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Children of Monsters
by Jay NordlingerWhat’s it like to be the son or daughter of a dictator? A monster on the Stalin level? What’s it like to bear a name synonymous with oppression, terror, and evil? Jay Nordlinger set out to answer that question, and does so in this book. He surveys 20 dictators in all. They are the worst of the worst: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and so on. The book is not about them, really, though of course they figure in it. It’s about their children. Some of them are absolute loyalists. They admire, revere, or worship their father. Some of them actually succeed their father as dictator--as in North Korea, Syria, and Haiti. Some of them have doubts. A couple of them become full-blown dissenters, even defectors. A few of the daughters have the experience of having their husband killed by their father. Most of these children are rocked by war, prison, exile, or other upheaval. Obviously, the children have things in common. But they are also individuals, making of life what they can. The main thing they have in common is this: They have been dealt a very, very unusual hand. What wouldyou do, if you were the offspring of an infamous dictator, who lords it over your country? An early reader of this book said, "There’s an opera on every page”: a drama, a tragedy (or even a comedy). Another reader said he had read the chapter on Bokassa "with my eyes on stalks. ” Meet these characters for yourself. Marvel, shudder, and ponder.
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense
by Reinhold NiebuhrThe Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, first published in 1944, is considered one of the most profound and relevant works by the influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and certainly the fullest statement of his political philosophy. Written and first read during the prolonged, tragic world war between totalitarian and democratic forces, Niebuhr’s book took up the timely question of how democracy as a political system could best be defended. Most proponents of democracy, Niebuhr claimed, were “children of light,” who had optimistic but naïve ideas about how society could be rid of evil and governed by enlightened reason. They needed, he believed, to absorb some of the wisdom and strength of the “children of darkness,” whose ruthless cynicism and corrupt, anti-democratic politics should otherwise be repudiated. He argued for a prudent, liberal understanding of human society that took the measure of every group’s self-interest and was chastened by a realistic understanding of the limits of power. It is in the foreword to this book that he wrote, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”This edition includes a new introduction by the theologian and Niebuhr scholar Gary Dorrien in which he elucidates the work’s significance and places it firmly into the arc of Niebuhr’s career.
Children of Facundo
by Ariel de la FuenteIn Children of Facundo Ariel de la Fuente examines postindependence Argentinian instability and political struggle from the perspective of the rural lower classes. As the first comprehensive regional study to explore nineteenth-century society, culture, and politics in the Argentine interior--where more than 50 percent of the population lived at the time--the book departs from the predominant Buenos Aires-centered historiography to analyze this crucial period in the processes of state- and nation-building. La Rioja, a province in the northwest section of the country, was the land of the caudillos immortalized by Domingo F. Sarmiento, particularly in his foundational and controversial book Facundo. De la Fuente focuses on the repeated rebellions in this district during the 1860s, when Federalist caudillos and their followers, the gauchos, rose up against the new Unitarian government. In this social and cultural analysis, de la Fuente argues that the conflict was not a factional struggle between two ideologically identical sectors of the elite, as commonly depicted. Instead, he believes, the struggle should be seen from the perspective of the lower-class gauchos, for whom Unitarianism and Federalism were highly differentiated party identities that represented different experiences during the nineteenth century. To reconstruct this rural political culture de la Fuente relies on sources that heretofore have been little used in the study of nineteenth-century Latin American politics, most notably a rich folklore collection of popular political songs, folktales, testimonies, and superstitions passed down by old gauchos who had been witnesses or protagonists of the rebellions. Criminal trial records, private diaries, and land censuses add to the originality of de la Fuente's study, while also providing a new perspective on Sarmiento's works, including the classic Facundo. This book will interest those specializing in Latin American history, literature, politics, and rural issues.
Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time
by Michael LiebAre Milton's Paradise Lost, Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense program, our culture's fascination with UFOs and alien abductions, and Louis Farrakhan's views on racial Armageddon somehow linked? In Children of Ezekiel Michael Lieb reveals the connections between these phenomena and the way culture has persistently related the divine to the technological. In a work of special interest at the approach of the millennium, Lieb traces these and other diverse cultural moments--all descended from the prophet Ezekiel's vision of a fiery divine chariot in the sky--from antiquity to the present, across high and low culture, to reveal the pervasive impact of this visionary experience on the modern world. Beginning with the merkabah chariot literature of Hebrew and Gnostic mysticism, Lieb shows how religiously inspired people concerned with annihilating their heretical enemies seized on Ezekiel's vision as revealing the technologically superior instrument of God's righteous anger. He describes how many who seek to know the unknowable that is the power of God conceive it in technological terms--and how that power is associated with political aims and a heralding of the end of time. For Milton, Ezekiel's chariot becomes the vehicle in which the Son of God does battle with the rebellious angels. In the modern age, it may take the form of a locomotive, tank, airplane, missile, or UFO. Technology itself is seen as a divine gift and an embodiment of God in the temporal world. As Lieb demonstrates, the impetus to produce modern technology arises not merely from the desire for profit or military might but also from religious-spiritual motives. Including discussions of conservative evangelical Christian movements, Reagan's ballistic shooting gallery in the sky, and the Nation of Islam's vision of the "mother plane" as the vehicle of retribution in the war against racial oppression, Children of Ezekiel will enthrall readers who have been captivated, either through religious belief or intellectual interests, by a common thread uniting millennial religious beliefs, racial conflict, and political and militaristic aspirations.
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 BC-400 AD
by Charles FreemanA brilliant, fascinating portrait of the intellectual tradition of Greek writers and thinkers during the Age of Rome.In 146 BC, Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic; sixty years later, when Athens and other Greek city-states rebelled against Rome, the Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato, laying waste to the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied. However, the traditions of Greek cultural life continued to flourish during the centuries of Roman rule that followed—in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers, doctors, scientists, geographers, and theologians. Charles Freeman's accounts of such luminaries as the physician Galen, the geographer Ptolemy, and the philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with contextual "interludes" that showcase a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives. A cultural history on an epic scale, The Children of Athena presents the story of a rich and vibrant tradition of Greek intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years, from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century AD.
Children, Literacy and Ethnicity: Reading Identities in the Primary School
by Lexie SchererThis book explores children's meaning making of the books they learn to read with, especially relating to the intersections of race, gender and class. Based on research using a participative, innovative design with young children, issues of identity, belonging and classroom hierarchies are explored in complex and poignant ways by the children.
Children, Home and School: Regulation, Autonomy or Connection?
by Ros EdwardsIn contemporary western societies, there are increasing emphases on children being the responsibility of their parents, contained within the home, and on their compartmentalisation into separate and protected organised educational settings. Thus 'home' and 'school' form a crucial part of children's lives and experiences.This book explores the key institutional settings of home and school, and other educationally linked organised spaces, in children's lives, and the relationships between these. It presents in-depth discussions concerning new research findings from a range of national contexts and focuses on various aspects of children's, and sometimes adult's, own understandings and activities in home and school, and after school settings, and the relationship between these. The contributors assess children from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances and consider how these children see and position themselves as autonomous within, connected to or regulated by home and school. Discussion of the impact of policy and practice developments on the everyday lives of these children is also included.
Children, Family and the State (Live Questions In Ethics And Moral Philosophy Ser.)
by David William ArchardThis title was first published in 2003. This book critically examines the moral and political status of the child by a consideration of three interrelated questions: What rights if any does the child have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child do parents have? What rights over and duties in respect of a child does the state have? David Archard adopts three areas for particular discussion on the practical implications of the general theoretical issues: education, child protection policy, and the medical treatment of children. Providing a clear legal context and a sharper, contemporary discussion of the question of rights, this book presents a clear introduction to the key issues in the moral and political status of children.
Children as Tissue Donors: Regulatory Protection, Medical Ethics, And Practice
by Shih-Ning ThenThis book examines the position of children who provide tissue to potentially save the life of another. It questions whether child donors of all ages have been treated appropriately and whether they are sufficiently protected in acting as tissue donors, and ultimately considers whether a new regulatory response is needed to benefit donor children.The book couples a legal exposition of the donor child’s position with the medico-ethical reality of clinical practice. In recent years, a growing body of literature concerning the clinical experiences and outcomes for child donors has emerged. This book adds to this by examining another dimension – the regulatory frameworks at play. It examines the ethical arguments for and against children acting as tissue donors and provides an original analysis of the legal and non-legal regulatory frameworks governing children’s participation in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. It combines these doctrinal and theoretical approaches with insights into clinical practice gained from the results of qualitative research conducted with health professionals.The analysis inevitably explores the more general issues of children’s right to make medical decisions, the role of parents in decision-making, the value of the best interests test and alternative (legal and ethical) standards, rights of participation of children before the courts, and the role of law and other forms of regulation in a clinical context.
Children and the Power of Stories: Posthuman and Autoethnographic Perspectives in Early Childhood Education (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)
by Carmen Blyth Teresa K. AslanianThis book explores how stretching stories through posthuman and autoethnographic perspectives can produce new stories that decolon(ial)ize traditional thinking and approaches to Early Childhood Education (ECE). It demonstrates how stories can provide a different way of knowing, and a way of knowing differently: a way of decolon(ial)izing current discourses of early childhood education within educational institutions.The book uses research and practice in ECE to act as a canvas, a context with which to explore how autoethnography can become other when viewed through a posthumanist lens. As a consequence the chapters and stories within allow for an interplay between the posthumanist and the autoethnographic, an interplay that allows for a very specific type of meaning to emerge; a meaning that traffics in numerous and disruptive possibilities rather than settled certainties. In so doing, authors rethink and perturb the notion of child-centered approaches to knowing, be(com)ing, and doing within the Early Childhood Education context.
Children and the Ethics of Creativity: Rhythmic Affectensities in Early Childhood Education (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)
by Victoria Jane HargravesThis book presents a critical reimagining of education and educational research in addressing practices of representation and their relation to epistemology, subjectivity and ontology in the context of early childhood education. Drawing on posthumanist perspectives and the immanent materialism of Deleuze & Guattari to conceive of early childhood education, childhood and indeed, adult life, in new ways, it highlights the powerful role of language in subjectivity and ontology, and introduces affectensity as a concept which can be put to work to undo habitual relations and meanings. It proposes that ethical becomings require the engagement of an expansion and intensification of a body’s affect or capacity, and offers readers a provocation for enhancing creative capacity as an ethic. This book is an important contribution to the discussions on methods for living and of ways of thinking commensurate with the orientation of a posthuman turn.
Children and the Changing Family: Between Transformation and Negotiation
by An-Magritt JensenThis timely and thought-provoking book explores how social and family change are colouring the experience of childhood. The book is centred around three major changes: parental employment, family composition and ideology. The authors demonstrate how children's families are transformed in accordance with societal changes in demographic and economic terms, and as a result of the choices parents make in response to these changes. Despite claims that society is becoming increasingly child-centred, this book argues that children still have little influence over the major changes in their lives.This book breaks new ground by researching family change from the child's point of view. Through combinations from childhood experts in Scandinavia, the UK and America, the book shows the importance of studying children's lives in families in order to understand how far children are active agents in contemporary society.Students of childhood studies, sociology, social work and education will find this book essential reading. It will also be of interest to practitioners in the social, child and youth services.
Children and Schooling: Issues In Childhood Socialization (Routledge Library Editions: Education)
by Phillip GammageThe book provides a synthesis of a broadly-based social-psychology of education and bridges the gap between theory and practice in education by emphasising the relationship between research and actuality. The author discusses the major issues in childhood socialisation relating to schooling, achievement and the curriculum, and in so doing makes a sensitive and well-argued case for the social-psychological perspective.He presents a social-psychologist’s view of the interaction between child, school and curriculum, and summarises mainstream psychological contributions to current thinking on achievement, self-esteem and education. He covers areas of social learning and attribution theory not commonly dealt with in education texts, showing that there are major fields of research which have until now been neglected. Children and Schooling is constructed so that its chapters can be used as independent study-guides to specific subjects or read in sequence, each subject inter-related. The text can be treated as an introduction, particularly in view of the notes and comprehensive and apposite scholarly apparatus: and as a spring-board for serious study at advanced level.
Children and Materialities: The Force of the More-than-human in Children’s Classroom Lives (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)
by Casey Y. MyersThis book makes the case for young children as both keenly materially aware of and highly dependent on sets of interrelated material-discursive circumstances. It argues that long-term engagement with children around the topic of meaning-matter relations upends many taken-for-granted notions of consumption, self-regulation, knowledge production, and what constitutes quality of life within a school setting.The book provides complex accounts of agency on multiple scales - the capability of children to shape and share research, the force of objects, stuff, and things to impact the "social" workings of a classroom, and the impact of nonhuman animals on the trajectory of the ways in which children relate to each other.This work makes a significant contribution to both theoretical conceptions and practical enactments of childhoods, productively addressing the many contradictions inherent in a posthuman and participatory approach to researching with young children. It also offers insights into how the everyday materialities of children’s classrooms (and their complex representations) are capable of disrupting the common-sense order of things.
Children: Rights and Childhood
by David ArchardChildren: Rights and Childhood is widely regarded as the first book to offer a detailed philosophical examination of children’s rights. David Archard provides a clear and accessible introduction to a topic that has assumed increasing relevance since the book’s first publication. Divided clearly into three parts, it covers key topics such as: John Locke’s writings on children Philippe Ariès’s Centuries of Childhood children’s moral and legal rights a child’s right to vote and to sexual choice parental rights to privacy and autonomy defining and understanding child abuse. The third edition has been fully revised and updated throughout with a new chapter providing an in-depth analysis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Part 2 has been restructured to move the reader from general theoretical considerations of children’s rights through to practical issues. This volume is ideal reading for advanced studies across Philosophy, Social Work, Law, Childhood Studies, Politics, and Social Policy.
Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Price of Innocence (Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education #1)
by Deevia BhanaPrimary schoolchildren are frequently shielded from education on sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases in an effort to protect their innocence. In countries like South Africa, where AIDS is particularly widespread, it is especially important to address prevention with younger boys and girls as active social agents with the capacity to engage with AIDS as gendered and sexual beings. This volume addresses the question of children’s understanding of AIDS, not simply in terms of their dependence but as active participants in the interpretation of their social worlds. The volume draws on an interview and ethnographic based study of young children in two socially diverse South African primary schools, as well as interviews conducted with teachers and mothers of young children. It shows how adults sustain the production of childhood sexual innocence, and the importance of scaling up programs in AIDS intervention, gender and sexuality. It makes significant contributions to the global debate around childhood sexualities, gender and AIDS education.
Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy: Children Ex Machina (Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories)
by David W. Kupferman Andrew GibbonsThis book invites readers to both reassess and reconceptualize definitions of childhood and pedagogy by imagining the possibilities - past, present, and future - provided by the aesthetic turn to science fiction. It explores constructions of children, childhood, and pedagogy through the multiple lenses of science fiction as a method of inquiry, and discusses what counts as science fiction and why science fiction counts. The book examines the notion of relationships in a variety of genres and stories; probes affect in the convergence of childhood and science fiction; and focuses on questions of pedagogy and the ways that science fiction can reflect the status quo of schooling theory, practice, and policy as well as offer alternative educative possibilities. Additionally, the volume explores connections between children and childhood studies, pedagogy and posthumanism. The various contributors use science fiction as the frame of reference through which conceptual links between inquiry and narrative, grounded in theories of media studies, can be developed.
Childhood, Philosophy and Open Society: Implications for Education in Confucian Heritage Cultures (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects #22)
by Chi-Ming LamThe purpose of this book is to develop a theory and practice of education from Karl Popper's non-justificationist philosophy for promoting an open society. Specifically, the book is designed to develop an educational programme for fostering critical thinking in children, particularly when they are involved in group discussion.The study conducted an experiment to assess the effectiveness of Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C) programme in promoting Hong Long (Chinese) children's critical thinking. Forty-two Secondary 1 students volunteered for the experiment, from whom 28 students were randomly selected and randomly assigned to two groups of 14 each: one receiving P4C lessons and the other receiving English lessons. The students who were taught P4C were found to perform better in the reasoning test than those who were not, to be capable of discussing philosophical problems in a competent way, and to have a very positive attitude towards doing philosophy in the classroom. It was also found that P4C played a major role in developing the students' critical thinking.Considering that the construction of children by adults as incompetent in the sense of lacking reason, maturity, or independence reinforces the traditional structure of adult authority over children in society, it runs counter to the goal of fostering critical thinking in children. As a way to return justice to childhood and to effectively promote critical thinking in children, the present study suggested reconstructing the concept of childhood, highlighting the importance of establishing a coherent public policy on promotion of agency in children and also the importance of empowering them to participate actively in research, legal, and educational institutions.
The Childhood Of Art (European Perspectives: A Series In Social Thought And Cultural Criticism)
by Sarah KofmanThe Childhood of Art: An Interpretation of Freud's Aesthetic
Childhood, Learning & Everyday Life in Three Asia-Pacific Cities: Experiences from Melbourne, Hong Kong and Singapore (Global Childhoods in the Asia-Pacific #1)
by I-Fang Lee Sue Saltmarsh Nicola YellandThis book introduces findings from an international, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary study of children’s everyday experiences of growing up and going to school in the context of the three global cities of Hong Kong, Singapore and Melbourne. It takes the premise that children’s learning and orientations to educational success are shaped by everyday cultural practices at home and at school, by policy contexts that both produce and respond to educational and cultural norms, and by individual and familial desires and aspirations. Drawing on research conducted with primary school-aged children in Year 4, the book considers how day-to-day routines such as going to school, engaging in extra-curricular activities outside of school, and spending time at home with family intersect with the broader milieus of education policy ideals in a changing and interconnected world. Through a combination of visual methodologies, surveys, ethnographic observations in schools, classrooms and cityscapes, re-enactments of everyday activities with children at home, and sociological education policy analysis, this book shows both the richness of children’s everyday lives and learning in global cities, as well as exploring questions that pose challenges to educational and social norms.
Childhood in Turkey: Educational, Sociological, and Psychological Perspectives (Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science #11)
by Hilal H. Şen Helaine SelinThis volume asks, what is it like to be a child in a country where 25% of the population is under the age of 14? Handling this question through a multidisciplinary lens, the book provides a rich and diverse analysis of different portrayals of childhood in Turkey. From children’s rights to transformation of childhood, from refugee children to host country children living in armed conflict areas, from cultural factors to gene-environment interaction, from parent-focused to child-focused programs, readers will find in-depth and up-to-date information about children living in Turkey from the perspectives of sociology, education, and psychology sciences.
Childhood in Society for the Early Years
by Rory ClarkChildhood can only be understood in relation to the multitude of social factors which surround it. Written for students of degrees and foundation degrees in Early Years, Early Childhood Studies and related disciplines, this accessible text offers an introduction to the study of these complex issues including the different contexts within which childhood exists. These contexts, from the child within the family, to the global perspective and the child's own perspective are closely examined. This second edition is updated in line with recent changes to early years policy and includes a new chapter 'The context of partnership: children in transition'. About the Early Years Series This series has been designed to support students of Early Years, Early Childhood Studies and related disciplines in popular modules of their course. Each text takes a focused look at a specific topic and approaches it in an accessible and user-friendly way. Features have been developed to help readers engage with the text and understand the subject from a number of different viewpoints. Activities pose questions to prompt thought and discussion and 'Theory Focus' boxes examine essential theory close-up for better understanding. This series is also applicable to EYPS candidates on all pathways. Other titles in the series are Early Childhood Studies, Becoming a Practitioner in the Early Years, Child Observation for the Early Years and Exploring Play for Early Childhood Studies. Rory McDowall Clark originally trained as a nursery and primary teacher in Brighton and has a wide range of experience in broader social contexts including community development with charities, voluntary organisations and outreach youth work. Rory is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Early Childhood at the University of Worcester.
Childhood in Society
by Rory Mcdowall ClarkChildhood can only be understood in relation to the multitude of social factors which surround it. This accessible text explores children’s place within society through an examination of the different contexts within which a child exists. It begins by looking at the child within the family then goes on to examine the child within the educational setting, the community, the nation and the global perspective. The child's own perspective is explored, recognising children as social agents in their own right. Finally it examines the current climate, making links with Every Child Matters, and considers today's public perceptions of childhood.
Childhood, Education and Philosophy: New ideas for an old relationship (New Directions in the Philosophy of Education)
by Walter KohanThis book explores the idea of a childlike education and offers critical tools to question traditional forms of education, and alternative ways to understand and practice the relationship between education and childhood. Engaging with the work of Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Simón Rodríguez, it contributes to the development of a philosophical framework for the pedagogical idea at the core of the book, that of a childlike education. Divided into two parts, the book introduces innovative ideas through philosophical argument and discussion, challenging existing understandings of what it means to teach or to form a child, and putting into question the idea of education as a process of formation. The first part of the book consists of a dialogue with a number of interlocutors in order to develop an original conception of education. The second part presents the idea of a childlike education, beginning with a discussion of the relationships between childhood and philosophy, and followed by a critique of the place of philosophical experience in a childhood of education. Instead of asking how philosophy might educate childhood, this book raises the question of how childhood might educate philosophy. It will be of key value to researchers, educators and postgraduate students in the fields of education and the human sciences.
Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies: Memories of Everyday Life
by Zsuzsa Millei Iveta Silova Nelli PiattoevaThis book explores childhood and schooling in late socialist societies by bringing into dialogue public narratives and personal memories that move beyond imaginaries of Cold War divisions between the East and West. Written by cultural insiders who were brought up and educated on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain - spanning from Central Europe to mainland Asia - the book offers insights into the diverse spaces of socialist childhoods interweaving with broader political, economic, and social life. These evocative memories explore the experiences of children in navigating state expectations to embody "model socialist citizens" and their mixed feelings of attachment, optimism, dullness, and alienation associated with participation in "building" socialist futures. Drawing on the research traditions of autobiography, autoethnography, and collective biography, the authors challenge what is often considered 'normal' and 'natural' in the historical accounts of socialist childhoods, and engage in (re)writing histories that open space for new knowledges and vast webs of interconnections to emerge. This book will be compelling reading for students and researchers working in education, sociology and history, particularly those within the interdisciplinary fields of childhood and area studies. 'The authors of this beautiful book are professional academics and intellectuals who grew up in different socialist countries. Exploring "socialist childhoods" in myriad ways, they draw on memories, and collective history, emotional insider knowledge and the measured perspective of an analyst. What emerges is life that was caught between real optimism and dullness, ethical commitments and ideological absurdities, selfless devotion to children and their treatment as a political resource. Such attention to detail and examination of the paradoxical nature of this time makes this collective effort not only timely but remarkably genuine. ' --Alexei Yurchak, University of California, USA