Children and Childhood

“Children are economically worthless but emotionally priceless.” - Zelizer, 1988

According to UNCRC, a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). This period of eighteen years called childhood is divided into different phases - early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence or early childhood, adolescence and late adolescence. It is divided differently by different psychologists. John Locke (1690/1913) explained that the child is tabula rasa, a blank slate. I believe he was right in saying this to a certain extent as it is we adults who direct the course of children’s lives.

My first step to seeing a child’s world closely was taken two years back when I started teaching 72 children in a government school. My students came from low income backgrounds and lived in a slum. From a teacher’s perspective, all that mattered to me was that my students should learn, grow and become responsible citizens of this country. Even though I had been to all their homes, I focussed on what went inside the classroom more and tried making it their second home. This time during the practicum visits, when I stepped into the classroom as well as the slum community, I tried looking at things from a third person’s perspective – not as a child, a teacher or a parent. My notions about schooling as well as childhood were questioned once again.

When I saw the kids in classroom blindly following and obeying the teacher, I was pushed to think are children really dependent, ignorant beings subordinated by adults. Or contradictory to what Piaget said play a passive not active role in their learning. Are they really the products and producers of their own development? I also saw how the appreciation of an adult, i.e. the teacher really gave the children a sense of achievement on one hand but on the other shaped their thinking about themselves. For example, the students in the school I visited had to attend extra classes incase they did not finish work. Students who attended these extra classes were called “dull”, by their classmates. Children do not build these notions about themselves, it is we adults who shape these for them. And if this is what education is doing by labelling them, then what are the aims of such an education? If school is a place for learning and growing, is providing midday meals, free uniforms and books, sufficient for carrying this out?

My mind was put through a bigger mayhem when I stepped into the slum. From basic sanitation issues to domestic violence, children here had seen it all at a very young age. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762/1955) saw the child as a “noble savage”, basically good but ruined by the adult world. This statement holds true for a certain Jailaxmi who sees her alcoholic grandfather beat her grandmother everyday. There are more children like her who deal with many intrinsic and extrinsic issues of health, malnutrition, gender bias, lack of schooling, etc. throughout their so called childhood. We talk of ‘Child Rights’ – Right to survival, Right to protection, Right to participation and Right to development. But do these rights also exist for children living in an unauthorised slum area? If yes, then who is responsible for ensuring the fulfilment of these rights?

Looking at all these situations from the perspective of Urie Bronfennberner’s (1994) theory of bioecological systems based on process-person-context-time (PPCT), I now understand that it is needed to consider the entire ecological system of a child to know how his/her development gets impacted. Their microsystems including their parents and teachers help them form opinions about themselves and the world. It is said that they are the mirrors of their parents’ ambitions, and that is why another child Zeeniya wants to become a teacher since her mother says so. The religion they follow, the school they go to, the care they receive from the adults around them, all form their mesosystem and have a similar effect on their biological growth and building their mindsets. But for those living in poverty, this impact is much more.  Poor children are believed to be more vulnerable as they are abused, exploited and neglected by the world around them. In the long standing debate of heredity versus environment, they end up losing at both ends, as there doesn’t seem to be an escape for them from poverty.

For the longest time that I can remember, I had always believed that childhood was the most simplified period of one’s life, but after a visit to a school and a slum, I feel that it is instead a complex and complicated period. Everytime I thought of the word childhood, the only links that came to my mind were play, fun, imagination, creativity and carefree. But I have now begun to question that is childhood really about these five words or different children experience childhood differently? Is there actually a concept of childhood for the children living in poverty or is it an experience for the children of the rich only? For a child who lives in marginalised conditions, goes to a government school, does the future really hold hope? Or they have a short term orientation to future? (Sonali Nag) And what about children out of school or do not have access to education or other resources due to stratification of society?

With all these questions in my mind, I feel that my understanding of children and childhood is blurred and it cannot become concrete till I have a complete view of what all goes into constructing childhood.