Childhood and the Philosophy of Education: An Anti-Aristotelian Perspective (Continuum Studies in Educational Research) - Softcover

Stables, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1441198334 ISBN 13: 9781441198334

Publisher: Continuum, 2011

Synopsis

Philosophical accounts of childhood have tended to derive from Plato and Aristotle, who portrayed children (like women, animals, slaves, and the mob) as unreasonable and incomplete in terms of lacking formal and final causes and ends. Despite much rhetoric concerning either the sinfulness or purity of children (as in Puritanism and Romanticism respectively), the assumption that children are marginal has endured. Modern theories, including recent interpretations of neuroscience, have re-enforced this sense of children's incompleteness. 

This fascinating monograph seeks to overturn this philosophical tradition. It develops instead a "fully semiotic" perspective, arguing that in so far as children are no more or less interpreters of the world than adults, they are no more or less reasoning agents. This, the book shows, has radical implications, particularly for the question of how we seek to educate children. One Aristotelian legacy is the unquestioned belief that societies must educate the young irrespective of the latter's wishes. Another is that childhood must be grown out of and left behind.

About this title

Book Description:

A critical examination of the idea that compulsory education is a social good, and that adulthood and childhood should be considered as entirely separate realms.

About the Author:

Andrew Stables in Professor of Education and Philosophy in the Department of Education at the University of Bath, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1441198334
• ISBN 13: 9781441198334
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 210