What are children like? Historical constructions and social meanings of childhood among educators and caregivers

Abstract

In this paper, we present a series of reflections that emerge from our work experience during the year 2019, in two salas cunas (nurseries) located in different areas of the city of Córdoba, Argentina -southeast and northwest. We propose to address the meanings and feelings associated to childhood developed by teachers and caregivers who work there. We start from the notion of childhood as a social and cultural construction. We also acknolwledge the junction of different philosophical and epistemological views in the construction of stereotyped images of childhood, which are still disputed in social institutions and common sense. The study was conducted through an expressive-creative methodology, with the aim of promoting modes of inquiry and reflection that exceed the spoken language, in order to rethink the place of childhood in our societies. To this end, we hosted meetings/workshops with teachers and caregivers of daycare centers, which gave rise to the problematization of some preconceptions emerging from the hegemonic adult-centric view and the "idealized childhood" of the advertising discourse. The different meanings that emerge throughout this work are not presented as opposite ones, but rather as rearticulated concepts permeating the possibilities of being and doing as children. These stereotyped models obstruct the understanding of the complexity presented by "real" childhood, thus assigning it a particular place in the social order as opposed and subordinated to the adult world.