Antropologia dzieciństwa jako przedmiot akademicki (w programie specjalizacji nauczycielskiej)
Anthropology of childhood as an academic course (part of the teaching specialization)

Author(s): Ryszard Waksmund, Dorota Michułka
Subject(s): Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: anthropology of childhood; child studies; anthropology of pedagogy; sociology of childhood; politics of childhood;
Summary/Abstract: Our paper aims to present what place the anthropology of child and childhood (within the programme of teaching specialization) may take in Polish studies the 21st-century. After many years of laborious research on children’s culture, children’s folklore, ethnography of childhood, sociology of childhood, and children’s pedagogy and psychology, after the discussions about “childhood reinvented” and many “breakthroughs” in studies about the interdisciplinary nature of such research (from Ellen Key’s work to Janusz Korczak, to Philippe Ariés and Paul Hazard), knowledge of children’s and youth literature and of children’s culture eventually became a part of Polish studies’ programmes at the university level.In modern times, an additional source of materials are journals and memoirs, which help better understand both traumatic and ludic experiences of the child, which often appear to be taboo. A special place is reserved for children’s reports of the Holocaust. Our times, which bring many threats to the young (crisis of family, drugs, sexual abuse, child prostitution, homelessness, religious cults, exploitation at work, excessive consumerism, Internet addiction, etc.), are a domain for sociology of childhood and adolescence.Therefore, it seems a new field of knowledge about childhood is needed, a field that takes into consideration the following, previously neglected aspects: historical, sociological, related to political science, and ethnographic with the context of children’s folklore, also indeterminacy of child’s social role.

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