The first I call, Developmental Ageism, which is just as it’s name implies, a prejudice against certain individuals on the basis of their developmental state. This is the view that suggests children ought to be barred from certain activities completely until a specifically determined age at which they should be able to demonstrate complete competence.
This view holds that children and adults exist along two separate planes, and that the child plane dies out and is replaced by the adult plane through physical and cognitive maturation. And lastly, this view holds that full “adult” maturity is a child’s teleological path. This view is bigoted and leaves no room for a child to actually do the very all-important transformation from "child" to "adult" in any meaningful way, despite best intentions. In seeking to protect children, it starves them. Children and adults are not two separate species, either.
The second I call, Developmental Egalitarianism, which is commonly called the “children are little adults” rationale. This is widely denounced in the modern world simply because it is has been largely scientifically discredited with the movements of Empiricism, Darwinism, and countless developmental studies into human physical and psychological growth over the past 200 years.
Proponents make the supposition that child development is stalled by social or cultural expectations, and that children are naturally able to do adult tasks long before they are said to be developmentally capable, and therefore argue that only through full incorporation into "adult" society can children develop in a natural way. This view is ignorant and also leaves no room for a child to fit into an adult world made for other adults, and therefore become systemically disenfranchised, despite its best intentions. As you can observe, it is just as bigoted to ignore a child's unique developmental characteristics as it is to limit a child by them.
The third I call, Developmental Relativism, which I personally believe to be the right way of looking at human development, if not the correct manifestation itself. Unlike Developmental Ageism, this theory posits that the developmental plane between children and adults exists along the same continuum, and therefore behaviors carried out along the continuum are the same behaviors as they would be at any stage in human development, only expressed in ways appropriate, physically and cognitively, for that developmental stage.
Unlike Developmental Egalitarianism, this theory posits that children are not capable of certain adult tasks, but may be capable of adult tasks that take into account the unique developmental differences that impair a child from performing certain tasks. Therefore, it is the view that forbidding a child from participating in an adult activity (as in Developmental Ageism) should not be necessary so long as the level of participation is appropriate for the ability of the child. Children and adults are the same species, just express the same human strengths and weaknesses relative to one another.
I both loved and was sad-end by what you said Crake.
ReplyDeleteSociety is too willing to throw kids onto the streets,
as if they are to be tolerated, until they of a certain age.