Continuum The Right to Childhoods: Critical Perspectives on Rights, Difference and Knowledge in a Transient World (Continuum Studies in Education (Hardcover))

This book offers an engaging study that analyses contemporary childhood by examining new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference. The author critiques the key issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life, including market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.In this fascinating study, Dimitra Hartas analyses contemporary childhood. She discusses the plurality inherent in childhood and the cultural, ideological, social and biological forces that shape children's experience of growing up in the 21st century. She engages with new lines of argument about diversity, disability and difference, and critiques the big issues that affect both adults' and children's quality of life such as market-driven values, poverty and civic disengagement.Hartas uncovers evidence of how the right to childhood is being violated in both the developed and developing world and how our consumerist culture is shaping children's lives in ways that are not always understood, and advocates the right to childhoods. She concludes by discussing the implications of her findings for both policy and practice in early childhood education, and examines pedagogies that are responsive to ethics, diversity and difference. Review "This book is an ambitious project that addresses four large themes for childhood in the 21st century - rights, transience, difference and knowledge - bringing to bear on them a critical perspective and a wealth of inter-disciplinary knowledge. Dimitra Hartas has made a cogent argument for the right to childhoods and an important contribution to a rapidly developing field."--Sanford Lakoff'The Right to Childhoods provides a way of reviewing how we have been approaching childhood using research from different countries to see if our perceptions of children have adapted to the world we live in today. The author conveys her sense of urgency and belief that this is a global concern that should be emphasized rather than overlooked.' Cristina Limlingan, Herr Research Center for Children and Social Policy, Erikson Institute, USA, in Comparative Education ReviewReviewed in Children & Society, 2010 About the Author Dr. Dimitra Hartas is a Lecturer in Special Educational Needs at Warwick University, Institute of Education.