The future of childhood Flashcards
(5 cards)
1
Q
What does Postman (1994) argue about childhood?
A
- Childhood is disappearing at a ‘dazzling speed’
- Trends such as giving children the same rights as adults, the disappearance of children’s traditional unsupervised games, the growing similarity of adults’ and children’s clothing
2
Q
What does Postman believe is both the cause and the decline of childhood?
A
- It lies in the rise and fall of print culture and its replacement by television culture
3
Q
How has the printed world created an information hierarchy?
A
- Mass literacy emerged from the 19th century onwards
- There was a sharp division between those who can read (adults) and those who can’t (children)
- Adults were able to keep things such as sex, money, violence, illness and death away from children- so childhood came to be associated with innocence
- Television destroys the information hierarchy as TV doesn’t require special skills to access it, so the boundary between adult and child is broken down, childhood is replaced with knowledge
4
Q
How does Opie and other sociologists disagree with Postman?
A
- Opie argues that childhood isn’t disappearing and has conducted a lot of research into children’s unsupervised games, rhymes and songs… and argues that there is strong evidence of the continued existence of a separate children’s culture over many years
- He over-emphasises TV at the expense of other factors that have influenced the development of childhood
5
Q
How do Postmodernists see childhood?
A
- Jenks (2005): childhood is changing, not disappearing
- In the past, modern society was concerned with futurity and childhood was seen as a preparation for the individual to become a productive adult in the future
- In postmodern society, the pace of change speeds up and relationships become more unstable which generates feelings of insecurity so parents try to protect their children as much as possible, resulting in even greater surveillance and regulation of children’s lives
