In the afternoon of December 18, 2020, HZNU-CIPSH Chair Collaboration Office invited Professor Claire Cassidy, a Reader in the School of Education at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, to give a lecture entitled "Thinking about Childhood: Being and Becoming in the World." The lecture was moderated over by Associate Professor Gao Zhenyu of the School of Education, translated by Associate Professor Leng Lu of Jinan University. Zheng Suhua, associate researcher of Zhejiang Normal University and Zheng Minxi, associate professor of Fujian Normal University were invited as discussants.
Starting with the example of Greta Sandberg, Professor Claire led the audience through an exploration of the traditional view of children that is commonly held by adults today, i.e., that children lack knowledge, power, status, authority, etc. She showed that Greta was attacked by conservatives not because of her stance, but because of her age. Professor Claire shows that the traditional deficit view places children in a subordinate position.
She pointed out that the inherent cognition of children, such as irrational, lack of critical discernment, lack of ability, lack of autonomy, etc., is actually an adult justifying the paternalism.
Professor Claire believes that this deficit view is largely due to the binary views of adults and children, which in part stem from a settled cognition that childhood is considered as a way to adulthood. Adulthood is regarded as the expected end and goal, while childhood is only a transitional and preparatory stage. Childhood is a process of becoming, which is transitional and independent by its own right. Children become adults after they experienced childhood. From the adult-child binary view, childhood needs special treatment in a sense, and what cannot be ignored is that adults are often deciding what kind of special treatment to give children and how they should provide it. Children’s agency and participation are therefore limited
In addition, the binary perspective is also perpetuated by children. Children are exposed to this binary view, and it is difficult for them to imagine another way. So they do not challenge it and continue to repeat the narrative of "growing up."
Professor Claire then introduced a cross-eight-country children's philosophy research project that she participated in, using practical philosophy as a means to investigate children's conceptions on childhood. The results consistently showed that children are used to applying binary views of themselves in relation to adults (whether they are teachers or other family members). This leads to an instrumental perspective of childhood, which is considered as a preparation period for adulthood; from the perspective of knowledge production, children think that they lack knowledge. Because knowledge is regarded as an empowering tool for decision-making, children generally believe that adults have decision-making ability, so only when they become adults can they make decisions, and learning, as considered, stops at the adult stage; in terms of influence, children are not aware of the impact they can have on society. Professor Claire points out that these perceived experiences of the relationship between children and adults have drawn more people to explore the nature of children, what children are, what childhood is, and how childhood reflects children's relational encounters with the world.
This led Professor Clare to suggest the need for “rethinking childhood.” Under the influence of Spyrou (Spyrou, Rosen & Cook, 2019, p.7), Professor Claire shifts the focus of research from thinking about what childhood is to how childhood is done. She pointed out that considering children in relation means that this allows us to think of children differently not as bounded or limited individuals, but as people who can be or as people who can be examined independently of the world. That means that we can explore different childhood or various childhood experiences. This helps us see the connectedness of children more clearly. The idea of seeing childhood as a connection or networking means that we will not consider the relationship between children and adults as a linear pattern of child-to-adult growth trajectories, but to explore a variety of incomplete and interdependent becomings.
Professor Claire notes that recognizing children in relations pushes adults to see children as central to global economic and political understanding. Children are participants in the world and care about how everyone exists in the world. By empowering children in this way, we can also transform adulthood (adulthood).
Regarding the existence of children in this world, Professor Claire pointed out that everything in the world is inextricably linked to children. We should connect to each other in a dialogue. These dialogues are shared experiences with others, allowing us to explore values in them and consider how to make them happen. It is worth noting that adults may be more inclined to some inherent views, so in the process of dialogue, adults may need to give up some assumptions and ideas that they have firmly grasped.
Professor Claire further pointed out that dialogue helps children cultivate dispositions and deliberations. She suggests deliberation is necessary if a healthy democracy or a healthy society generally is to be supported with the plurality of ideas and beliefs where values and assumptions can be challenged. Philosophical dialogue thus also promotes the formation of identity.
Regarding the ways forward, Professor Claire proposes to connect the present and the future through philosophical dialogues and connect them in a community, allowing children to become participants in this world. This also helps us to consider alternative ways of in-relations. Cultivate a new type of bond with our children, and encourage us all to become interconnected and form a community.
During the discussion, Dr. Zheng Suhua said that many teachers and parents in China are concerned about children's philosophy and hope to develop children's philosophy at home and school. Many teaching methods in university classrooms also draw on children's philosophy. Children’s philosophy is not only a philosophical method, but also a way of teaching. It has changed people’s views on children and students, realizing that student identity and child identity are mutually complementary with adult and parental identity: the existence of children makes mothers and students has made teachers. Dr. Zheng then introduced the work "Mother Mountain" and repositioned the mother's identity: mother and child grow together and depend on each other. Based on the "human beings" and "human becomings" proposed by the Sinology professor Roger T. Ames, Dr. Zheng showed that when discussing "human becomings," we can better discover the relationship between people, answering the essential question of what man is, and discussing where he comes and where he goes can promote people’s thinking at the level of becoming, and come the realization that the past and the future together constitute us in the present.
Associate Professor Zheng Minxi explored three aspects of child philosophy: concepts, methods, and knowledge generation and development. At the conceptual level, Professor Zheng stated that the philosophy of children has corrected cognition on the defects of children and is a new movement for children’s liberation. Childhood is a precious period full of philosophical ideas and is the spiritual home of mankind. This is worth discussing further. From the methodological perspective, he showed that this method of doing philosophy with children fundamentally determines the major role played by children and develops meaningful and valuable exchanges with children. However, under the influence of natural sciences, previous research perspectives were all about children or about children, just like geologists studying geology, only manifesting a binary perspective. The research method of dialogue curbs the binary opposition between children and adults, and shows that children's philosophy explores the way of human existence as a whole and reflects the meaning of existence. In terms of knowledge production, Professor Zheng stated that in the traditional sense, children are not regarded as producers of knowledge, but the ones who need to learn. Although some scholars believe that children are the fathers of adults, this concept has not been incorporated into a knowledge production framework. Our ideas are branded with adult prints. However, the lack of children's language expression does not represent the lack of children's knowledge, and the lack of knowledge does not represent the shallow thinking of children. The defense of children's philosophy for the status of children as producers of childhood knowledge shows that children are one of the most precious sources of human wisdom, and the discussion of children's philosophy is also an exploration of the future of human society.
During the Q&A, the audience actively participated and discussed topics such as the status of children's philosophers and what makes one to make a judgement that a question raised by a child is philosophical. Professor Claire stated that when discussing the status of children's philosophers, it is necessary to distinguish between the concepts of academic philosophy and practical philosophy, so as to determine the status of children's participation in philosophical discussions. In response to the question of what is philosophical, Janette Poulton, an Australian child philosophy expert, also responded, showing that forming an idea itself is philosophical. Professor Claire believes that it is very important to think about whether the problem itself is philosophical. Sometimes we will find that for things that children find interesting, we sometimes jump to the conclusion that these things are philosophical. However, in the process of judgment, we need to think about the building of ideas, the sustained level of those ideas, and the ideas in relation to others. This in turn ensures that we exist as a community.
