Childhood research historical aspect. Childhood as a historical category. Principles of the historical study of childhood

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………. ... 3
Chapter 1. Childhood as a subject of psychological research ………………….. 4
1. 1. Historical analysis of the concept? childhood? …………………………………….... 4
1. 2. Childhood as a subject of science …………………………………………………….. 7
1. 3. Specifics of the child’s mental development…………………………….. 9
1. 4. Strategies for studying the mental development of a child ………………….. 11
Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………. ...... 13 Chapter 2. Development of mental processes in the younger school age ……. 14 2. 1. Psychological characteristics junior school student……………………… 14 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… ... 20 Conclusion ………… ……………………………………………………………….. 21 Literature ……………………………………………………… ……………….. . 22

Introduction Childhood arose in the animal world at a certain stage of phylogenesis, and the higher the level of development of animals of a particular species, the longer childhood was. Intellectual forms of behavior are built on top of its instinctive forms. Links in the intellectual behavior of animals dropped out and were replaced by acquired forms of behavior. During the development of the animal world, constant new formations arose in behavior where instinctive forms of behavior were repressed and childhood was repressed.
In the process of the emergence of man, biological evolution ceases. During the transition from ape to man, instinctive forms of behavior disappear, and all human behavior becomes acquired.
The human baby is born a helpless being, and this helplessness is the greatest asset of the human race. The formation of a helpless creature into a subject of diverse human activity is precisely the subject of child psychology.
Child psychology begins with a simple description of the symptoms of the emergence and further development of various mental processes in children.
Child psychology is one of the fundamental psychological disciplines, since it studies the emergence, formation and main stages of development of activity, consciousness and personality during the childhood period, and they, as is known, are the main components of the human psyche.
The object of research is child psychology.
The subject of the study is the concept of “childhood” as a subject of psychological research.
The purpose of the study is to study the concept of “childhood” as a subject of psychological research.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
- make a historical analysis of the concept of “childhood”;
- consider the concept of “childhood” as a subject of science;
- analyze the specifics of the child’s mental development;
- study strategies for studying the mental development of a child.
The research topic has been well developed in domestic and foreign psychological literature. On this issue you can find works by such authors as: G.S. Abramova, L.S. Vygotsky, P.Ya. Galperin, D.I. Feldshtein, etc.

CHAPTER 1. CHILDHOOD AS A SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

1. 1. Historical analysis of the concept of “childhood”

Today, any educated person, when asked what childhood is, will answer that childhood is a period of intense development, change and learning. But only scientists understand that this is a period of paradoxes and contradictions, without which it is impossible to imagine the process of development. About paradoxes child development wrote V. Stern, J. Piaget, I. A. Sokolyansky and many others. D.B. Elkonin said that paradoxes in child psychology are developmental mysteries that scientists have yet to solve. D.B. Elkonin invariably began his lectures at Moscow University by characterizing the two main paradoxes of child development, which imply the need for a historical approach to understanding childhood. Let's look at them.
When a person is born, he is endowed with only the most basic mechanisms for maintaining life. By physical structure, organization of the nervous system, by types of activity and methods of its regulation, man is the most perfect creature in nature. However, based on the state at the time of birth, there is a noticeable drop in perfection in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living creature stands in the ranks of animals, the longer its childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth. This is one of the paradoxes of nature that predetermines the history of childhood.
In the course of history, the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of mankind has continuously increased. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But during this same time, the newborn child has practically not changed. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between Cro-Magnon and modern Europeans, it can be assumed that a newborn of a modern person is not significantly different from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago.
How does it happen that, given similar natural prerequisites, the level of mental development that a child achieves at each historical stage of the development of society is not the same? Childhood is a period that lasts from newbornhood to full social and, therefore, psychological maturity; This is the period of a child becoming a full-fledged member of human society. Moreover, the duration of childhood in primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or in our days. The stages of human childhood are a product of history and are as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study a child’s childhood and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.
Theoretically, the question of the historical origin of periods of childhood was developed in the works of P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonin. The course of a child’s mental development, according to L.S. Vygotsky, does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of maturation of the organism. The course of child development in a class society, he believed, “has a completely definite class meaning.” That is why he emphasized that there is no eternally childish, but only historically childish. So, in XIX literature centuries, there is numerous evidence of the absence of childhood among proletarian children.
It is generally accepted that the status of the childhood of the proletarian child was formed only in the 19th and 20th centuries, when child labor began to be prohibited with the help of legislation on the protection of children. Of course, this does not mean that the legal laws adopted are capable of ensuring childhood for the working people of the lower strata of society. Children in this environment and, above all, girls today perform work necessary for social reproduction (child care, housework, some agricultural work). Thus, although in our time there is a ban on child labor, one cannot talk about the status of childhood without taking into account the position of parents in the social structure of society. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and ratified by most countries of the world, is aimed at ensuring the full development of the personality of the child in every corner of the earth.
Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with a biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with a range of rights and responsibilities inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it. Many interesting facts were collected to support this idea by the French demographer and historian Philippe Aries. Thanks to his works, interest in the history of childhood in foreign psychology has increased significantly, and the research of F. Aries himself is recognized as classic.
F. Aries was interested in how the concept of childhood developed in the minds of artists, writers and scientists over the course of history and how it differed in different historical eras. His studies in the field of fine art led him to the conclusion that until the 13th century, art did not address children, artists did not even try to depict them. Children's images in the painting of the 13th century are found only in religious and allegorical subjects. Childhood was considered a period that quickly passed and was of little value. Indifference towards childhood, according to F. Aries, was a direct consequence of the demographic situation of that time, characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality. A sign of overcoming indifference to childhood, according to the French demographer, is the appearance in the 16th century of portraits of dead children. Their death, he writes, was now experienced as a truly irreparable loss, and not as a completely natural event. Judging by painting, overcoming indifference to children occurs no earlier than the 17th century, when the first portrait images of real children began to appear on artists’ canvases. As a rule, these were portraits of children of influential persons and royalty in childhood. Thus, according to F. Aries, the discovery of childhood began in the 13th century, its development can be traced in the history of painting of the 14th-16th centuries, but the evidence of this discovery is most fully manifested at the end of the 16th and throughout the entire 17th century.
The discovery of childhood made it possible to describe the complete cycle of human life. To characterize the age periods of life in scientific works of the 16th-17th centuries, terminology was used that is still used in scientific and colloquial speech: childhood, adolescence, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age, senility (very old age). But modern meaning these words do not correspond to their original meaning. In the old days, periods of life were correlated with the four seasons, the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac. The coincidence of numbers was perceived as one of the indicators of the fundamental unity of nature.
For parents, a child is simply a cute, funny baby with whom you can have fun, play with pleasure and at the same time teach and educate him. This is the primary, “family” concept of childhood. The desire to “dress up” children, “pamper” them and “undead” them could only appear in the family. However, this approach to children as “charming toys” could not remain unchanged for long.
The development of society has led to further changes in attitudes towards children. A new concept of childhood emerged. For teachers of the 17th century, love for children was no longer expressed in pampering and entertaining them, but in psychological interest in upbringing and teaching. In order to correct a child's behavior, it is first necessary to understand him, and scientific texts from the late 16th and 17th centuries are full of commentary on child psychology. Let us note that deep pedagogical ideas, advice and recommendations are also contained in the works of Russian authors of the 16th-17th centuries.
The concept of rational education based on strict discipline penetrates family life in the 18th century. Parents' attention begins to be drawn to all aspects of their child's life. But the function of organizing children’s preparation for adult life is assumed not by the family, but by a special public institution - a school, designed to educate qualified workers and exemplary citizens. The school, thanks to its regular, orderly structure, contributed to the further differentiation of that period of life, which is designated by the general word “childhood”. “Class” has become a universal measure that sets a new markup for childhood. A child enters a new age every year as soon as he changes classes. In the past, a child's life and childhood were not divided into such fine layers. Therefore, class became a determining factor in the process of differentiation of ages within childhood and adolescence itself.
Thus, according to the concept of F. Aries, the concept of childhood and adolescence is associated with school and cool organization schools as those special structures that were created by society in order to give children necessary preparation for social life and professional activities.
The next age level is associated with a new form of social life - the institution military service and compulsory military service. This is adolescence or adolescence. The concept of the adolescent led to a further restructuring of learning. Teachers began to attach great importance to dress code and discipline, instilling perseverance and masculinity, which had previously been neglected.
As already noted, the question of the historical origin of periods of childhood, the connection between the history of childhood and the history of society, the history of childhood as a whole, without solving which it is impossible to formulate a meaningful concept of childhood, was raised in child psychology in the late 20s of the 20th century and continues is still being developed. According to the views of Soviet psychologists, studying child development historically means studying the child’s transition from one age stage to another, studying the change in his personality within each age period that occurs in specific historical conditions. And although the history of childhood has not yet been sufficiently studied, the very formulation of this question in the psychology of the 20th century is important. And if, according to D.B. Elkonin, there are still no answers to many questions in the theory of a child’s mental development, then the path to a solution can already be imagined. And it is seen in the light of the historical study of childhood.

1. 2. Childhood as a subject of science

The science of child mental development - child psychology - originated as a branch of comparative psychology at the end of the 19th century. The starting point for systematic research into child psychology is the book of the German Darwinist scientist Wilhelm Preyer, “The Soul of a Child.” In it, V. Preyer describes the results of daily observations of the development of his own son, paying attention to the development of sensory organs, motor skills, will, reason and language. Despite the fact that observations of child development were carried out long before the appearance of V. Preyer’s book, its indisputable priority is determined by turning to the study of the earliest years of a child’s life and introducing into child psychology the method of objective observation, developed by analogy with the methods of the natural sciences. From a modern point of view, V. Preyer’s views are perceived as naive, limited by the level of development of science in the 19th century. He, for example, considered the mental development of a child as a special version of the biological one (although, strictly speaking, even now there are both hidden and obvious supporters of this idea). However, V. Preyer was the first to make the transition from introspective to objective research into the child’s psyche. Therefore, according to the unanimous recognition of psychologists, he is considered the founder of child psychology.
The objective conditions for the formation of child psychology, which developed by the end of the 19th century, are associated with the intensive development of industry, with a new level of social life, which created the need for the emergence of a modern school. Teachers were interested in the question: how to teach and raise children? Parents and teachers stopped considering physical punishment as an effective method of education - more democratic families emerged. The task of understanding the child became the order of the day. On the other hand, the desire to understand oneself as an adult has prompted researchers to treat childhood more carefully - only through studying the psychology of a child is the path to understanding what the psychology of an adult is.
What place does child psychology occupy in the light of other psychological knowledge? I.M. Sechenov wrote that psychology cannot be anything other than the science of the origin and development of mental processes. It is known that the ideas of genetic (from the word “genesis”) research penetrated into psychology a very long time ago. There is almost no outstanding psychologist dealing with problems of general psychology who would not at the same time be involved in child psychology in one way or another. Such world-famous scientists as J. Watson, W. Stern, K. Bühler, K. Koffka, K. Levin, A. Vallon, Z. Freud, E. Spranger, J. Piaget, V.M. worked in this field. Bekhterov, D.M. Uznadze, S.L. Rubinstein, L.S. Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, A.N. Leontiev, P.Ya. Galperin and others.
Genesis (gr. genesis) – origin, emergence, in a broad sense – the moment of origin and the subsequent process of development, leading to a certain state, type, object, phenomenon.
However, by studying the same object - mental development - genetic and child psychology represent two different psychological sciences. Genetic psychology is interested in problems of the emergence and development of mental processes. It answers the questions: “how does this or that mental movement occur, manifested by a feeling, sensation, idea, involuntary or voluntary movement, how do those processes occur, the result of which is a thought.” Genetic studies can also be carried out on adults. A well-known example of genetic research is the study of the formation of pitch hearing. In a specially organized experiment in which subjects had to adjust their voice to a given pitch, it was possible to observe the development of the ability to distinguish pitches.
To recreate, make, shape a mental phenomenon - this is the main strategy of genetic psychology. The path of experimental formation of mental processes was first outlined by L.S. Vygotsky. “The method we use,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, “can be called an experimental-genetic method in the sense that it artificially induces and creates a genetic process of mental development... An attempt at such an experiment is to melt every frozen and fossilized psychological form, turn it into a moving, flowing stream of individual moments replacing each other... The task of such an analysis comes down to experimentally representing any higher form behavior not as a thing, but as a process, to take it in motion, to move not from a thing to its parts, but from the process to its individual moments."
Among many researchers of the development process, the most prominent representatives of genetic psychology are L.S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget, P.Ya. Galperin. Their theories, developed on the basis of experiments with children, relate entirely to general genetic psychology. The famous book by J. Piaget “The Psychology of Intelligence” is not a book about a child, it is a book about intelligence. P.Ya. Galperin created the theory of the planned and step-by-step formation of mental actions as the basis for the formation of mental processes. Genetic psychology includes the experimental study of concepts carried out by L.S. Vygotsky.
Child psychology differs from any other psychology in that it deals with special units of analysis - this is age or the period of development. It should be emphasized that age is not reduced to the sum of individual mental processes; it is not a calendar date. Age, according to L.S. Vygotsky’s definition, is a relatively closed cycle of child development, which has its own structure and dynamics. The duration of an age is determined by its internal content: there are periods of development and, in some cases, “epochs” equal to one year, three, five years. Chronological and psychological ages do not coincide. Chronological, or passport age is only a reference coordinate, that external grid against the background of which the process of mental development of the child, the formation of his personality, takes place.
Unlike genetic psychology, child psychology is the study of periods of child development, their changes and transitions from one age to another. Therefore, following L.S. Vygotsky, it is more correct to say about this area of psychology: child, developmental psychology. Typically child psychologists were L.S. Vygotsky, A. Vallon, A. Freud, D.B. Elkonin. The distinction between genetic and child psychology indicates that the very subject of child psychology has changed historically. Currently, the subject of child psychology is the disclosure of general patterns of mental development in ontogenesis, the establishment of age periods of this development and the reasons for the transition from one period to another. Progress in solving theoretical problems of child psychology expands the possibilities of its practical implementation.

1. 3. Specifics of the child’s mental development

What is development? How is it characterized? What is the fundamental difference between development and any other changes in an object? As you know, an object can change, but not develop. Growth, for example, is a quantitative change in a given object, including a mental process. There are processes that fluctuate within the limits of “less is more.” These are processes of growth in the proper and true sense of the word. Growth occurs over time and is measured in time coordinates. Main characteristics growth is a process of quantitative changes without changes in the internal structure and composition of its individual elements, without significant changes in the structure of individual processes. For example, when measuring the physical growth of a child, we see a quantitative increase. L.S. Vygotsky emphasized that there are phenomena of growth in mental processes. For example, an increase in vocabulary without changing speech functions. But behind these processes of quantitative growth, other phenomena and processes may occur. Then growth processes become only symptoms, behind which significant changes in the system and structure of processes are hidden. During such periods, jumps in the growth line are observed, which indicate significant changes in the body itself. For example, the endocrine glands mature. In such cases, when significant changes occur in the structure and properties of a phenomenon, we are dealing with development.
Development, first of all, is characterized by qualitative changes, the emergence of new formations, new mechanisms, new processes, new structures. X. Werner, L.S. Vygotsky and other psychologists described the main signs of development. The most important among them are: differentiation, the dismemberment of a previously unified element; the emergence of new sides, new elements in development itself; restructuring of connections between the sides of an object. As psychological examples, we can mention the differentiation of natural conditioned reflex on the position under the chest and the revitalization complex; the appearance of the sign function in infancy; changes in the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness throughout childhood. Each of these processes meets the listed development criteria.
As L.S. Vygotsky showed, there are many different types of development. Therefore, it is important to correctly find the place that the child’s mental development occupies among them, that is, to determine the specifics of mental development among other developmental processes. L.S. Vygotsky distinguished between preformed and non-preformed types of development. A preformed type is a type when, at the very beginning, both the stages that the phenomenon (organism) will go through and the final result that the phenomenon will achieve are specified, fixed, and recorded. Everything is given here from the very beginning. In psychology, there was an attempt to represent mental development according to the principle of embryonic development. This is the concept of Art. Holla. It is based on Haeckel's biogenetic law: ontogeny is a brief repetition of phylogeny. Mental development was considered by Art. Hall as a brief repetition of the stages of mental development of animals and the ancestors of modern humans. The untransformed type of development is the most common on our planet. It also includes the development of the galaxy, the development of the Earth, the process of biological evolution, and the development of society. The process of a child’s mental development also belongs to this type of process. The unreformed path of development is not predetermined. Children of different eras develop differently and achieve different levels development. From the very beginning, from the moment the child is born, neither the stages through which he must go, nor the result that he must achieve are given. Child development is an untransformed type of development, but it is a completely special process - a process that is determined not from below, but from above, by the form of practical and theoretical activity that exists at a given level of development of society. This is a feature of child development. Its final forms are not given, not specified. Not a single development process, except ontogenetic, is carried out according to a ready-made model. Human development follows the pattern that exists in society. According to L.S. Vygotsky, the process of mental development is a process of interaction between real and ideal forms. The task of a child psychologist is to trace the logic of mastering ideal forms. A child does not immediately master the spiritual and material wealth of humanity. But without the process of mastering ideal forms, development is generally impossible. Therefore, within the untransformed type of development, the mental development of a child is a special process. The process of ontogenetic development is a process unlike anything else, an extremely unique process that takes place in the form of assimilation.

1. 4. Strategies for studying a child’s mental development

The level of theory development determines the research strategy in science. This fully applies to child psychology, where the level of theory forms the goals and objectives of this science. At first, the task of child psychology was to accumulate facts and arrange them in time sequence. The observation strategy corresponded to this task. Of course, even then researchers were trying to understand the driving forces of development, and every psychologist dreamed of this. But there were no objective possibilities for solving this problem... The strategy of observing the real course of child development in the conditions in which it spontaneously develops led to the accumulation of various facts that needed to be brought into the system, to identify the stages and stages of development in order to then identify the main trends and general patterns of the development process itself, and, ultimately, understand its cause. To solve these problems, psychologists used the strategy of a natural scientific ascertaining experiment, which makes it possible to establish the presence or absence of the phenomenon under study under certain controlled conditions, measure its quantitative characteristics and give a qualitative description. Both strategies - observation and ascertaining experiment - are widespread in child psychology. But their limitations become more and more obvious as it becomes clear that they do not lead to an understanding of the causes of human mental development. This happens because neither observation nor ascertaining experiment can actively influence the development process, and its study proceeds only passively.
Currently, a new research strategy is being intensively developed - a strategy for the formation of mental processes, active intervention, and construction of a process with given properties. It is precisely because the strategy for the formation of mental processes leads to the intended result that one can judge its cause. Thus, the criterion for identifying the cause of development can be the success of the formative experiment.
Each of these strategies has its own history of development. As we have already said, child psychology began with simple observation. A huge amount of factual material about the development of a child at an early age was collected by parents - famous psychologists as a result of observations of the development of their own children. (V. Preyer, V. Stern, J. Piaget, N. A. Rybnikov, N. A. Menchinskaya, A. N. Gvozdev, V. S. Mukhina, M. Kechki, etc.).
Currently, most psychologists are skeptical about the observation method as the main method of studying children. But, as D.B. Elkonin often said, “a sharp psychological eye is more important than a stupid experiment.” The experimental method is remarkable because it “thinks” for the experimenter. Facts obtained by observation are very valuable. V. Stern, as a result of observing the development of his daughters, prepared two volumes of research on speech development. At the beginning of the century, the first attempts were made to experimentally study the mental development of children. The French Ministry of Education ordered the famous psychologist A. Binet to develop a methodology for selecting children for special schools. And already in 1908, testing of the child began, and measuring scales of mental development appeared. A. Binet created a method of standardized tasks for each age. Somewhat later, the American psychologist L. Termen proposed a formula for measuring intelligence quotient.
It seemed that child psychology had entered a new path of development - mental abilities could be reproduced and measured with the help of special tasks. But these hopes were not justified. It soon became clear that in an examination situation it is unknown which of the mental abilities is being examined using tests. In the 30s, Soviet psychologist V.I. Asnin emphasized that the condition for the reliability of a psychological experiment is not the average level of problem solving, but how the child accepts the problem, what problem he solves. In addition, IQ debt
etc.................

When a person is born, he is endowed with only the most basic mechanisms for maintaining life. In terms of physical structure, organization of the nervous system, types of activity and methods of its regulation, man is the most perfect creature in nature. However, based on the state at the time of birth, there is a noticeable drop in perfection in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living creature stands in the ranks of animals, the longer its childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth. This is one of the paradoxes of nature that predetermines the history of childhood.

In the course of history, the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of mankind has continuously increased. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But during this same time, the newborn child has practically not changed. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between Cro-Magnon and modern Europeans, it can be assumed that a newborn of a modern person is not significantly different from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

How does it happen that, given similar natural prerequisites, the level of mental development that a child achieves at each historical stage of the development of society is not the same?

Childhood is a period that lasts from newbornhood to full social and, therefore, psychological maturity; this is the period of the child becoming a full member of human experience. Moreover, the duration of childhood in primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or in our days. The stages of human childhood are a product of history and are as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study a child’s childhood and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

The problem of childhood history is one of the most difficult in modern child psychology, because in this area it is impossible to carry out either observation or experiment. Ethnographers are well aware that cultural monuments related to children are poor. Even in those not very frequent cases when toys are found in archaeological excavations, these are usually objects of worship that in ancient times were placed in graves so that they would serve the owner in the afterlife. Miniature images of people and animals were also used for witchcraft purposes.

Theoretically, the question of the historical origin of periods of childhood was developed in the works of P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, D.B. Elkonina. The course of the child’s mental development, according to L.S. Vygotsky, does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of maturation of the organism. That is why he emphasized that there is no eternal child, but only a historical child exists.

Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with a biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with a range of rights and responsibilities inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it. A lot of interesting facts was collected to support this idea by the French demographer and historian Philippe Aries. Thanks to his works, interest in the history of childhood in foreign psychology has increased significantly, and the research of F. Aries himself is recognized as classic.

Childhood was considered a period that quickly passed and was of little value. Indifference towards childhood, according to F. Aries, was a direct consequence of the demographic situation of that time, characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality. A sign of overcoming indifference to childhood, according to the French demographer, is the appearance in the 16th century of portraits of dead children. Their death, he writes, was now experienced as a truly irreparable loss, and not as a completely ordinary event. The differentiation of the ages of human life, including childhood, according to F. Aries, is formed under the influence of social institutions, i.e. new forms public life generated by the development of society. Thus, early childhood first appears within the family, where it is associated with specific communication - “tenderness” and “pampering” of a small child. For parents, a child is simply a cute, funny baby with whom you can have fun, play with pleasure and at the same time teach and educate him. This is the primary, “family” concept of childhood. The desire to “dress up” children, “pamper” them and “undead” them could only appear in the family. However, this approach to children as “charming toys” could not remain unchanged for long.

The development of society has led to a further change in attitudes towards children, and a new concept of childhood has emerged. For teachers of the 17th century, love for children was no longer expressed in pampering and entertaining them, but in psychological interest in upbringing and teaching. In order to correct a child's behavior, it is first necessary to understand him, and scientific texts from the late 16th and 17th centuries are full of commentary on child psychology. Let us note that deep pedagogical ideas, advice and recommendations are also contained in the works of Russian authors of the 16th – 17th centuries.

The concept of rational education based on strict discipline penetrates family life in the 18th century. Parents' attention begins to be drawn to all aspects of their child's life. But the function of organized preparation for adult life is assumed not by the family, but by a special public institution - a school, designed to educate qualified workers and exemplary citizens. It was the school, according to F. Aries, that took childhood beyond the first 2-4 years of maternal and parental upbringing in the family. The school, thanks to its regular, ordered structure, contributed to the further differentiation of that period of life, which is designated by the general word “childhood”. “Class” has become a universal measure that sets a new markup for childhood. the child enters a new age every year as soon as the class changes. in the past, a child's life was not divided into such subtle layers. Class therefore became a determining factor in the process of differentiation of ages within childhood or adolescence itself.

The next age level is also associated by F. Aries with a new form of social life - the institution of military service and compulsory military service. This is adolescence or adolescence. The concept of the teenager led to a further restructuring of learning. Teachers began to attach great importance to dress code and discipline, instilling perseverance and masculinity, which had previously been neglected.

Childhood has its own laws and, naturally, does not depend on the fact that artists begin to pay attention to children and depict them on their canvases. The study of F. Aries begins with the Middle Ages, for only at that time did pictorial subjects depicting children appear. But caring for children, the idea of education, of course, appeared long before the Middle Ages. Already in Aristotle there are thoughts dedicated to children.

Based on the study of ethnographic materials by D.B. Elkonin showed that at the earliest stages of the development of human society, when the main way of obtaining food was gathering with the use of primitive tools for knocking down fruits and digging up edible roots, the child very early became familiar with the work of adults, practically mastering the methods of obtaining food and using primitive tools. Under such conditions, there was neither need nor time for the stage of preparing children for future work. As emphasized by D.B. Elkonin, childhood arises when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since the child cannot yet master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is delayed. According to D.B. Elkonin, this extension in time occurs not by building a new period of development over the existing ones (as F. Aries believed), but by a kind of wedging in a new period of development, leading to an “upward shift in time” of the period of mastering the tools of production. D.B. Elkonin brilliantly revealed these features of childhood when analyzing the emergence of role-playing games and a detailed examination of the psychological characteristics of primary school age.

Chapter 1. Cultural and historical phenomenon of childhood.

§ 1. Childhood as a special phenomenon of the social world.

§ 2. The evolution of childhood culture in the historical process.

Chapter II The nature and diversity of manifestations of children's subculture.

§ 1. The child’s picture of the world as the building of relationships in the children’s subculture.

§ 2. Screen and transformations of the modern child’s picture of the world.

Introduction of the dissertation (part of the abstract) on the topic “The phenomenon of childhood culture in the 20th century”

Humanity has entered the third millennium. The current stage of development is characterized by a global transformation of society and people. States and peoples with significantly different levels of development are drawn into a single civilizational space. IN modern society This consciousness affirms the idea that humanity is at a turning point and faces the need to solve qualitatively new problems of an economic, political, socio-cultural nature. Under these conditions, attention to anthropological problem. Each philosophical or cultural movement or doctrine is determined by a certain idea of a person, an image of a person. The above determines the fact that the phenomenon of childhood in beginning of XXI century is becoming one of the priority objects of general humanities research.

Childhood as a certain period of human development, the age-related socio-psychological characteristics of the child and his position in society are determined by general historical factors: social order and the level of cultural development. These problems require cultural understanding. Therefore, the dissertation research is aimed at a detailed analysis of the culture of childhood: at defining the conceptual apparatus that covers this phenomenon, at the historical and cultural formation of childhood, the status of childhood in modern society, as well as at the results of understanding the identified problems in philosophy and cultural studies.

The relevance of studying the phenomenon of childhood in culture is determined by the need to develop a cultural concept of childhood and identify new approaches to understanding this phenomenon.

According to many modern researchers, modern stage development, as a result of the civilizational crisis, including: the deterioration of the physical and mental health of people (drug addiction, alcoholism, AIDS) on the one hand, and reorganization in areas of social organization, updating the relationships of ethnic groups, strata and various groups of the population - on the other hand, there is a search for new type of relationships between people, new social structures, new status of a person in the world around him. Entry into the civilizational space, subject to the preservation of one's own individuality, is possible only through recognition of the importance of other people. In this regard, one of the general and specific themes that comes to the fore is the problem of the future of humanity, clearly expressed in the phenomenon of childhood1.

In modern humanitarian knowledge, childhood is considered as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, which is mediated by many socio-cultural factors. The opinion that childhood is a stage of human formation preceding adulthood, characterized by the development of mental functions, currently seems ambiguous and insufficient. With variety research approaches and in our time, childhood still remains little studied, and in a certain sense, even mysterious phenomenon. Children are a very special “population”. This is very well understood by those adults who do research. social problems children and directly experience the fears, anxieties and hopes of the modern child. However, it should be noted that for the most part

1 See about: Feldshteip D.I. The phenomenon of childhood and its hundredth place in the development of modern society // World of psychology. 2002, No. 1 (29). pp. 9 - 20; Chistyakov V.V. Modern childhood as an anthropologist-methodologist! ical problem // Ibid. pp. 20 - 25. adults are not entirely clearly aware of the complexity and inconsistency of the phenomenon of childhood as such.

As a result of numerous studies in the field of ethnology and anthropology, childhood received the status of a socio-historical and cultural phenomenon. By acquiring human essence, becoming familiar with culture, the child absorbs, comprehends and appropriates culture, and subsequently he himself becomes the subject of cultural creativity. In the process of socialization, a growing person is introduced to a system of values: all the needs, attitudes, manifestations of a child are a gift of culture, and even those that are determined by biological nature, in the process of socialization turn out to be “processed” by culture1.

Thus, it is obvious that the culture of childhood is a special cultural phenomenon, the theoretical understanding of which is relevant and necessary in modern world For modern science.

Goals and objectives of the study. Purpose dissertation work is to comprehend and analyze the content of the concept “culture of childhood”.

In accordance with this goal, the study identifies the following tasks:

Understanding the concept of “childhood” in interdisciplinary humanities studies;

Identification of the stages of formation and development of the phenomenon of childhood in the cultural and historical process;

Consideration of the childhood subculture as a special space for the child’s self-realization;

Determining the influence of screen culture on a child’s worldview in the 20th century;

1 See about "scrap: Kurulenko EL. Historical evolution childhood. Sociocultural aspect // Sociology. 1998, no.!. pp. 21 - 35.

Analysis of children's drawings as a way of self-realization of a child's creative potential.

The object of the study is the culture of the 20th century, within which the phenomenon of childhood culture is emerging.

As an item dissertation research the formation and essence of the culture of childhood appears.

Dissertation research hypothesis. In the modern world, children grow up quickly, the phenomenon of childhood rapidly acquires all the qualities of autonomy, independence, independence, which is determined mainly by the high dynamism of social development, information changes and achievements.

Research and analysis of the phenomenon of childhood in a cultural and historical context allows us to put forward the assumption that the essence of childhood lies in its creative activity. The study of a sufficient number of sources devoted to the topic of childhood, their analysis, classification and systematization showed that creative activity, and especially its artistic and creative side, is realized to a greater extent during childhood.

The degree of scientific development of the dissertation research topic. The scientific literature presents studies in the field of history, pedagogy, and psychology of childhood, which mainly focus on memories of him. Many scientists of past years wrote about family, upbringing, childhood and manifestations of “childhood” as a characteristic of the spiritual world of an adult. For a long time, the mature generation assessed childhood on the basis of “adult” ideas about it.

Reflections on the meaning of childhood, its essence, and status in society are contained in the works of ancient authors - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In the Middle Ages, this topic was raised by Augustine Aurelius, E. Rotterdam, in the Renaissance - L.B. Alberti, M. de Moiteni and others. German philosophers G.W.F. Hegel, I. Kant, K. Marx, L. Feuerbach, J.-G. Fichte, F. Schelling also reflected on the topics of creative activity as the source and basis of human maturation, family and education. The concept of “childhood” as a general phase of development was first formulated in family pedagogy of the Enlightenment, namely in the works of K.A. Helvetius, D. Diderot, J.A. Komensky, J. Korczak, J. Locke, I.G. Pestalozzi , J.-J. Rousseau, in Russian pedagogy - K.D. Ushinsky, V.A. Sukhomlinsky and others.

The cultural meanings of human development and childhood in general are represented by the provisions of a concrete historical and philosophical approach, in particular by such authors as: F. Aries, P. Buchner, W. Wundt, K. Groos, L. Demoz, M. Dubois-Reymond, M .Klein, L.Lévy-Brühl, K.Lévy-Strauss, M.Mead, J.Piaget, Z.Freud, E.Fromm, J.Huizinga, W.Stern, I.Eibl-Eibesfeld, E.Erikson, K .-G. Jung, K. Jaspers et al.

Domestic experts also worked on this problem. in the field of history, psychology, ethnography of childhood, turning to the origins of European culture, historiography and the methodology of humanities. Such researchers include: R.G. Apresyan, O.Yu.Artemova, V.G.Bszrogov, A.A.Belik, L.S.Vygotsky, A.Ya.Gurevich, S.N.Ikonnikova, G.A.Zvereva, V.V.Zenkovsky, I.S. Kon, V.T. Kudryavtsev, E.A. Kurulenko, A.R. Luria, M.V. Osorina, D.I. Feldshtein, F.I. Shmit, G.G. Shpet and others.

Theoretical basis dissertation research

The growing interest in the phenomenon of childhood indicates that this phenomenon in the modern world is acquiring a significant status, in contrast to the long-term formation of relations with the younger generation throughout historical development. Generalizing material that fully reveals the culture of childhood is not yet available either in Russia or abroad. There is no consensus about the time when the special concept “culture of childhood” appeared in society. Research into the world of childhood in various fields of knowledge is an interdisciplinary subject. Among the sources of the dissertation, the author used data and information from monographs, journal articles, and materials of scientific conferences. In particular, the phenomenon of childhood and its place in the development of modern society is analyzed in his works by D.I. Feldshtein; modern childhood is considered as an anthropological and methodological problem by V.V. Chistyakov, and E.A. Kurulenko analyzes the historical evolution of childhood in the sociocultural aspect; The cultural and historical status of childhood is considered by V.T. Kudryavtsev. and etc.

Methodological basis dissertation research consists of:

An axiological method that substantiates the role and place of childhood culture in the modern world;

A method of reconstruction that traces the development of the history of childhood through various eras;

An interpretation method that helps reveal the essence of childhood culture;

A method of comparative analysis that allows us to show the diversity of manifestations of such a phenomenon as the culture of childhood.

The work also uses generalization methods and empirical descriptive analyses, which, in turn, make it possible to identify the characteristic features of the subject under study, namely, the culture of childhood in the 20th century."

Scientific novelty of the dissertation research

The work for the first time identifies new research priorities: analysis of historical, sociocultural and psychological-pedagogical features modern image childhood, which is, first of all, a cultural analysis, because the concept of culture depends on the totality of these definitions.

Addressing the issue of the phenomenon of childhood culture leads to an expansion of the range of available results scientific research, namely, the developed methodology for multidisciplinary analysis of childhood, based on which, in the future it will be possible to conduct specific studies,

In this dissertation research, in contrast to previous works, the main attention is paid to the fact that over time, an independent image of childhood was formed in its development, given in the metaphysical aspect of the established relationship of the world of adults to the world of children, to nature, between children, etc. .

The sociocultural aspect remains poorly studied and extremely important, namely, the attitude of the world of childhood to culture as a whole and to oneself. In this aspect, a different image of childhood, primarily preschool, can be identified, which has the features of a developed harmonious integrity.

Signs of the scientific novelty of the dissertation research include the author's view of the picture of the world of childhood, where the central image is the visual image of the world, which is a system of graphic and color meanings recorded in children's drawings, the semantics of which are culturally conditioned and, to a certain extent, archetypal.

Within the framework of the information-sign essence of the children's picture of the world, the emergence of a section - media education has been determined, revealing the holistic concepts of foreign and domestic researchers who have set themselves the following goals: teaching visual forms of communication and developing the “immune” qualities of the individual against manipulation by the media.

In his dissertation research, the author proves that modern civilization has “handed” a screen to a child as a means of entertainment and learning. The child turned out to be more capable than the teachers who have to eliminate “media illiteracy.” The screen, as an invention of civilization, gives rise to an aggressive information environment, where the boundaries of the real and virtual world are blurred, and “clip consciousness” comes to the fore, alienating a person from contemplation and reflection, which is especially detrimental to Russian culture, since these components are characteristic of the Russian mentality .

The practical significance of the dissertation research is determined by the author’s desire to present the generalized experience of “past and present” as the basis for further research into the phenomenon of childhood culture.

The materials and conclusions of the work can be used in the development and teaching of special courses on the theory and history of culture, psychology, sociology of childhood culture, cultural anthropology, ethnography, in the preparation of relevant curricula. Published articles and theses on the topic of dissertation research will help in the practical activities of university teachers and students.

Provisions for defense

1. Childhood is presented as a special phenomenon of the social world, as a necessary state of dynamic social order, a state of maturation of a growing organism and preparation for the reproduction of the future generation. Socialization as a child grows up has a defining specificity in its formation and the content of the development of individuality, which is confirmed by monodisciplinary research in the fields of philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

2. In the history of culture, certain stages in the formation and formation of the concept of “childhood” have been identified, and numerous estate, class, regional, family and other variations are clearly visible in them. Namely: in an archaic society a relict level of pedagogical culture was realized; medieval consciousness did not consider childhood as a special human state; Renaissance thinkers emphasized the importance of family relationships, reflecting on the duty of adults towards children; the concept of childhood as a general phase of human development was first formulated by the pedagogy of the Enlightenment. In the 19th century Childhood has become the subject of close attention of researchers, thanks to the emergence of scientific pediatrics. XX century characterized by interest in the phenomenon of childhood by various sciences. Within the framework of an interdisciplinary approach, the phenomenon of “childhood culture” was formed, which became the subject of our research.

3. Children's subculture is characterized by the child's special ideas about the world, values that develop in the culture and are created by the joint efforts of children and adults. When comprehending and analyzing the phenomenon of childhood in a cultural and historical context, an assumption has been made that the peculiarity of childhood is determined by the existence of creative activation in it. The child’s visual picture of the world is expressed primarily in graphic and color images; A child’s “philosophizing” is often driven by his doubts and anxieties. As part of the general problem of cultural understanding of the culture of childhood, an analysis of the subculture of childhood was carried out, the significance of which for the development of the child lies in the fact that it represents a special psychological space. Thanks to him, the child acquires “social competence” among his peers; it protects him from the adverse effects of adult culture; it also provides him with an “experimental platform” for “testing” himself and clarifying the boundaries of his capabilities.

4. There are many specific ways to generalize and systematize a child’s ideas about the world around him. A child’s creativity, in particular, artistic and visual creativity, is one of the forms of reproducing what his worldview represents, which is realized in fantasies, games, dancing, songs, modeling and other types of individual creative activity.

5. In modern society, audio and video media have a significant influence on the subculture of childhood. The unlimited dominance of the screen (both television and computer) has invaded the sphere of human existence. For a modern child, the screen is not so much an informant and source of constructing a picture of the world, but rather its constructor. Screen culture, through optical effects, “clip art,” etc., transforms the traditional children’s picture of the world into a different (visual) reality, immersing the child in special, altered states of consciousness.

Approbation of the dissertation research results

Certain provisions were discussed at seminars of the Department of Cultural Studies of the Institute of Retraining and Advanced Studies of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, at methodological seminars of the Department of Theory and History of Culture of the Nizhnevartovsk State Pedagogical Institute. The author made presentations on the topic of research at conferences at various levels: at the Second Russian Philosophical Congress: Ekaterinburg, 1999; at the district scientific and practical conference “Humanization of culture and education in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug on the threshold of the third millennium”: Nizhnevartovsk, 2000; at the All-Russian Scientific Conference “Culture. Society. Creative": Omsk, 2002; in the regional scientific and practical conference “Artistic culture as a phenomenon”: Tyumen, 2002.

The structure of the dissertation work is determined by the logic of the topic research and the sequence of solving the assigned problems. The dissertation consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a bibliography. The total volume of the dissertation research is 154 pages.

Conclusion of the dissertation on the topic “Theory and history of culture”, Savitskaya, Valeria Viktorovna

CONCLUSION

Summarizing the results of the study, it should be noted that the main objective dissertation work - comprehension and analysis of the modern content of the concept “culture of childhood” has been achieved.

The dissertation confirms the increasing relevance of the phenomenon of childhood culture with the accumulation of rapidly acquired qualities of autonomy, independence, independence, which is determined mainly by the latest information achievements.

In the course of analyzing the problem in the phenomenological aspect, an empirical approach and sources were used, which reflected identification methods that capture individual and socialized vectors of childhood culture, features of communication and the construction of behavior patterns and self-determination of the phenomenon of childhood culture in the 20th century.

The universal definition of childhood is the stage of human formation at which primary socialization is realized. Understanding the concept of “childhood” in humanities research is the subject of an interdisciplinary field of knowledge. The core factors in the study of the phenomenon of childhood are contained in such fields of knowledge as: ethnography (I.S. Kon), anthropology (R. Benedict, M. Mead, I. Eibl-Eibesfeld, etc.), history (F. Aries, L. Demoz , I.S. Kon), psychology (L.S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget, D.B. Elkonin), psychological anthropology (R. Benedict, M. Mead, etc.).

Childhood is a physiological, psychological, pedagogical, sociocultural phenomenon of historical origin and nature, where the child “animates” the world that captivates him and reorganizes it in his imagination (V. Wundt, L. S. Vygotsky, J. Ortega y Gasset, J. Heisiiga). Amateur artistic and play activities of children are carried out under the influence of the fruits of artistic creativity of adults, created specifically for children or fairy tales, songs, and dances inherited from childhood. Thus, the child develops and develops simultaneously and in interaction the two main abilities of assimilation and creation necessary for a person.

In the modern world, childhood is assessed in various degrees, cultures, forms, types, and types of its comprehension.

Childhood is a historical conquest of humanity, which has its own developmental structure. In the cultural-historical process, researchers identify certain stages in the formation of childhood as a phenomenon, with characteristic levels of personality development for each of them and determining its originality. Determining the chronicle of childhood development in a cultural and historical context confirms the hypothesis according to which the peculiarity of childhood is determined by the existence of creative activation in it.

Addressing the problem of the formation of a childhood subculture in the modern world is due to the search for resources for optimal interaction between the child and society. When considering and analyzing the subculture of childhood, the existence of a special system of signs, meanings, ideas, and relationships of the child to environment, to other people and to yourself. Thus, this is a holistic picture of the world that develops thanks to the mechanism of internalization in the process of the child’s interaction with objects and his joint activities with adults and peers.

The visual picture of the world is recorded in a child’s drawing, which represents the child’s “perceptual statement” about the world and largely reflects the image of the world itself (W. Wundt).

In the development of children's drawings, every drawing is considered as a sign, constructed and compared with reality according to the rules that have developed during the development of human culture. An analysis of children's drawings as a way of self-realization of a child's creative potential showed that the semantics of images carries within itself universal, national and regional features of the picture of the world.

The influence of the screen on the transformation of a child’s picture of the world is especially evident in children’s drawings, in which often, regardless of the given topic, television screen images imprinted in the child’s mind appear. The screen actively carries out “telescreen socialization”, modifies the children’s picture of the world, gradually displacing traditional forms and institutions of socialization of the modern child, awakening quasi-relationships instead of humane relationships to the world.

This dissertation research and the problems stated in it do not pretend to be a complete and exhaustive disclosure of the topic, and require, of course, in the opinion of the author, further development in line with cultural analysis.

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Introduction

2..Western concept of childhood. Age symbolism

3. Cultural-anthropological approach to studies of the phenomenon of childhood

4. Historical types of childhood

Conclusion

Introduction

Humanity has entered the third millennium. At the present stage of development, states and peoples with significantly different levels of development are involved in a single civilizational space. Humanity is faced with the need to solve qualitatively new problems of an economic, political, socio-cultural nature. Under these conditions, attention to the anthropological problem is intensifying. Each philosophical or cultural movement or doctrine is determined by a certain idea of a person, an image of a person. The phenomenon of childhood at the beginning of the 21st century is becoming one of the priority objects of general humanities research.

Childhood as a certain period of human development, the age-related socio-psychological characteristics of the child and his position in society are determined by general historical factors: the social system and the level of cultural development. The relevance of studying the phenomenon of childhood in culture is determined by the need to develop a cultural concept of childhood and identify new approaches to understanding this phenomenon.

According to many modern researchers, at the present stage of development, due to the civilizational crisis, which includes: the deterioration of the physical and mental health of people (drug addiction, alcoholism, AIDS) on the one hand, and reorganization in areas of social organization, the actualization of the relationships between ethnic groups, layers and various population groups - on the other hand, there is a search for a new type of relationships between people, new social structures, a new status of a person in the world around him. Entry into the civilizational space, subject to the preservation of one's own individuality, is possible only through recognition of the importance of other people. In this regard, one of the general and specific themes that comes to the fore is the problem of the future of humanity, clearly expressed in the phenomenon of childhood.

In modern humanitarian knowledge, childhood is considered as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, which is mediated by many socio-cultural factors. The opinion that childhood is a stage of human formation preceding adulthood, characterized by the development of mental functions, currently seems ambiguous and insufficient. Despite the variety of research approaches, in our time, childhood still remains poorly studied, and in a certain sense, even a mysterious phenomenon. Children are a very special “population”. This is very well understood by those adults who study the social problems of children and directly experience the fears, anxieties and hopes of the modern child.

Thus, the goal of studying childhood, as a cultural-historical phenomenon, is its theoretical understanding and analysis for modern science. In accordance with this goal, the study identifies the following tasks:

Understanding the concept of “childhood” in interdisciplinary humanities research;

Identification of the stages of formation and development of the phenomenon of childhood in the cultural-historical process;

Consideration of the childhood subculture as a special space for the child’s self-realization;

The object of the study is the culture of the 15th-20th centuries, within which the phenomenon of childhood culture is emerging.

In the modern world, children grow up quickly, the phenomenon of childhood rapidly acquires all the qualities of autonomy, independence, independence, which is determined mainly by the high dynamism of social development, information changes and achievements.

The scientific literature presents studies in the field of history, pedagogy, and psychology of childhood, which mainly focus on memories of him. Many scientists of past years wrote about family, upbringing, childhood and manifestations of “childhood” as a characteristic of the spiritual world of an adult.

Reflections on the meaning of childhood, its essence, and status in society are contained in the works of ancient authors - Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. In the Middle Ages, this topic was raised by Augustine Aurelius, E. Rotterdam, in the Renaissance - L.B. Alberti, M. de Moiteni and others. German philosophers G.W.F. Hegel, I. Kant, K. Marx, L. Feuerbach, J.-G. Fichte, F. Schelling also reflected on the topics of creative activity as the source and basis of human maturation, family and education. The concept of “childhood” as a general phase of development was first formulated in family pedagogy of the Enlightenment, namely in the works of K.A. Helvetius, D. Diderot, J.A. Komensky, J. Locke, I.G. Pestalozzi, J.-J. .Rousseau, in Russian pedagogy - K.D. Ushinsky, V.A. Sukhomlinsky and others.

The cultural meanings of human development and childhood in general are represented by the provisions of a concrete historical and philosophical approach, in particular by such authors as: F. Aries, P. Buchner, W. Wundt, K. Groos, L. Demoz, M. Dubois-Reymond, M .Klein, L.Lévy-Brühl, K.Lévy-Strauss, M.Mead, J.Piaget, S.Freud, E.Fromm, J.Huizinga, W.Stern, E.Erikson, K.-G.Jung, K. Jaspers et al.

Domestic specialists: R.G. Apresyan, O.Yu.Artemova, V.G.Bezrogov, A.A.Belik, L.S.Vygotsky, A.Ya.Gurevich, S.N.Ikonnikova, G.A.Zvereva, V.V.Zenkovsky, I.S. Kon, V.T. Kudryavtsev, E.A. Kurulenko, A.R. Luria, M.V. Osorina, D.I. Feldnpein, F.I. Shmit, G.G. Shpet and others.

An axiological method that substantiates the role and place of childhood culture in the modern world;

A method of reconstruction that traces the development of the history of childhood throughout...different eras;

1. The emergence of the phenomenon of childhood

Childhood is a period that lasts from newborn to full social and psychological maturity; This is the period of a child becoming a full-fledged member of human society. Moreover, the duration of childhood in primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or in our days. The stages of human childhood are a product of history, and they are as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study a child’s childhood and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

The children's community, as historical and cultural studies show, is the very first and most ancient institution of child socialization, since the first children's associations arose already in the primitive era in connection with the gender and age division of society and preceded the monogamous family. They had their own special status, their specific place in the gender-age social-hierarchical system. The emergence of a children's subculture as an integral historical and cultural phenomenon is due to the gender and age stratification of society, which has its roots in ancient times.

The course of a child’s mental development, according to L. S. Vygotsky, does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of maturation of the organism. The course of child development in a class society, he believed, “has a completely definite class meaning.” That is why he emphasized that there is no eternally childish, but only historically childish. Thus, in the literature of the 19th century there is numerous evidence of the absence of childhood among proletarian children. For example, in a study of the situation of the working class in England, F. Engels referred to the report of a commission created by the English parliament in 1833 to examine working conditions in factories: children sometimes began to work from the age of five, often from the age of six, even more often from the age of seven, but almost all children of poor parents worked from the age of eight; their working hours lasted 14-16 hours

It is generally accepted that the status of childhood of the proletarian child was formed only in the 19th and 20th centuries, when child labor began to be prohibited with the help of legislation on child protection. Of course, this does not mean that the legal laws adopted are capable of ensuring childhood for the working people of the lower strata of society. Children in this environment and, above all, girls today perform work necessary for social reproduction (child care, housework, some agricultural work). Thus, although in our time there is a ban on child labor, one cannot talk about the status of childhood without taking into account the position of parents in the social structure of society. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and ratified by most countries of the world, is aimed at ensuring the full development of the personality of the child in every corner of the earth.

Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with a biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with a range of rights and responsibilities inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it. Many interesting facts were collected to support this idea by the French demographer and historian Philippe Aries. Thanks to his works, interest in the history of childhood in foreign psychology has increased significantly, and the research of F. Aries himself is recognized as classic.

F. Aries was interested in how the concept of childhood developed in the minds of artists, writers and scientists over the course of history and how it differed in different historical eras. His studies and areas of fine art led him to the conclusion that until the 13th century, art did not address children, artists did not even try to depict them. Children's images in the painting of the 13th century are found only in religious and allegorical subjects. These are angels, the baby Jesus and a naked child as a symbol of the soul of the deceased. The depiction of real children was absent from painting for a long time. No one apparently believed that the child contained a human personality. If children appeared in works of art, they were depicted as miniature adults. Then there was no knowledge about the characteristics and nature of childhood. The word “child” for a long time did not have the exact meaning that is given to it now. Thus, it is characteristic, for example, that in medieval Germany the word “child” was a synonym for the concept “fool”. Childhood was considered a period that quickly passed and was of little value. Indifference towards childhood, according to F. Aries, was a direct consequence of the demographic situation of that time, characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality. A sign of overcoming indifference to childhood, according to the French demographer, is the appearance in the 16th century of portraits of dead children. Their death, he writes, was now experienced as a truly irreparable loss, and not as a completely natural event. Judging by painting, overcoming indifference to children occurs no earlier than the 17th century, when the first portrait images of real children began to appear on artists’ canvases. As a rule, these were portraits of children of influential persons and royalty in childhood. Thus, according to F. Aries, the discovery of childhood began in the 13th century, its development can be traced in the history of painting of the 14th-16th centuries, but the evidence of this discovery is most fully manifested at the end of the 16th and throughout the 17th century.

According to the researcher, clothing is an important symbol of changing attitudes towards childhood. In the Middle Ages, as soon as a child grew out of swaddling clothes, he was immediately dressed in a costume that was no different from the clothing of an adult of the appropriate social status. Only in the 16th-17th centuries did special children's clothing appear, distinguishing a child from an adult. Interestingly, for boys and girls aged 2-4 years, the clothing was the same and consisted of a children's dress. In other words, in order to distinguish a boy from a man, he was dressed in a woman’s costume, and this costume lasted until the beginning of our century, despite the change in society and the lengthening of the period of childhood. Let us note that in peasant families before the revolution, children and adults dressed the same. By the way, this feature persists where there are no big differences between the work of adults and the play of a child.

The discovery of childhood made it possible to describe the complete cycle of human life. To characterize the age periods of life in scientific works of the 16th-17th centuries, terminology was used that is still used in scientific and colloquial speech: childhood, adolescence, adolescence, youth, maturity, old age, senility (very old age). But the modern meaning of these words does not correspond to their original meaning. In the old days, periods of life were correlated with the four seasons, the seven planets, and the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The differentiation of the ages of human life, including childhood, according to F. Aries, is formed under the influence of social institutions, that is, new forms of social life generated by the development of society. Thus, early childhood first appears within the family, where it is associated with specific communication - “pampering” a small child. For parents, a child is simply a pretty, funny baby with whom you can have fun, play with pleasure and at the same time teach and educate him. This is the primary, “family” concept of childhood. The desire to dress up children, “pamper” and “undead” them could only appear in the family. However, this approach to children as “charming toys” could not remain unchanged for long.

The development of society has led to further changes in attitudes towards children. A new concept of childhood emerged. For teachers of the 17th century, love for children was no longer expressed in pampering and entertaining them, but in psychological interest in upbringing and teaching. To correct a child's behavior, it is first necessary to understand him, and scientific texts from the late 16th and 17th centuries are full of commentary on child psychology. Let us note that deep pedagogical ideas, advice and recommendations are also contained in the works of Russian authors of the 16th-17th centuries.

The study of F. Aries begins with the Middle Ages, for only at that time did pictorial subjects depicting children appear. But caring for children and ideas of education, of course, appeared long before the Middle Ages. Already in Aristotle there are thoughts dedicated to children.

Based on the study of ethnographic materials, D. B. Elkonin showed that at the earliest stages of the development of human society, when the main way of obtaining food was gathering using primitive tools for knocking down fruits and digging up edible roots, the child very early became familiar with the work of adults, practically assimilating methods of obtaining food and using primitive tools. Under such conditions, there was neither need nor time for the stage of preparing children for future work. As D. B. Elkonin emphasized, childhood arises when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since the child cannot yet master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is postponed. According to D. B. Elkonin, this lengthening in time occurs not by building a new period of development over existing ones (as F. Aries believed), but by a kind of wedging in a new period of development, leading to an “upward shift in time” of the period of mastering the tools of production .

Data from ethnographic, sociological and psychological studies of the development of children in societies of various types contributed to overcoming the prevailing ideas about childhood as a “natural stage” that had been dominant for many centuries, possessing certain “universal” properties for all times and peoples, as well as to the rejection of the unreasonable comparison of the childhood of a human child childhood of animals. A significant contribution to the accumulation of factual information about the unique development of children growing up in different cultures and isolated ethnic groups belongs to representatives of the school of cultural anthropology (M. Mead, R. Benedict, etc.). From the middle of the twentieth century. This line of research has received powerful development within the framework of the cross-cultural direction in psychology. A comparative study of different aspects of the development of children from many countries of the world has brought a wealth of material showing the complex interdependence of socio-economic and environmental factors in the life of society, on the one hand, the characteristics of the forms of family and public education, on the other hand, and the originality of mental and personality traits characteristic of representatives of a given society, on the third (E. Erickson, P. Aries, J. Whiting, M. Ainsworth, etc.).

In Russian science, the idea of the historical origin and development of childhood was first voiced in the 30s of our century in the works of P.P. Blonsky and L.S. Vygotsky. Later, works appeared that convincingly showed that, being a sociocultural, and not a purely biological phenomenon, D. has its own history and is of a specific historical nature (D.B. Elkonin, V.V. Davydov, I.S. Kon). This means that different types of society have different types of childhood, with unequal duration and number of “steps” of the age “ladder”, and most importantly, with different content of the processes of formation of the child’s psyche and his personal characteristics.

At the same time, the most important, from a psychological point of view, side of the transformation of a child’s life was a change in the child’s place in the system of social division of labor, and with it the entire nature of relationships with other members of the family and society. Thus, the cultural-historical approach to the analysis of modern childhood allows us to consider it as the result of complex development, going along the line of structural differentiation and enrichment of socio-psychological functions. It is noteworthy that the new age stages are not necessarily “added” to existing ones, but can “wedge themselves” between previously formed age levels. The nature and content of individual periods of childhood are also influenced by the specific socio-economic and ethnocultural characteristics of the society in which the child grows up, his belonging to a particular social class, and the adopted system of public education.

V.T. Kudryavtsev: The emergence of the phenomenon of childhood in culture, on the one hand, is a natural-historical process, the same as the formation social formations in the history of civilization. On the other hand, the identification of childhood as a special and original era of human development in ontogenesis is the result of the creativity of the collective, generic human subject; in a word, childhood is a creation, a work.

Thus, attributing the “discovery of childhood” to a strictly defined historical period raises doubts and objections. Nevertheless, all historians agree that modern times, especially the 17th-18th centuries, were marked by the emergence of a new image of childhood, growing interest in the child in all spheres of culture, a clearer distinction, chronologically and meaningfully, between the children's and adult worlds and, finally, , recognition of childhood as an autonomous, independent social and psychological value.

Until the 17th century, adolescence was not a special period in the human life cycle. The childhood stage ended with puberty, after which most young people immediately entered the adult world. As a result of acceleration, puberty occurs in modern conditions several years earlier than in the past, while psychological and social maturation has been delayed, increasing the intermediate period between childhood and adulthood. The profound socio-economic transformations associated with the development of the capitalist formation, one of the consequences were changes in the periods of ontogenesis.

2. Western concept of childhood. Age symbolism

Reading ethnographic material on initiation rites evokes two kinds of feelings in the Western reader. The description of some extremely harsh rites, during which adolescents are subjected to deprivation, dangerous trials, sexual mutilation, eating sickening food, etc., arouses in the Western reader disgust at these barbaric customs and strengthens in him the feeling of the superiority of civilized man. On the other hand, all this makes him nostalgic for a lost paradise: a representative of a primitive culture is inextricably linked with nature, from which civilization has torn Westerners away; he knows how to listen carefully to the rhythms of nature and space. But one should refrain from falling into both of these extremes - condemnation of barbarism or envy of the “good savage”. Any comparison of these two worlds is futile, because... There are many contrasts and irreconcilable contradictions between Western civilization and primitive culture. However, the universality of teenage rituals among primitive peoples and their disappearance in our society again raises the extremely important question of the connection between generations in our culture.

The Western concept of childhood - “Children's children” (I.S. Kon) - are not children at all, but the same conventional symbols of a certain ideal world, like the “happy savages” of the 18th century. Childhood innocence and spontaneity are contrasted with the “perverted” and cold world of rational adulthood. In W. Blake's "Songs of Innocence" the child is a "child of joy", "a bird born for joy", which in "Songs of Experience" awaits a school resembling a cage. The intrinsic value of childhood is emphasized in every possible way. According to W. Wordsworth's definition, “a child is the father of a man.” S. Coleridge draws attention to how much a child can teach an adult, etc. But in romantic poems and discussions it is not a real, living child that appears, but an abstract symbol of innocence, closeness to nature and sensitivity that adults lack. The cult of idealized childhood did not contain a grain of interest in the psychology of the real child. An objective study of childhood would even seem blasphemous to a romantic, and growing up in this belief system would seem more like a loss than a gain.

The medieval European cultural tradition in the interpretation of the social value of childhood phenomena defines and legitimizes this value from the outside - the value of something else, more high order, given in the instance of myth. This is also the basis for the archetypes and metaphorical images of childhood enshrined in culture (“the child is the bearer of the Universe”; “baby god”, “eternal boy”; “childhood as paradise”), its aesthetic interpretation in romanticism,

In societies of primary formation, the socialization of children is carried out through the joint efforts of the entire community, mainly through the consistent practical inclusion of children, as they grow, in various forms of play, social production and ritual activities, which are not yet sufficiently separated from each other, so that all the most ancient institutions socialization, for example, age groups, are multifunctional and simultaneously perform labor, social-organizational and ritual functions.

As society urbanizes and industrializes, the importance public institutions and means of socialization is steadily increasing. Education becomes a directly social, national matter, requiring planning, management, systematic coordination of the efforts of individual institutions, among which the most important are family, school, peer society and means mass communication. The relationship between these institutions often becomes conflicting. Individual functions of socialization are also isolated, which is reflected in the differentiation of such socio-pedagogical concepts as upbringing, education (general and special), training and enlightenment, each of which corresponds to a specific type of activity and its own institutional system (for example, the school system , vocational training and cultural and educational institutions).

The complication of the socialization system makes it more flexible and provides greater variable opportunities for individual development, but at the same time such a system becomes less and less manageable. It should be noted that the goals of education formulated and proclaimed by adults are never fully realized anywhere, which is confirmed by the eternal complaints of elders about the “bad manners” of young people, who were supposedly better before. Such a discrepancy between the goals, means and results of education is one of the objective prerequisites for cultural innovation, making the process of transferring cultural values selective and selective. In the context of the modern scientific and technological revolution, when the pace of cultural renewal has increased, this selectivity becomes especially noticeable, reinforcing the difference between generations and providing youth with greater autonomy from their elders, the actual degree of which varies significantly, however, depending on the field of activity and specific conditions of development.

All nations distinguish between the stages of childhood, adulthood (maturity) and old age. But within this periodization there are many variations that are revealed during the comparative historical study of age terminology and especially systems of age degrees.

An extremely important fact that proves the conventionality of age boundaries and periodization of the life cycle, although it seems to be based on ontogenesis invariants, is the dependence of this periodization on the symbolism of numbers inherent in each given culture. Although all nations have their favorite “sacred numbers,” these numbers do not always coincide. For example, the Greco-Roman tradition, adopted later in medieval Europe, was one of the main sacred numbers it was 7.

For understanding age symbolism, the question of whether this ritual only means the transition of an individual from one stage of life to another or the emergence of a new social identity, i.e., is especially important. moving to another age level, class or group? Although the second presupposes and implicitly includes the first, it is far from the same thing whether to associate the rite of passage or initiation with ontogenetic invariants and individual variations of the life cycle or with the peculiarities of age stratification and age symbolism of a given society or people. Already van Gennep, studying the so-called “pubertal initiations,” was faced with the fact that physiological puberty and “social puberty” are qualitatively different and very rarely coincide in terms of timing.

Childhood is a cultural and historical phenomenon that can only be understood taking into account age symbolism, i.e. systems of ideas and images in which culture perceives, comprehends and legitimizes life path individual and age stratification of society.

1. normative age criteria, i.e. culturally accepted age terminology, periodization of the life cycle indicating the duration and tasks of its main stages;

2. ascriptive age properties or age stereotypes - traits and properties attributed by culture to persons of a given age and serving as an implied norm for them;

3. symbolization of age-related processes - ideas about how the growth, development and transition of an individual from one age stage to another proceed or should proceed;

4. age rites - rituals through which culture structures life cycle and formalizes the relationships between age layers, classes and groups;

5. age subculture - a specific set of characteristics and values by which representatives of a given age stratum, class or group recognize and assert themselves as “we,” different from all other age communities.

Age symbolism has a direct impact on the content and methods of socialization of children, which always somehow correlates with the implied, implicit canon of a person in general and the canon of a child in particular. Within the same European cultural tradition there are several different images of the child:

a) the traditional Christian view that a newborn bears the mark of original sin and can only be saved by the merciless suppression of his will, submission to parents and spiritual shepherds;

b) the point of view of social-pedagogical determinism, according to which a child by nature is not inclined to either good or evil, but is a tabula rasa on which society or the teacher can write anything;

c) the point of view of natural determinism, according to which the character and capabilities of a child are predetermined before his birth; this view is typical not only of genetics, but also of medieval astrology;

d) a utopian-humanistic view that a child is born good and kind and is spoiled only under the influence of society; This idea is usually associated with Romanticism, but it was also defended by some Renaissance humanists, who interpreted the old Christian dogma of childhood innocence in this spirit.

Medieval iconography is replete with images of the infant Christ (though with the face of an adult). According to Christian tradition, the baby was seen as an allegory of purity and sinlessness. (A.Ya. Gurevich, 1984; I.S. Kon, 1988; Ph. Aries, 1973).

The pre-romantic interpretation of childhood as the embodiment of innocence and purity, in contrast to the alienated and perverted world of adults, is the same symptom of disappointment in existing social existence as the idealization of the “noble Middle Ages” and the “natural life” of the savage. Without taking into account such mostly unconscious projections, it is impossible to study the history of age stereotypes. Hence the fundamental limitations of quantitative elemental analysis, which destroys the immanent polysemy and ambivalence of these images (and these are precisely images, not concepts).

The Western mythology of the lost paradise had a great influence on the formation of the new European idea of childhood.

In ch. 3 of the biblical Book of Genesis (telling the story of the fall of the first people) are given:

a) a cause-and-effect explanation of the cycle of human life through the general idea of sin: birth - knowledge - punishment - death;

b) the connection between choice and responsibility for it.

This mythology has determined the scientific understanding of the crisis transitional (adolescent) age (a socio-psychological phenomenon), which is often incorrectly identified with the puberty period (a predominantly biological phenomenon).

Culturology is based on its myths (like any other science), especially since they capture a certain aspect of reality. IN in this case- this is an objective moment of repeatability in development.

For the archaic and a number of later forms of mythological consciousness, any actually human action or event is filled with meaning only to the extent that it symbolizes some action committed at the “time” by a mythical sub-subject - a deity, first man or “cultural hero” (see: Ya. E. Golosovker, 1987; A.Ya. Gurevich, 1984; E.M. Meletinsky, 1976; M. Eliade, 1987, 1995, etc.). In his earthly life, archaic man considered, first of all, the “recapitulation” of the plot of the myth, which sanctified his existence. Therefore, human development was associated with the reproduction of prototypes and standards of behavior (ideal forms, in modern language) attributed to the mythical sub-subject.

In mythological terms, the universalization of man was paradoxically achieved at the cost of his deuniversalization. Man became a man because from the very beginning he strived to be something more than the actual “empirical I” (I. Kant) - commensurate with Eternity and the Absolute, and felt the need to merge and identify with it. To satisfy this need, at the dawn of human history, Myth was created. He really took man beyond the framework of abstract self-identity, elevated him above the space of available everyday practical existence.

Psychology and cultural studies are trying to give a meaningful description of the zone of proximal and more distant human development - from “sinfulness” (the primordial “infantile” state) to “holiness” (the final “socially mature” state or intermediate states on the way to it), which can stages of formation of mental actions or points of experiencing crises of age-related development.

A “sinful” person (a child) begins his path to “holiness” with another person - a ready-made personification of the state of “holiness” (an adult). However, there is no need to talk about any initial absolute “sinfulness” here: the “sinful” from the moment of his birth is fused with the “saint” into a single organism (the “mother-child” dyad). Therefore, modern psychology - following L.S. Vygotsky (1983, p. 281) - recognizes the baby as a “maximally social being,” meaning the initial influence that an already socialized adult has on him. The adult socially mediates all acts of the infant’s life, having at his disposal, as it were, a plan for “travel through the zone of proximal development” (Y. Engestrom, 1987). In the process of the child’s actual development, he clarifies and corrects this plan in detail, while maintaining, however, the main direction of movement. Guided by it, the adult identifies socially preferred strategies for solving the problems facing the child, i.e. means of achieving “social maturity” (“holiness”).

The mythological orientation of psychological and pedagogical sciences also has deeper objective historical foundations. Society projected its myths about development onto the realities of childhood, and psychology, pedagogy, etc. “taught” and completed them. The objective source of myth is a person’s “attachment” to certain cycles of reproduction of his life - external and internal. Thus, for archaic and medieval man these were natural cycles, the dependence on which the scientific and industrial revolution of the New Age was able to overcome. For a long time this left its mark on the way of life, for example, in a Russian village, where “for children preschool age from Vladimir “Red Sun” and to this day (we are talking about the beginning of the twentieth century. - V.K.) proper attention has not been paid either by the family or by the school. In winter, their lot was the notorious stove, from which they caught, one might say, not very articulate sounds of domestic speech, and in the spring - a green meadow with constant objects of grazing: poultry, calves and... infants" (M.M. Sokolov, 1916).

For industrial civilization, dependence on natural cycles is no longer absolute. But the development of industry involved man in new cycles of life reproduction - technical and technological, including social technology and technology. It would hardly be appropriate today to revive the Luddite mentality. However, one cannot help but be alarmed by the fact that social models of the development of a modern child are set in the categories of computer and other “technological initiations.” The self-directed enrichment of the technological infrastructure of child development can lead in the 21st century (if we take into account the growing trend of the “technological boom” on the eve of the new century) to an impoverishment of the content of this development. The replacement of the principle of “development based on technological cycles” with the principle of “development within the framework of technological cycles” may mark another fatal step towards a global “anthropological catastrophe” (M.K. Mamardashvili).

The cyclical nature of the organization of human life (or rather, its absolutization) sets the myth-making orientation of modern practical and scientific consciousness. This explains the persistence with which the carriers of the latter (at the level of a supraconscious attitude, according to M.G. Yaroshevsky) reproduce the recapitulationist myth of development. This myth does not belong to the category of arbitrary fiction; it quite adequately reflects the historically limited form of people’s social existence.

Childhood is divided into three periods: the feeding period, early childhood and school age.

Adolescence is the period of life lying between childhood and adulthood. This seemingly simple definition contains a problem, especially when it comes to the end point of adolescence. There is no doubt that puberty is easy! a definable beginning, and gradual puberty significantly changes the process of growing up, but with the end of adolescence, which coincides with the inclusion of the individual in adult society, everything is different.

Reaching puberty marks the entry into adolescence, the universal starting point of which is determined by biological maturation: over a relatively short period, an average of 4 years, the body will experience profound changes- and the body acquires its final sexual characteristics. However, the use of simple and obvious biological criteria provokes a number of difficulties. First, chronological age is not a very accurate indicator of biological age, especially given the enormous interindividual differences that characterize puberty.

“Adolescence ends when the individual reaches social and emotional maturity and has the experience, ability and desire to assume the role of an adult, expressed in a wide range of actions - as defined by the culture in which he lives” (Horrocks, 1978, p. 15 ).

Changes in adolescence consistently cover four areas of development: body, thinking, social life and self-awareness. These changes represent psychological acquisitions that reflect the content of a given moment of development. These new formations are determined by the need for greater sexual and social personal freedom, as well as by the general, or at least widespread, characteristics of a given society.

A. Zones of development and main developmental tasks in adolescence

1. Pubertal development. Over a relatively short period of 4 years on average, a child's body undergoes significant changes. This entails two main developmental tasks: 1) the need to reconstruct the bodily image of the Self and build a male or female “tribal” identity; 2) a gradual transition to adult genital sexuality, characterized by joint eroticism with a partner and the combination of two complementary drives.

2. Cognitive development. The development of the adolescent’s intellectual sphere is characterized by qualitative and quantitative changes that distinguish it from the child’s way of understanding the world. The development of cognitive abilities is marked by two main achievements: the development of the ability to think abstractly and the expansion of time perspective.

3. Transformations of socialization. Adolescence is also characterized by important changes in social connections and socialization, as the predominant influence of the family is gradually replaced by the influence of the peer group, which serves as a source of reference norms of behavior and obtaining a certain status. These changes occur in two directions, in accordance with two developmental tasks: 1) liberation from parental care; 2) gradual entry into a peer group, which becomes a channel of socialization and requires the establishment of relations of competition and cooperation with partners of both sexes.

4. Formation of identity. Throughout adolescence, a new subjective reality is gradually formed, transforming the individual’s ideas about himself and others. The formation of psychosocial identity, which underlies the phenomenon of adolescent self-awareness, includes three main developmental tasks: 1) awareness of the temporal extent of one’s own self, which includes the childhood past and determines the projection of oneself into the future; 2) awareness of oneself as different from internalized parental images; 3) implementation of a system of elections that ensure the integrity of the individual (mainly we are talking about the choice of profession, gender polarization and ideological attitudes).

3. Cultural-anthropological approach to studies of the phenomenon of childhood

Traditional culture is a stable, non-dynamic culture, characteristic feature which is that the changes taking place in it are too slow and therefore are practically not recorded by the collective..consciousness..of a given..culture.

There have been a number of civilizations in history whose culture can be considered traditional. This is about Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Sumer, Assyria, Ancient India etc. Data traditional societies reproduced the existing way of life for millennia, when the past of adults turned out to be the future of their children. The death of some states and the emergence of others in their place did not change the type of culture itself. The foundation of culture was preserved and passed on as social heredity, ensuring the reproduction of the traditional type of development. Not only did man not feel any discord with society, but nature also organically interacted with this culture, proving its unity with it through numerous examples. Samoan culture can also be considered a traditional culture.

Mead Margaret (1901-1978) - American anthropologist, for 40 years studied the mental development of children in primitive cultures and compared these conditions with American ones. In her works, she concludes that it makes sense to talk about adolescence as an intermediate period between puberty and the beginning of adulthood only in relation to industrialized countries. Anthropologists did not discover any developmental crisis in primitive cultures, but found and described the opposite - a harmonious, conflict-free course of adolescence.

For American teenagers, the adolescence crisis is filled with stress, anxiety and conflict. Most teenagers entered adult life, adapting their behavior to the norms and rules that prevailed in different social groups. Many of them, however, experienced feelings of fear, guilt or depression associated with the moral and social prohibitions that characterized their sex lives. In this regard, M. Mead's work clearly demonstrated how the social institutions of a particular culture shape the content of the adolescent's life experience.

Mead and her colleagues found that adolescence can vary in length, and in some tribes it is limited to a few months. Anthropologist Benedict, comparing the upbringing of children in different societies, came to the conclusion that many cultures do not emphasize the contrast between adult and child that exists in the American education system. In these cultures, children from a young age are included in the work of adults, have responsibilities, and bear responsibility. With age, both increase, but gradually. There is a relationship between an adult and a child. Behavior is not polarized: one for the child, the other for the adult. This allows the child from childhood to acquire the skills and concepts that he will need in the future. In such conditions, the transition from childhood to adulthood proceeds smoothly, the child gradually learns ways of adult behavior and becomes prepared to fulfill the requirements of adult status.

Otherwise, the transition from childhood to adulthood occurs in conditions where important requirements for children and adults do not coincide and are opposite (as, for example, in societies with high industrial development). As a result, an unfavorable situation arises: in childhood, the child learns what is not useful to him as an adult, and does not learn what is necessary for the future. Therefore, he is not prepared for it when he reaches “formal” maturity. Under these conditions, various difficulties arise in the development and upbringing of a teenager. Thus, we can conclude that the idea of a crisis as a phenomenon determined by a biologically and genetically specified development program was not confirmed by the facts.

M. Mead studied the peculiarities of the origin of age-related crises (primarily teenage ones) in different social conditions, the development of gender identification in children, as well as the influence of child-parent relationships on intelligence and personal qualities child. Proving the leading role of sociocultural factors in the mental development of children, M. Mead showed that the characteristics of puberty, the formation of the structure of self-awareness, and self-esteem depend primarily on the cultural traditions of a given people, the characteristics of raising and teaching children, and the dominant style of communication in the family. She introduced a new term “enculturation” into psychology.

The entire dynamics of age-related development in Samoa depends only on the presence of certain physical strengths necessary to perform heavy physical labor, and the more difficult the work a child can do, the more mature he is considered.

If we consider the problem of choice, for example, regarding future professional self-determination, then “all isolated primitive civilizations and many civilizations of modern times differ strikingly from ours in the number of possible choices allowed to each individual. In contrast, the very temperament of Samoan life does not have the painful nature of choice, explaining the absence of conflicts in it, M. Mead refers to the difference “between a simple, homogeneous, primitive civilization, which changes so slowly that it seems static to each generation, and the motley, a diverse, heterogeneous civilization."

Boys and girls in our industrial society are positioned "in the middle" between childhood and adulthood, and grow up in a society that is itself constantly changing. This is what distinguishes different types of cultures and, accordingly, different types of maturation and development. Growing up can occur without development (as in Samoa). Our institutions of growing up may not be reflective, i.e. not to ensure development as a subject of relations and interaction between adulthood and childhood. They can also be traditional.

“In Samoa, immediately after birth, the child loses its ceremonial significance and regains it only after puberty. In most Samoan villages, no celebration is held in honor of the girl until she is married. ... Relative age is of great importance, since the elder can always order the younger, until social differences between adults abolish this rule. The actual age may be completely forgotten."

Thus, adults in such a society are people who do not have a strict subordinate relationship with each other, which is again relative, because they will have children under their control and will be responsible for the family and for fulfilling certain...responsibilities.
At seventeen, a Samoan girl still doesn't want to get married. After all, it is better to live as a girl, without bearing any responsibility, experiencing all the richness and variety of feelings. Considering the system of relationships in Samoan society, one can see that this is the best period in her life. There are as many inferiors under her, whom she can offend, as there are superiors above her, tyrannizing her. Finding herself in the middle of the family hierarchy, a Samoan girl has ample opportunities to demonstrate a growing sense of her own importance.

Nepalese children are involved in the labor process early. Already at three years old, various responsibilities occupy up to ten percent of the child’s time, and by nine years he works up to a third of his out-of-school time. There are three categories of work: child care; all categories of work except childcare and paid work (housework and subsistence work); overall child labor rate. The third category includes the first two and, in addition, paid work, commodity labor. In the relationship between natural and commodity labor, the latter is assigned a subordinate role, and there is little time left for its share.

All primitive cultures have ritual ceremonies that mark the transition to a new stage of maturation or to a new social status. The role of these “rites of passage,” as Van Gennep calls them, is to indicate the change from one social state to another, and their function is to facilitate this transition. Van Gennep is already abandoning ideas that connect teenage initiations with the celebration of physiological maturity, believing that we should rather talk about teenage rites than about puberty rites, since they have not a physical, but a social meaning. The function of such rituals is to ensure transitions from teenage status to socially recognized adult status.
This transition includes three sequential stages that Van Gennep identified in all initiation rites: a ritual of excommunication from the previous status, which determines the differentiation of roles and a break with the previous group, a transitional period, or a period of leisure, which prepares participants for a new status, and a ritual of acceptance of a new member into the adult society, whose role is to publicly recognize the initiation participant as now a full-fledged adult.

According to Hart (1975), initiation is an extremely important "institution of education" among primitive peoples, who expend much time and effort to transform the adolescent into a culturally socialized adult. The rules of the ceremony are very strictly defined, the same for everyone and must be strictly observed. The initiation rite separates the adolescent from the family in whose care he has hitherto been, and who has been responsible for teaching him the ways of hunting, fishing, etc. With the onset of puberty, the “school of initiation,” as Hart calls it, begins to be taken care of strangers, multiplying the prohibitions and taboos that regulate the forms of behavior learned in the family. The "curriculum" in the initiation school consists exclusively of the knowledge that defines the culture of the tribe - myths, beliefs, social values in order to transform the adolescent into a "citizen", a socialized being, which he was not previously. Primitive peoples invented an excellent apparatus for "civil education" of adolescents within their culture, essentially abandoning the teaching of survival skills such as food production, mastery of agricultural techniques, hunting and fishing skills. Unlike Western society, primitive peoples, writes Hart, despite the difficult conditions of existence and the frequent threat of extinction, are much more concerned about raising “citizens” who can “fit into” the culture than about “workers” who could study and increase the ways of obtaining food.

Childhood research historical aspect. Childhood as a historical category. Principles of the historical study of childhood

CHAPTER 1. CHILDHOOD AS A SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

1. 1. Historical analysis of the concept of “childhood”

1. 2. Childhood as a subject of science

1. 3. Specifics of the child’s mental development

1. 4. Strategies for studying a child’s mental development

Introduction of the dissertation (part of the abstract) on the topic “The phenomenon of childhood culture in the 20th century”

Conclusion of the dissertation on the topic “Theory and history of culture”, Savitskaya, Valeria Viktorovna

List of references for dissertation research candidate of cultural studies Savitskaya, Valeria Viktorovna, 2003

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