The disappearance of childhood Flashcards
Postman 1994
Argues that childhood is disappearing into dazzling speed he points out the trend towards giving children the same rights as adults and the disappearance of children’s traditional unsupervised games the growing similarity of adults and children’s clothing and even to cases of children committing adult crimes such as murder
In postman is for you because first of emergency childhood now its disappearance lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture
In postman is for you because first of emergency childhood now its disappearance lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture
During the Middle Ages most people are illiterate and speech see any skill needed a Tish patient in the adult world children were able to enter adult society for an early age in childhood was not associated in a sense nor the adult world with a mystery. There was no division between the world of the adult and that the child
The information hierarchy
Postman argues that childhood emerged as a separate status along with maths literacy for the 19 century onwards. This is because the printed word creates an information hierarchy: a sharp division between adults you can read in children who cannot
Gave adults the power to keep knowledge about sex money violence illness death and other adult matter secret from children
However television plays a distinction between childhood and adult hood registering the information hierarchy between adult and child is broken down adult authority diminishes in the occurrents in innocence of childhood is replaced by knowledge and cynicism
Evaluation of postman
Opie 1993 argues that childhood is not disappearing. Based on a lifetime of research into children’s unsupervised games rhymes and songs conducted with her husband Peter OP she argues there is strong evidence at the continued existence of a separate children’s culture over many years
Christmas city is viable and sharing had different types of communication technology such a printer television can influence the way in which childhood is constructed however he over emphasises a single cause TV at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood
