Articles
Disappearance Of Childhood
My observation is that the dividing line between childhood and adulthood is rapidly eroding.
As I write this, twelve and thirteen year old children are among the highest paid models, most viable performers in television channels and movies.
In cities and town throughout the country the difference between adult crimes and children’s crime is rapidly narrowing; and in some states the punishments are horrifyingly the same.
Old timers will also remember when there existed an important difference between the clothing of children and adults. Within the past decade the children’s clothing industry has undergone such rapid change that for all practical purposes “children’s clothing” has disappeared. Watch the TV commercials, children’s music competitions ( “chote ustaad show”) boogie woogie show, cartoon shows and you know what I mean.
Like distinctive forms of dress, children’s games, once so visible on the streets of our towns and cities, are also disappearing. Even the idea of a children’s game seems to be slipping from our grasp. Children’s game , as we used to think of it, requires no instructors or umpires or spectators: it uses whatever space and equipment are at hand: it is played for no other reason than pleasure. But now they are supervised by adults and modeled on big league sports. Umpires are needed, equipments required, adults cheer and jeer from sidelines. It is not the pleasure but the result and the reputation that the players are forced to seek.
In this scenario, I believe, there are only two institutions that have an interest in the matter. The first is the family; the other, the school.
But the structure and role of the family is severely weakened as parents have lost control over the environment of the young. Margaret Mead once referred to television , for example, as the Second parent, by which she meant that our children literally spend more time with television than with their fathers.
In such terms, fathers may be the fourth or fifth parent, trailing behind television, movies, computers….It is quite clear that the media have diminished the role of the family in shaping the values and sensibilities of the young. It cannot be denied that as women find their place in business, in the arts, in industry and in the profession, there is a serious decline in the strength and meaning of traditional patterns of child care. Parents of both sexes while making their way in the world of career, at times, seem to view children as something of a burden. So, an unconscious, unintentional outsourcing of “parenting chores” is happening right now.
As for school, educators are confused about what they are expected to do with children. It is evident that schools reflect social trends far more powerfully than they can direct them, and are close to helpless in opposing them.
Nonetheless, as a creation of literacy, the school should not easily join the assault and hasten the process of disappearance of childhood.
There are ways of doing this.
The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media.
The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and the values of the media’s content.
Third is to help the children have their childhood by resisting popular choices – be it in clothes, games, style statements.
It is not conceivable that our culture will forget that it needs children. But we are halfway toward forgetting that children need childhood. Let us work towards keeping a humane tradition alive.
Lakshmi Kumar
Director
The Orchid School
As I write this, twelve and thirteen year old children are among the highest paid models, most viable performers in television channels and movies.
In cities and town throughout the country the difference between adult crimes and children’s crime is rapidly narrowing; and in some states the punishments are horrifyingly the same.
Old timers will also remember when there existed an important difference between the clothing of children and adults. Within the past decade the children’s clothing industry has undergone such rapid change that for all practical purposes “children’s clothing” has disappeared. Watch the TV commercials, children’s music competitions ( “chote ustaad show”) boogie woogie show, cartoon shows and you know what I mean.
Like distinctive forms of dress, children’s games, once so visible on the streets of our towns and cities, are also disappearing. Even the idea of a children’s game seems to be slipping from our grasp. Children’s game , as we used to think of it, requires no instructors or umpires or spectators: it uses whatever space and equipment are at hand: it is played for no other reason than pleasure. But now they are supervised by adults and modeled on big league sports. Umpires are needed, equipments required, adults cheer and jeer from sidelines. It is not the pleasure but the result and the reputation that the players are forced to seek.
In this scenario, I believe, there are only two institutions that have an interest in the matter. The first is the family; the other, the school.
But the structure and role of the family is severely weakened as parents have lost control over the environment of the young. Margaret Mead once referred to television , for example, as the Second parent, by which she meant that our children literally spend more time with television than with their fathers.
In such terms, fathers may be the fourth or fifth parent, trailing behind television, movies, computers….It is quite clear that the media have diminished the role of the family in shaping the values and sensibilities of the young. It cannot be denied that as women find their place in business, in the arts, in industry and in the profession, there is a serious decline in the strength and meaning of traditional patterns of child care. Parents of both sexes while making their way in the world of career, at times, seem to view children as something of a burden. So, an unconscious, unintentional outsourcing of “parenting chores” is happening right now.
As for school, educators are confused about what they are expected to do with children. It is evident that schools reflect social trends far more powerfully than they can direct them, and are close to helpless in opposing them.
Nonetheless, as a creation of literacy, the school should not easily join the assault and hasten the process of disappearance of childhood.
There are ways of doing this.
The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media.
The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and the values of the media’s content.
Third is to help the children have their childhood by resisting popular choices – be it in clothes, games, style statements.
It is not conceivable that our culture will forget that it needs children. But we are halfway toward forgetting that children need childhood. Let us work towards keeping a humane tradition alive.
Lakshmi Kumar
Director
The Orchid School