Guest Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Hi everyone...this is my first post so here goes! I am currently researching traditional views of childhood for my first essay on my foundation degree in early childhood studies. I'm really struggling to find any books with this sort of info (e.g. games, pastimes, hobbies etc) in so any help would be great! Thanks x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mundia Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Hi hanspan17, welcome to the forum and thanks for making your first post. You will find many members here who are doing degrees of varying kinds at the moment. I wonder what you mean by 'traditional'? By that do you mean historical, in which case a search for something like victorian childhood would get you started. Or did you mean more about how our views of childhood have changed over the past say 100 years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catma Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Peter and Iona Opie - the books they wrote about playground games are seminal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona_and_Peter_Opie Cx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SueFinanceManager Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Hi hanspan17 and welcome Traditional view of childhood.....time to have fun, learn, explore, be carefree, be protected and nurtured by others, imaginative, creative, boisterous Just a few things that come to mind but if you give us a little more to go on we can help more I am sure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enuffsenuf Posted October 19, 2011 Share Posted October 19, 2011 (edited) Hi everyone...this is my first post so here goes!I am currently researching traditional views of childhood for my first essay on my foundation degree in early childhood studies. I'm really struggling to find any books with this sort of info (e.g. games, pastimes, hobbies etc) in so any help would be great! Thanks x I finished the OU children's Literature course last year (ea300)...as childhood is a constructed state (that each society, era etc has its own view on what is or is not acceptable for a child to do think and receive) the type of books about childhood have varied over time....Traditionally children would have read exactly the same books as adults/or heard them...for example fairy tales were originally hearth side tales told to whole communities..but over time got sofetned to be appropriate for children...and latterly became associated with children and not adults. In the puritan era books for and about children depicted children being ood or bad and the baduns being punished .....then in the 18th century we have books depicting gender treasure island (what it is to be a man) and little women (what it is to be a woman)...In the victorian era childhood is romnticised and we have books depicting perfect and less than perfect childhoods. Many of the books we think of today as "children's books" were in fact written for adults, for example robinson crusoe....many books are written thus because it is the adults who buy them hence a book for children has to appeal to the adult or what the adult thinks is suitable for the child.....after the world wars childhood was again idealised and we have books by enid blyton and arthur ransome encouraging children to go and play outdoors.(in the famous five & swallows and amazons children go off to an island with no adults and sail with no life jackets...today their parents would be locked up for neglect) A great example of a children's book about gender is peter rabbit...look at the pictures of peter (typical boy discourse...not listening to warnings, breaking rules, getting into scrapes) while his sisters are all sweetness and light. Another example of books for adults is 'five minutes peace'...now who is that for the child or a mother? try googlin John Newbuery's little pretty pocket book, 1744...Alice in Wonderland is generally thought of as the first modern, high quality piece written sepcifically for children. Rousseau (romantic discourse) believed children should be denied books all apart from Robinson Crusoe..because he believed that it was through books that adults corrupted innocent childhood. The poems of William Blake songs of innocence songs of experience also depict two types of childhood. Today with the boundaries between adulthood and childhood once again merging we have crossover fiction going the other way with adults reading harry potter.....I dont know if any of that helps at all but maybe something in there will spark a light! Edited October 19, 2011 by enuffsenuf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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