Steps towards the decolonization of childhoods
The thesis of the colonization of childhood has occasionally been called into question because it was precisely in the bourgeois concept of childhood coming up with the Enlightenment that not only the mastery of the children was foreseen by means of disciplinary techniques, but also their autonomy had been sought. For instance, the educationalist Gerold Scholz (1994) argues against Gstettner’s view that the discipline of children has been unstoppable since the beginnings of childhood science, with the thesis that ‘with the emergence of developmental psychology, also the thought of the child’s autonomy arose’ (Scholz, 1994: 206). It could not have been a coincidence that at the beginning of the 20th century the ‘century of the child’7 was proclaimed. There must be a relationship between the child’s conquest of science and the child’s autonomy. This assuming relation compels Scholz in the thesis (Scholz, 1994: 203)
… that the childhood constructions are destined from the attempt to remove the contradictions which the distinction between ‘child’ and ‘adult’ has brought with. On the basis of this distinction, the adult and the child share a space, and since then the child has called the adult to behave in a manner that takes into account the ambivalence of the child’s difference and similarity.
The autonomy mentioned by Scholz has always been imagined in bourgeois childhood construction as a form of education, which is to be generated by education; it was conceived as a task and obligation for adults. It was based not only on the idea that bourgeois society and the labour relations between capitalists and ‘free’ wage-workers had required a certain degree of individual self-responsibility, but also that it should be granted to children so that the desired norm-adequate behaviour can be produced more effectively and more sustainably. The autonomy granted was always related to this purpose, aiming at self-control and self-discipline (see Elias, 2000; Foucault, [1969]2002). In reform pedagogy, which was conceived as enlightened and directed against the superficial discipline of children, especially in schools, it was called on to respect the ‘nature of the child’. But this nature was always regarded as a first to be worked on and developed. In addition, it should be borne in mind that the children of the dominated classes have long been excluded from the bourgeois childhood ideals and left to the mere drill of ‘black pedagogy’.8 That this drift was gradually loosened was itself due to the fact that the new prosperity, which also spread to the subalterns, was largely based on the persistent exploitation of the colonies and is now based on the continuing inequality in the world order. Apart from the exception of the children in privileged classes, in the education institutions of the Global South, the children have had little autonomy.
The construction of a childhood that is strictly differentiated and separated from the adult is necessarily connected with ambivalence. Even though it is intended to provide the children with their ‘own space’ and to temporarily relieve them of the ‘seriousness of life’ or to provide them with special protection, it inevitably goes hand in hand with the devaluation of their competencies and their social status. Under these circumstances, the ‘privilege’ of being spared and protected is at the expense of independence, and the recognition of the peculiarity or difference takes place in inequality. This is shown by the fact that children may sometimes be happy to be overwhelmed by commitments, but they sooner or later perceive childhood as a form of contempt and do not want to be considered as ‘children’ anymore.9
Certainly, human life (as well as animal and plant life) has a beginning and an end, and every society has to find a way how to structure the life course and how to organize the relationship between people of different ages. Nevertheless, the form that has been ‘invented’ in Western-bourgeois society and which has produced what is now called ‘childhood’ is not the only possible one. It would also be conceivable and can be found in many non-Western cultures that the relationship of different age groups is not institutionalized and legally regulated as a strict distinction or even as a separation, but as a shared coexistence, which includes different kinds of (co-)responsibility. This also means that people do not have to be distinguished, as is customary in Western societies, primarily according to chronological age, but to tasks, which are more or less vital. The abilities required for this can be distributed very differently and not necessarily lower in younger people than in older adults. Furthermore, it is to be remembered that – according to the saying that each one grows with one’s tasks – abilities that are required for such tasks are not given, but rather arise as these tasks are trusted and entrusted to a person.
The strict separation of childhood from adulthood in bourgeois society has to do with the fact that the production and reproduction of life in this society is carried out in forms that make the continuous unfolding of one’s own abilities almost impossible. The notion of the ‘seriousness of life’ is characterized by the fact that it is localized in the ‘world of work’, which in its turn is separated from the rest of life and follows rules which are not based on human needs, but on the exploitation of human labour power and the maximization of profits. This circumstance makes it difficult to imagine the world of work as a place where children can also have their place and test their abilities. It suggests that childhood should be nailed in places where no important activities are to be done, and where it is only important to ‘be prepared’. Thus, children are condemned to a life characterized by lack of independence and passivity or at best by a previously limited and determined autonomy or participation. However, these separations are also questioned in bourgeois-capitalist societies, and there is an increasing search for possible ways of combining abstract learning in educational institutions with life-related or life-relevant tasks. This would be an opportunity to learn from the way children’s lives are shaped in some non-Western cultures, rather than to continue setting the childhood pattern as an absolute must and to impose it on the cultures and societies in the Global South.
At the same time, it must be borne in mind that life in such cultures and societies is affected by the postcolonial constellation. This constellation means that not only are the childhoods found here underestimated and made invisible, but they also are damaged and impaired in a very material sense. In order to put an end to the colonization of childhood, which can also be described as postcolonial paternalism, it is particularly urgent to push the decolonization of postcolonial societies further.
Notes
1The concept of literacy also includes the ability to communicate as well as the appropriation of ways of thinking and value beyond its written form. To emphasize this is particularly important in the age of digital media.
2Erica Burman (2016) has identified metaphorical as well as empirical references to children and childhood in the writings of Frantz Fanon, which were so important for the anticolonial movements, and analyzed them under liberationist pedagogical aspects (see also Dei and Simmons, 2010).
3Without using the term ‘colonialization’, Habermas