher Lucas, Foundations of Education: Schooling and the Social Order (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984).
- Zelizer , Pricing the Priceless Child , p. 216
- Jerome Kagan , Richard Kearsley , and Philip Zelazo , Infancy: Its Place in Human Development ( Cambridge , Mass. : Harvard University Press , 1978 ).
- Thorne , “ Re-Visioning Women and Social Change ,” p. 93 .
- Kagan , The Nature of the Child ; see also Montagu, Growing Young, and Goodman, The Culture of Childhood.
- Goodman , The Culture of Childhood , p. 66
- Whiting and Whiting , Children of Six Cultures.
- Alvin Toffler “ The Psychology of the Future ,” in Learning for Tomorrow , ed. Alvin Toffler ( New York : Vintage Books , 1974 ), p. 15
- Boulding , Children's Rights , p. 62 , 60 .
- Boulding , Children's Rights , p. xiii.
- See, e.g., Alvin Toffler , ed., The Futurists ( New York : Random House , 1972 ); Erich Jantsch and Conrad Waddington eds., Evolution and Consciousness: Human Systems in Transition (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976); Magoroh Maruyama, “Toward Human Futuristics,” General Systems 17 (1972): p. 3–15.
- Whiting and Whiting , Children of Six Cultures.
- Coleman, Youth; Glen H. Elder , Children of the Great Depression ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press , 1974 ); Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), and The Political Life of Children (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986); Marion Dobbert and Betty Cooke, “The Biological Foundations of Education: A Primate Based Perspective,” Educational Foundations 1 (Spring 1987): 67–86.
- Dobbert and Cooke , “Biological Foundations of Education,” Kagan , The Nature of the Child ; Franco Ferrarotti, “Youth in Search of a New Social Identity,” in UNESCO, Youth in the 1980s, pp. 305–320; David Elkind, A Sympathetic Understanding of the Child: Birth to Sixteen (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1978); Robert Biehler and Jack Snowman, Psychology Applied to Teaching (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986); William Glasser, Control Theory in the Classroom (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).
- Toffler , “ The Psychology of the Future ,” p. 15 ; also see the good summary by Boulding, Children's Rights, pp. 96, 137.
- Ruthanne Kurth-Schai , “ Reflections from the Hearts and Minds of Children: A Delphi Study of Children's Personal, Global, and Spiritual Images of the Future ,” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1985 . One hundred and fifty 5th and 6th grade children participated in this study. See pp. 71 – 124 for a detailed description of the Delphi method and its adaptation for use with children).
- It is beyond the scope of this essay to include a full discussion of proposed philosophic and procedural biases that characterize contemporary research concerning the nature of childhood. Relevant resources include Kagan, The Nature of the Child ; Thorne, “Re-Visioning Women and Social Change;” Coles, Political Life of Children.
- Goodman , The Culture of Childhood.
- Whiting and Whiting , Children of Six Cultures , p. 106 .
- Boulding , Children's Rights. Also see William Corsaro , Friendship and Peer Culture in the Early Years ( Norwood , N.J. : Ablex , 1985 ).
- Beverly T. Purrington , “ Effects of Children on Their Parents: Parents' Perceptions ” (Doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, 1980); Coles, Political Life of Children, and Moral Life of Children; Douglas Maynard, “On the Functions of Social Conflict among Children,” American Sociological Review 50 (April 1985): 207–223; Matthews, Dialogues with Children, and Philosophy and the Young Child.
- Edith Cobb , The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood ( New York : Columbia University Press , 1977 ), and “Ecology of the Imagination,” Daedalus 88 (Summer 1959): 538–548.
- Montagu , Growing Young , p. 2 .
- Boulding , Children's Rights , p. 96 .
- Raymond Lorenzo , “ Emerging Utopian Sensibility in Children: Its Communication with Adults—Some Considerations ,” (Paper for discussion, United Nations Working Group on Household, Gender and Age Consultation (Rome, April 1982 ), p. 4 .
- Eleonora Masini , “Women and Children as Builders of the Future,” in Education: A Time for Decisions , eds. Arthur Harkins and Kathleen Redd ( Washington , D.C. : World Future Society , 1980 ).
- Herbert Read , quoted in Goodman, The Culture of Childhood , title page.
- Mead , Culture and Commitment , pp. 94 – 95
- Cobb , Ecology of Imagination.
- Masini , “ Women and Children ,” p. 204 .
- See also Joseph Chilton Pearce , Magical Child ( New York : Bantam Books , 1977 ); John C. Lilly, The Center of the Cyclone (New York: Julian Press, 1972).
- See, e.g., Piaget's work as interpreted by Herbert Ginsburg and Sylvia Opper , Piaget's Theory of Intellectual Development ( Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall , 1969 ); Elkind, A Sympathetic Understanding; Coleman, Youth. (It is interesting to note that these traits are most commonly described as representative of an immature stage to be transcended, rather than as a potential source of innovation and energy for social reform.)
- See, e.g., Helen Schwartzman , Transformations: The Anthropology of Children's Play ( New York : Plenum Press , 1978 ); Montagu, Growing Young; Dobbert and Cooke, “Biological Foundations of Education.”
- Boulding , Children's Rights , p. 15 .
- Lorenzo , “Emerging Utopian Sensibility,” and “Children as Catalysts of Another Development,” Network for Environment and Development 3 ( March 1976 ): 4 – 6 Simon Nicholson, “Multimilieu Project 2000” (unpublished project description available through the Oxford Research Unit, United Kingdom Open University).
- Lorenzo , “ Emerging Utopian Sensibility ”, p. 12 .
- Kurth-Schai , “ Reflections from the Hearts. ”
- Maruyama , “ Toward Human Futuristics. ”
- Anne Parke Pareluis and Robert J. Pareluis , The Sociology of Education ( Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall , 1978 ).
- Jantsch and Waddington , Evolution and Consciousness , p. 7 .
- Zelizer , Pricing the Priceless Child.
- Jerome Bruner , Actual Minds, Possible Worlds ( Cambridge , Mass. : Harvard University Press , 1986 ).
- Maruyama , “ Toward Human Futuristics. ”
- This issue is of particular importance in light of current research that suggests that teacher-directed approaches to education may impede rather than enhance the learning process because they fail to acknowledge (a) the biologically determined self-organizing nature of children's learning [e.g., Alison Stallibrass , The Self-Respecting Child: A Study of Children's Play and Development ( London : Thames & Hudson , 1974 ); L. Joseph Stone, Henrietta Smith, and Lois Murphy, The Competent Infant: Research and Commentary (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Dobbert and Cooke, “Biological Foundations”, Merlin C. Wittrock, “Learning and the Brain,” in The Brain and Psychology, ed. Merlin C. Wittrock (New York: Academic Press, 1980)] and (b) the extent to which students' experience of course content, instructional methods, and classroom procedures and interactions vary depending on a complex array of variables that are psychological [e.g., cognitive styles and motivational patterns-Herman A. Witkin and Donald R. Goodenough, Cognitive Styles, Essence and Origins (New York: International University Press, 1981); Rita Dunn and Kenneth Dunn, Teaching Students through Their Individual Learning Styles (Reston, VA: Reston, 1978); Samuel Messick, Individuality in Learning (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1976); Nathan Kogan, “Educational Implications of Cognitive Styles,” in Psychology and Educational Practice, ed. Gerald S. Lester (Glenview, III.: Scott, Foresman, 1971), pp. 242–292; David C. McClelland, “Toward a Theory of Motive Acquisition,” American Psychologist 20 (March/April 1965): 321–333; Joann W. Atkinson and J.O. Raynor, Personality, Motivation, and Achievement (Washington, D.C.: Hemisphere, 1978)]; sociocultural [e.g., gender, class, and race issues - Belenky, et. al., Women's Ways; Dale Spender, Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal (London: Writers and Readers, 1982); Frances Maher and Kathleen Dunn,” The Practice of Feminist Teaching: A Case Study of Interactions among Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Female Cognitive Development” (Working Paper No. 144, Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women, 1984)]; and neurological [e.g., hemispheric specialization, growth spurts during brain development,—Wittrock, “Learning and the Brain,” Jeanne S. Chall and Allan F. Mirsky, ed., Education and the Brain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)].
- See Michelle Geslin Small , “ Education for a Systems Age ,” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1983 ).
- See, e.g., David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson , Learning Together and Alone (Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1975 ); Robert E. Slavin, Cooperative Learning (New York: Longman, 1983); Nancy Schniedewind, “Cooperatively Structured Learning: Implications for Feminist Pedagogy,” Journal of Thought 20 (Fall 1985): 74–87.
- Positive theoretical and practical implications are discussed by Maruyama , “Toward Human Futuristics;” David T. Moore , “ Discovering the Pedagogy of Experience ,” Harvard Educational Review 51 ( May 1981 ): 266 – 300 Eliot Wigginton, Sometimes a Shining Moment: The Foxfire Experience (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985); Simon Nicholson and Raymond Lorenzo, “The Political Implications of Child Participation: Steps toward a Participatory Society,” International Foundation for Development Alternatives (March/April, 1981): 7–11 [Nyon, Switzerland].
- Similar thoughts are expressed by Coleman , Youth , pp. 163 – 167
- Recommendations for educational reform advocated in the cited national reports (Reference 1) reflect those historically associated with conservative schools of educational thought. Based upon a traditionalist perspective, the primary purposes of education are to teach basic academic skills, to transmit traditional knowledge and values, and to preserve the social order (political and economic status quo). It is not the author's intention to imply that such issues are unimportant but rather to suggest that continued emphasis on these, to the exclusion of the recommendations proposed in the final section of this essay, would be inappropriate in light of emergent social and educational imperatives.
- Immanuel Kant , Kant on Education , translated by Annette Churton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1900), p. 14 ; George S. Counts, Dare the School Build a New Social Order? (New York: John Day, 1932); Theodore Brameld, Education as Power (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), and Education for the Emerging Age (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
- Bruner , Actual Minds , p. 149 .