Childhood Culture, Culture for Childhood: Social and Political Problems of Children and Adults
Larisa Logunova
Childhood culture is a complex system formed through the sociocultural practices of maturing children. A child is a ‘defi cient being’ who requires additional protection. Culture provides this protection. Children, experiencing their childhood, created their own culture. Children found themselves in a situation of misunderstanding on the part of adults. Before the development of a culture of attitudes toward children, childhood culture served as a social protection function. Children created their own childhood world, separate from the adult world. As a result, childhood culture emerged as a relatively independent subsystem of the ‘culture’ system.
The ‘childhood culture’ system has the following structure: a value core, boundaries, functions, a symbolic subsystem, and a subsystem of creative play culture. This system is self-governing through cultural mechanisms (normative, social continuity, traditions) and is self-reproducing. The specifi c nature of childhood culture requires a culture of understanding by adults and reinterpretation in accordance with the historical and sociocultural context. This methodology developed relatively recently, but has undergone a long process of developing humanistic protection for children from adult tyranny. The humanists of the Renaissance, the enlightened era, and modern educators developed pedagogical concepts for a caring and understanding approach to children. Only in the last century did the science of children – the culture of childhood – begin to emerge. The development of childhood study methodology encompasses the vectors of communicative interactions: ‘adult-child,’ ‘child-child,’ and ‘child-adult.’
The culture of childhood and culture for childhood are concepts that require distinction. Through creative, culture-building play, children have created their own culture, which is transmitted to future generations. Adults have created a childhood industry that serves the interests of politicians and business. The values of childhood culture defi ne the mission of childhood in the life of humanity. The introduction of values that are specially constructed and inconsistent with the values of childhood culture carries risks. This is an attempt to control children, to interfere with the sociocultural processes of childhood culture, a desire to exploit a child for the interests of others under the guise of noble goals. Children, sensitive to lies, are able to understand, quickly learn to play pseudo-games, and master techniques of social manipulation.
A childhood policy based on the values of childhood culture, linked to the values of national culture, is needed, protecting children from being exploited for the interests of any social group or party. This policy must be built on a rejection of attempts to interfere in the world of childhood and to control the system of childhood culture.