The Moral Life of Children - Softcover

Coles, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395431530 ISBN 13: 9780395431535

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1987

Synopsis

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About this title

About the Author

Robert Coles is a winner of the National Medal of Freedom.

From Library Journal

Child psychiatrist Coles received the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for his Children of Crisis , a multi-volume cross-cultural study of American children as moral witnesses to social struggle. The present work, issued in two companion volumes, expands on that theme by including transcripts and thematic analyses of probing interviews with children in Brazil, French Canada, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Poland, South Africa, and Southeast Asia, while occasionally comparing their responses with interviews of American children. Coles's field work methodology is not made explicit enough, the transcripts are highly edited and undocumented, his subjects seem to have been chosen because they were articulate and resourceful, and he admits to an existential bias that one's moral or political conscience is tested only through adversity. Nevertheless, these volumes raise fundamental questions and make an important contribution to the literatures of survival, poverty, and political socialization. Most of his subjects display unnerving composure while living in constant moral jeopardy, and cope by what Coles admiringly terms "an Orwellian attentiveness to the drama of everyday life." These compelling narratives form a vivid testament to the embattled moral stature of children in a diversity of cultures. Both volumes are recommended for those concerned with moral education, the child as citizen, or nationalism as an aspect of childhood. Both include children's drawings that mirror with evident pathos each child's fears and aspirations. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0395431530
• ISBN 13: 9780395431535
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English