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Children are not Meant to be Studied …
Author(s) -
HART W. A.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9752.1993.tb00293.x
Subject(s) - dimension (graph theory) , psychology , epistemology , order (exchange) , social psychology , sociology , philosophy , mathematics , finance , pure mathematics , economics
The project of studying children in order to understand them, which lies at the heart of contemporary thinking about children and their education, is misconceived. It rests, jrst of all, upon a false belief that we can only come to know something properly by deliberately and systematically pursuing knowledge of it. Secondly, it offers a paradigm of knowing children which justifies parents and teachers in not giving themselves to children. By re‐interpreting the problems that adults experience with children as technical, as arising from lack of information about them, it ignores the personal and moral dimension of adults’ relations with children and thus further alienates them from one another.