Childhood, Culture and Education

Pre-requisites: none

Course objectives: Understanding the relations and interdependence of culture, understood as a system of meanings, education as a mediator of culture and childhood as a concept and a practice of growing up. Development of critical relations towards the student’s own understanding of the childhood in today’s conditions.

Course description: Theoretical course: Childhood as a cultural-historical creation. Concepts and approaches. Modern and postmodern understanding of childhood. Historical, sociological, ethnographic-anthropological, psychological, literary and laic view on childhood. Comprehension of a child in traditional and modern Serbian culture. Cultures as the systems of meaning. School seen as a culture and as an educational culture. Intertextuality – how do we „read“ the culture and how do we integrate ourselves into the culture. Narrative – what meanings the school is teaching us. Intersubjectivity and culture of peer learning. Children’s culture as a product and as a process. Growing up in Serbia in the beginning of the millennium. Practical course: Student research activities in children’s institutions and in instiutions which distribute products of children’s culture – establishing the collection of students’ findings, „Children’s culture in Serbia“; familiarizing with the understanding of childhood in our environment.

Learning Outcomes: Student is familiar with the different concepts of childhood and the basic processes of integrating children into the culture. Student understands the childhood as a product of culture and the role of childhood’s culture in transformation of the culture. Student is able to research children’s culture through the examples of children’s products.

Literature/Reading:

• Arijes, F., Vekovi detinjstva, Beograd, ZUNS, 1989, 176-185, 210-218.
• Bruner, J., Kultura obrazovanja, Zagreb, Edusa, 2000, 139-157.
• Kon, I. S., Dete i kultura, Beograd, ZUNS, 1991, 37-74.
• Marjanović-Šejn, A., „Ti si svinja“: stvarno ili „kobajagi“? : Različite orijentacije u igri i metafori, Predškolsko dete, 1989, 3-4, 1-9.
• Pešić, M., Konvencija UN i obrazovanje za dečja prava, Dečja prava – čija odgovornost, Beograd, IPA FF, 1996, 25-38.
• Saton-Smit, B., Igračke i kultura, Beograd, ZUNS, 1989, 255-267.
• Trebješanin, Ž., Predstava o detetu u srpskoj kulturi, Beograd, Srpska književna zadruga, 1991, 275-316.
• Fisk, Dž., Popularna kultura, Beograd, Klio, 2001, 8-34.