The Human Experience: The Early Years

Exploring the nature of early childhood, this work looks at previous research and demonstrates the conflict between the traditional interpretations of childhood and contemporary literature based on experiments. The conclusion is drawn that the application of critical intelligence begins far earlier than the Piagetian assumptions. This intelligence includes the understanding of the social, as well as the physical world. The experience of childhood is, therefore, more akin to entering an "alien" world which demands interpretation, than to imbibing all that is observed.. This critical scrutiny includes parents and siblings, the importance of relationships is constantly reiterated. The book explores the experience of home and the early development of language and categorization. It then demonstrates how children develop a sense of their own place in society. The sophisticated semi-structured interviews on which the book is based reveal very clear strands of analysis of the world as children see it. The distinction between the rich and poor, and other divisions of society, are carefully, if idiosyncractically analyzed, demonstrating the way in which young children interpret the data that is so unsystematically set before them. The book then delineates children's experience of school: their attitudes to both the formal and the social side of school, from bullying to disaffection, their friendships with teachers and peers, to competition, academic demands and stress. The whole experience of childhood, the inadvertent as well as the formal, the hidden as well as the structured, is summarized in such a way as to underline the author's conviction of the need for a thorough rethink about the nature of the early years, and the need to change social and public policy.