Faces of childhood in contemporary pedagogical culture. Between news and history
Andrea Bobbio
The relationship between the children’s social image and education is close and lasting, as widely demonstrated by the history of education. Comenio, Rousseau , Pestalozzi upto Korzac are the foundation of such an awareness. The child’s demon face - the medieval one - exposed to sin and death or the angelic, metaphysical image have nowadays given way to other representations of the childhood, being pedagogically more controlled though not less risky. They are the faces of the cognitive child (Piaget, Bruner, Gardner, Gopnik), a child seen only under a functional or intellectual sense (without desire and imagination) or the little tyrant, slave of the narcissistic delirium of his parents and prisoner of their emotional blackmail.
The article - from the perspective of the general (therefore theoretical) pedagogy - draws the portrait the of the contemporary image of childhood providing the coordinates for its interpretation.
Keywords
Early Child Education and Care, infancy, child development, history of child education, sciences of education.
