An encounter with children
What is the main argument in Harcourt’s article?
The main argument in Harcourt’s article is the importance of listening to the child. The author conceptualizes children as being with the ability to understand and communicate their standpoints on matters that they may have an opinion about. The children’s viewpoint of childhood often contradicts the interpretation by adults. Harcourt argues that adults should acknowledge children as social actors with inalienable rights as this would help in developing an understanding of children’s developmental psychology. Adults should therefore not feel threatened by the notion of children having rights such as the freedom to receive, seek, and impart information. Rather, adults should strive to develop a deeper understanding of how children experience childhood to be able to appreciate the uniqueness of children’s developmental psychology rather than applying social constructs by adults about children and childhood.
Taking into consideration the ‘disjunction’ that Harcourt describes (Harcourt, 2011, p. 332 and 340), why do you think it is important to listen to children?
İ believe that listening to children holds immeasurable benefits to children’s development. children have their unique language and way of expressing themselves but only a keen adult listener is bound to understand because the communication is highly complex for adults. Failure to listen to children may prompt adults to ignore the children’s everyday life. Understanding and listening to children can be challenging of course. The way children explain themself is more complicated for adults to understand and oftentimes, the adults end up assuming the various forms of communication from children and instead impose their adult ‘constructs’ of childhood thereby ending up misjudging and mistreating the children. As a result, the children may end up thinking that adults are not paying attention to them or do not care and therefore end up stopping to explain themself or stop telling every detail they experienced. İ think listening to children is important because other than adults getting to understand the children’s psychology, it helps in forging healthy relationships between children and adults as children do not feel ignored which may affect children’s adult life. From the legal and moral perspective, children ha their rights to impart information and therefore, adults have an obligation to listen to the children.
How do you respond to Harcourt’s conclusions (2011, p. 341) regarding children’s wellbeing?
Adults can change their understandings of children’s behavior by examining childhood and adulthood from the children’s viewpoints and not based on what adults think childhood should be like. Childhood is a developmental stage in human existence and children in this stage exhibit a general experience. Adults who interact with children including parents and educators should reflect their children’s experiences while trying to deconstruct and understand children’s behavior rather than imposing the adult social constructs. As adults observe children’s behavior, they should also understand that children also observe them. Children have things to learn from adults so as adults have lessons to learn from children. Exchange and debate of ideas, and provide reciprocal learning which would be of great benefit to both adults and children. In this way, we may develop a greater symmetry between the two viewpoints and give rise to a more equitable reality of childhood.’’ ( Harcourt 2011). Adults and children can work together to give specifications to different distances and that may help to understand their experiences and their thinkings.
Reference
Harcourt, D., 2011. An encounter with children: seeking meaning and understanding about childhood. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 19(3), pp.331-343.