Children’s agency and educational norms a tensed negotiation (original) (raw)
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The fact that children are greatly puzzled about the world around them is no news. However, the idea that children can, due to their naturally conditioned philosophical openness, pose philosophical questions that are relevant and very valuable to us all has only recently been embraced by scholars. This and, for example, children's rights to their sexuality as well as to work instead of going to school are just a few of the triggering points evoking further interest in reading this much-needed collection of essays, which finally provides in one place an introductory insight into the state-of-the-art contemporary debate surrounding the philosophy of children. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children comprises thirty-six essays collected by three editors. Anca Gheaus, a political philosopher interested in justice and the normative significance of personal relationships, has published numerous journal articles and book chapters and is currently writing a monograph on child-centred childrearing. Gideon Calder, a social and political philosopher, has authored or edited ten books, including How Inequality Runs in Families, and is a co-editor of the Routledge journal Ethics and Social Welfare. Jurgen De Wispelaere, whose research interests are at the intersection of political theory and public policy, is a Political Economy Research Fellow with the ISRF and a Policy Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. With well-distributed topics that have been largely set aside for most of the history of philosophy, the editors have structured a handbook that provides timely guidance to the world of neglected questions that have only recently
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The article explores how towards the last decade of the twentieth century, children and childhood, from being on the margins of research in social sciences, appeared in its limelight. It examines, in particular, the emergence of the interdisciplinary approach called the 'New Social Studies of Childhood', its principal theoretical assumptions, as well as some of the wealth of research that appeared in the wake of the NSSC. Among main theoretical positions of the NSSC are the view of childhood as socially constructed and the view of children as capable social actors (agents). These trends have, in turn, led to the appearance of the body of research into diverse childhoods, depending on the culture, class, gender, (dis)ability, and historical circumstances, with a primary focus on child-centered, child-friendly and child-empowering, participatory research methods. The core NSSC assumptions, critical and even revolutionary for their time, also nurtured what I call the 'geogr...