Understanding childhood - Test 4

C2 Proficiency · Multiple Matching · Cambridge English Proficiency 2, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read extracts from an introduction to a book about the study of children. For questions 1–10, choose from the sections (A-E). The sections may be chosen more than once.

Common sense suggests a child is someone who is young, who is smaller, more immature and vulnerable and in many other ways different to human adults. The pioneer anthropologist of childhood Margaret Mead believed children everywhere were 'pygmies among giants, ignorant among the knowledgeable, wordless among the inarticulate'. Half a century later, there is good reason to challenge this universal prescription for young humanity. Children share in common that they are growing, changing and learning, but they differ in innumerable ways in the expression of growth and change, as well as in the circumstances, goals and extent of their learning. They are not universally seen as weak, wordless or ignorant. Childhood is viewed very differently depending on the geographical area under investigation and the period of time under study as well as the standpoint of the person studying it.

This book is as much about studying the cultural beliefs, representations and discourses of childhood as about studying children's physical and psychological immaturity, growth and development. Of course, the two are linked. Key questions are raised about children – their needs, competences, responsibilities and rights. Put simply, how far are they seen as innocents who need protection, nurture and training, and how far as social actors who engage with and contribute to their development, and who have a right to be heard? The near universal adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has come to symbolize a profound and challenging shift in perspective, especially its emphasis on children's participatory rights. This is reflected in the way this book includes perspectives of children and young people on many of the issues being discussed.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child perceives a child to be anyone under the age of eighteen, which is also consistent with much national and international legislation. But what does this vast cross-section of the world's population – in some countries nearly half the population – have in common that justifies a single formal designation? This is not just an issue of diversity between societies. It is also about the varieties of childhood within the broad age span nought to eighteen years. The child of five months is worlds apart from the child of five years, as is the five year old from the fifteen year old. In many ways, a fifteen-year-old 'child' has more in common with a twenty-five-year-old 'adult' than with a five-year-old 'child'.

Developmental psychology has provided detailed descriptions of the many stages and transitions that take place within Western childhoods, which are also reflected in everyday distinctions in the English language – for example, between babies, toddlers, school children, teenagers and young people. Distinguishing kinds of childhood by finely divided ages is not universal. In some societies, children's ages have not always been recorded; their status has been determined by their abilities, their social class or caste and their gender, not by their age. Defining childhood as a distinctive life phase is also premised on assumptions about adulthood. There is good reason to challenge the contrast between the dependent, vulnerable, developing child and the autonomous, mature, knowing adult – for example, by acknowledging situations where adults may be vulnerable and children may be resilient.

A guiding principle in planning this book has been to acknowledge wherever possible that knowledge, beliefs and understanding about childhood are culturally situated. Much scientific research on childhood, especially in developmental psychology, has been criticized for presenting its conclusions as universal truths, even though the research was based on children and young people growing up in industrialized societies, especially in Europe and North America. In the same way, dominant discourses of childhood innocence have to be understood in the context of Western history and cultural traditions. This issue applies even more strongly in relation to the study of children's rights, where one of the key debates is about how far the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child projects a universalized image of the individualized child which fails to take account of competing cultural traditions.

Understanding childhood

the need to be aware of bias in interpretation

the lack of documentation on certain children

the lack of consensus regarding children's capabilities

sources of misleading views on children

the interdependence of different approaches to studying childhood

a concern about the implication of differences in maturity between children

a case for recognising exceptions to traditional characteristics

valuing children's opinions in current debates

how laws have come to define a child

the proportion of children in certain societies

In which section are the following mentioned?

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