Do We Tactfully Meet The Children Halfway?

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Do we tactfully meet the children halfway?

Working with the child's autonomy as a goal in upbringing and education


presupposes qualities of interaction.

Dr. Jan Jaap Rothuizen


VIA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
© CC-BY-ND

In this paper I wil introduce core concepts in pedagogy. Concepts are guiding what we can see, so the use
of new concepts can help us to see a different reality. Wittgenstein already drew attention to the close
connection between “language games” and “forms of life”. What are the concepts and stories we live by?
Are they satisfying? Do they need new interpretations? What new concepts can help us to understand in
new ways, to develop new stories we can live by?

In this paper I will introduce some of concepts that are key concepts in my understanding of education:
autonomy, relationships, subjectification, beings and becomings, the child´s perspective, integrity,
participation, democratic moments, recognition, self-education, collaborative action, improvisation,
practitioner-research.

I will refer to text that elaborate those concepts and understandings. The goal of this paper is to stimulate
discussion about daily practice and about the educational life that deserves your support.

Most of the articles I refer to in this paper will be distributed to the participants in the course.

Introduction.
The modern history of education as an academic subject begins in the Renaissance and the time of the
Enlightenment, when people in cities around the Mediterranean, and later on also in northern European
cities, got the idea that change and development was possible. Philosophers became interested in
education, as they saw the child as a promise for possible change, and not only as a being that should learn
to think and act as previous generations. Here we find the starting point for the conception of upbringing
and education as a project that relates to an unknown future instead of a tradition that relates to the past.

Three philosophers from three different areas in Europe wrote about education in the 17. and 18. Century,
and they can be seen as the founding fathers of three different paradigms.

John Locke in Essex (England) asked how to furnish the child´s mind, when this mind could be supposed to
be “white paper, void of all characters without any ideas”. He founded the pedagogical tradition that
believes that the central power in education is influence: writing on the child´s open mind. In Locke´s
opinion, it was necessary to influence, and then at some mystical moment the child would be able to
become autonomous. No doubt for Locke that the relationship between the writer (educator) and the
white paper (the child) is an authoritarian one.

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Jean Jacques Rousseau in Geneve and Paris opposed this view: Locke is only preparing children to adapt to
the bourgeois society that is developing; it is just socialization and adaptation. Rousseau distrusted society:
“Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of
man”, and his solution was to ban the influence of society in upbringing and education: back to nature.
Let´s give place for the natural development: “On leaving my hands he will not, I admit, be a magistrate , a
soldier, or a priest; first of all he will be a man”. Raised as a (hu)man, the child will be able to find its own
way, also, and specially, when the conditions in society are changing and unstable.

Rousseau and his radical ideas about freedom and autonomy impressed Immanuel Kant, in Königsbergen
(Prussia), but he wat not convinced that nature was the key to freedom. In his opinion, what was needed,
was the child´s moral development, that means: the development of the child´s own ability to make good
choices, a task the child only could lift himself, but not without help. So for Kant the task of the educator
and teacher becomes paradoxical: on one hand influence (or in Kants words: coercion) was necessary but
at the same time the goal should be freedom and the child´s autonomy.

With these three philosophies, three paradigms of education were founded: an authoritarian style (Locke),
a child-centered and quite anti-authoritarian style (Rousseau) and a style that focuses on the quality of the
pedagogical relationship and on the growth of the child´s own powers of judgment.

It is not difficult to find tracks of those paradigms and styles in actual debates and practices, and it would
be an illusion to suppose that each of them could be found in a pure form. Locke stresses the dimension of
education that concerns qualification, as qualifications give the child new possibilities. Rousseau stresses
the dimension of education that concerns subjectification, as the child has the right to become an
autonomous subject. Kant stresses that two dimensions of education are intertwined , even though they
seemingly point in different direction: socialization, becoming a part of the world that already exists, is an
unavoidable point of departure, but the goal is not adaptation but autonomy; becoming a subject that
takes responsibility for own choices. In the Kantian tradition upbringing and education is a question of
meeting the child tactfully halfway. It will be mainly this tradition (paradigm, style) we will follow in this
paper.

A contemporary philosopher of education, Gert Biesta (Biesta, 2010), summarizes the educational
challenges in this way : education operates in three domains: socialization, qualification and
subjectification. Educators will have goals for each domain, and they are at stake all the time.

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The art of education is to handle this multi-dimensionality and the ability to prioritize in the right way in
every unique situation. In order to develop this art, the teacher needs to know her pupils and a core task
for the educator is to develop educational relationships.

The text we have chosen represent a way of thinking on education that is well known in our own country
(Denmark) and Scandinavia, but it is not typically Danish (or Scandinavian), as it has roots in the
pedagogical project that took shape in the renaissance. Therefor we have also chosen two texts that do not
have any relation with the Nordic countries. We have added an appendix, where we sort out different
figurations of the child and the following educational focus and approaches

Tradition and rupture


The texts we have gathered combine

- A call for education as a project that aims at the child´s autonomy, the child as an actor in the
world.
- A call for education to recognize the child both as a being, right here and now, with unalienable
rights and qualities and as a becoming; on its way to become an adult
- Attentiveness for how those ideas about children and education may represent ruptures with older
and other traditional ways of treating children

The text “The child´s right to be himself” by Janusz Korczak (Korczak, 2009) is nearly 100 years old, but it
still talks to us. Korczak was director of an orphanage in Warsaw1, and he is one of the many educators who
at that time, in the first part of the 20th. century, after the first world war, were disappointed by the mess
grown-up people had created, and who projected the future and the hope for a better world in children.
Just as other educational practitioners and theoreticians from that time, e.g. Ellen Key, Celestine Freinet,
Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Rudolf Steiner, he was very well aware that children only could be a symbol

1
see: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Korczak for more information about him

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for hope and new beginnings if they were accepted in their own right, as beings; not only as becomings but
also as beings.

In the text “The Child´s right to be himself” Korczak asks “do we tactfully meet the children halfway, do we
avoid unneccesary grievances, facilitate mutual relations. Are we not rather stubborn, capricious, offensive
and annoying”. As long as we think we as adults are the ones who always know best and therefore have to
direct the child´s activities and mind, life may be easy for us, but we do not give the children conditions for
better development. Being an educator implied for Korczak being suspicious about what grown-ups,
including himself take for granted and being curious to discover the child´s perspective, not as a final truth,
but as a starting point for a more dialogical relationship.

Korczak’s work and writings have been an important inspiration for the formulation of the UN Declaration
of Children’s Rights (1959) and the Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989) (Korczak, 2009, see also
http://www.unicef.org/crc/)

While Korczak was a doctor, who (literally) devoted his life to disadvantaged children for 70 years agoo,
Jesper Juul is a family therapist who is still active, but their messages are remarkably similar. Both of them
do away with the adult centered way of bringing up and education.

Jesper Juuls text “methods of upbringing” (Juul, 2011) is an extract from the introduction in the book
“Your competent child”2. A book written for about twenty years agoo and translated in more then 20
languages. The book is about the rupture with the authoritarian education, and it shows an alternative.
“When children are born, they are fully human –that is, they are social, responsive and empatic.” “It´s time
(…) to change how we relate to children – to move from a subject-object relationship to a subject-subject
relationship.” . This line of thought resembles Korczaks, and seems to be a relevant answer on
contemporary questions about upbringing and education.

Jesper Juul is a psychotherapist and he relates the question of contemporary upbringing not to abstract
principles, but to human well being in family and schools. His argument is compatible with modern
psychological insights (e.g. Daniel Stern), but also with older psychodynamic models (e.g. Donald Winnicott,
Margareth Mahler). Juul stresses the child’s natural willingness to cooperate and adapt. If this willingness is
to be saved, the child’s natural ability to express when the quest for cooperation leads to a loss of sense of
the self (integrity), should be notices and cared for as well.

Children are competent, but this competence is put to the test when they are raised in a power-structure
that misjudges them, and there is a lack of recognition of the child´s perspective. As a parent or teacher,
says Juul, you should not only be interested in your own perspective, but also in the child´s. The healthy
alternative to the power play, he says, is open, personal dialogue that takes into account the desires,
dreams and needs of children as well as those of adults.

The rupture in upbringing and education, from a power-structure towards dialogue and recognition, is also
connected with the changing expectations to individuals in society. For not so many years beings disciplined

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The book is published in Italy under the title: Il bambino è competente. Valori e cognoscenze in famiglia.
The book “Asta sunt eu! Cine esti tu?” is published in Romanian

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and able to submit to power structures was a more or less necessary and appreciated characteristic, while
we today request strong individuals who can lead themselves. Jesper Juul points out that being integrated
in traditions and being a competent person is not a contradiction. Upbringing and education deal with
initiation and individualization at once. A key word in this process is participation.

Participation and democratic moments


Participation is also a key word in the text written by Berit Bae: Children´s right to participate –challenges
in everyday interactions (Bae, 2009) The right to participation, as expressed in the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, challenges dominating discourses regarding relationships and adult roles. The
Norwegian Kindergarten Act states that children should have the right to express their views on the day-to-
day activities.

Professor Berit Bae has been working extensively with the concept of definition power. In her empirical
findings she found that adults exercise “definition power”: they define the child, and they communicate
their definitions in many ways to the child. Adults do not always realize that their “definitions” not
necessarily are right, or at least in accordance with the child’s own views. Neither are they aware of the
power they exert, as the dominant position of the adult will lead to the child´s submission under this
definition, also in those cases when the definition is not in accordance with the child´s own original feeling.
The adult always is in a powerful position and should be careful in how to exercise this power. Participation
that implies being attentive and listening to the child is a good cure against unjustified and harmful exercise
of definition-power. For Berit Bae, and maybe for a strong tradition in Scandinavian Kindergarten-
pedagogy, participation is closely related to education for democracy.

In her article, Berit Bae stresses and elaborates what it means to view children both as “beings” and as
“becomings”. If children only where “becomings” we should only be concerned with their future, for “real
life”. Behind this idea of children as just becomings we can glimpse John Locks view on education. But
children are also “beings”, whose life here end now matters, who should be met just where they are, in
their childhood.

The democratic form of life is not something that first will count in the future, it is also relevant here and
now, and this “here and now” also is an education for the future. What then means “democracy” and
“participation” in childhood-settings? For Bae it makes sense to talk about “democratic moments”, not
about a formalized democratic prcedures. In relation to the occurrence of those democratic moments the
empirical study this article refers to distinguishes between narrow and spacious interactional patterns. In
the spacious interactional patterns both the teacher and the child can come forth as subjects. The empirical
study also point out what kind of contributions from the teacher seem especially important:

- Following up on the child´s initiative


- Emotional responsiveness and expressivity
- An attitude of playfulness
- The ability to shift perspective and take the child´s perspective.

In other studies Berit Bae also elaborates the concept of recognition and the four ways of being that can
guide the work with recognition in practice:

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 Understanding (the child from its own perspective)
 Confirmation (affirming the child´s experience in a given situation; not praise or positive feed-back))
 Openness (giving up attempts to use, dominate, manipulate or control others)
 Self reflection (upon our contribution to and role in communication, a separation of aspects of oneself
from aspects of others)

Working with recognition in schools contributes to learning beyond cognition3. Further reading: (Ritchie,
2008; Schibbye, 1993)

Education and self-education


In educational theory the concept of self-education is not unknown. We find the concept in the continental
tradition, specially in the traditions inspired by Rousseau and by Kant. The concept of self-education
originates in the difficulty of answering the question how to raise children towards autonomy: Autonomy is
not something one person can learn or give another person, but at the other hand, the child does not attain
autonomy unless grownups take responsibility and initiate the child in the world. Self-education is the
child´s own affair, it is how (s)he develops him og herself. Grown up people can help, initiate, challenge,
remove stones from the road, encourage, comfort, but in the end the child makes her or his own moves.
This also means that educators never precisely can know what will happen, and how things will end.
Education requires attentiveness, recognition and the ability to adapt plans to what seems to be most
appropriate in the specific situation, at this moment, with those kids (see also Manen, 2008). That requires
an ability to improvise, to make judgements about what is appropriate, and the willingness to take risks.
Maybe a teacher in a subject is doing a good job in teaching the subject in order to give the children a
possibility for getting better qualifications in this subject. But when the children are not motivated, when
education is out of touch with self-education, it is time to stop, and to ask: how can we re-establish a
cooperative atmosphere. That may require some other pedagogical actions then just continuing the usual
teaching or putting oneself on top of a power structure and keep the children down.

With children, not to them


The International Step by Step Association (ISSA) (www.issa.nl, http://l4wb.org) had its 2009 conference in
Bucharest, under the title “Seeds of change: effective investments in early childhood for enduring social
progress.” ISSA is a membership association, which serves as learning community and a champion for
quality and equity for all children and their families. The ISSA network embodies over 60 members from
across Europe and Central Asia and is a dynamic mix of NGO’s, schools and kindergartens, higher education
and academic institutions. All ISSA members work to ensure the best quality care and education for young
children, especially the most vulnerable.

ISSA has elaborated a booklet about Competent Educators of the 21st Century: Principles of Quality
Pedagogy (http://www.issa.nl/content/issa-quality-principles) , a policy document that defines quality

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Further reading: (Ritchie, 2008; Schibbye, 1993)

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teaching practices when working with children from 3 to 10 years old, and their families, to better support
the child's development and well-being. Referring to the importance of well-being, of children´s rights and
of democracy the main point is “with children, not to them”. This is very much in line with what we have
dealt with in this paper. ISSA recommends and promotes collaborative processes that can encourage
practitioner´s critical reflection on their practice, with reference to basic educational values. “Quality”, ISSA
says, “is a process that requires the building of shared values and meanings.”(Tankersley & Ionescu, 2016).
That means, that (pre)school development is a collaborative action, that both requires and stimulates
engagement of the teachers. For the development of the culture of teaching and learning support from
and active participation of the authorities is required. The concepts and thoughts presented in this paper
and in the underlying literature can serve as keystones for discussions and enquiries, leading towards the
building of shared values and meanings.

The principles of quality concerning the learning-environment elaborated by ISSA are attached to this
material as appendix 2.

How to develop teaching-skills and educational setting?


If it is true that education is more than initiation, discipline and the teaching of subjects, if it is true that
education requires attentiveness, recognition, changing planned activities and improvisation, how then can
a teacher develop his or her skills and competences?

The great American educational philosopher John Dewey saw research as a normal human activity: every
time you get stuck you have to find out, you do research in order to be able to act more appropriate.
Learning and doing research are intimately connected for him, as both serve the higher goal of acting
appropriate in the world.

Today the talk is about class-room research, participative action- research, and practitioner research; terms
that point to the activity of researching own experiences. This kind of research is in line with Deweys idea
that research is a natural activity, that sometime you have to get more knowledge about what is at stake in
order to be able to act adequate.

I have chosen to finish this paper with a reference to Korczak, who also was the first one mentioned in the
paragraph about tradition and rupture. Korczak was a reflective person who looked deeply and honestly
into himself and his actions; he was a practitioner-researcher. He encouraged teachers to become
autonomous knowledge producers by questioning an interrogating their work. For him and for us that is
the road towards the teachers own self-education. “Korczak teaches us”, writes Efron (2005), “that it is the
educator´s professional obligation to continuously improve and grow professionally, in order to become a
force of change and a leader in the struggle to improve children´s lives and futures.”.

It is important to understand that general knowledge, that means knowledge about the subject for one´s
teaching and knowledge about curriculum, didactics, developmental psychology etcetera, is a good
resource, but that it is not enough for becoming a good teacher. In order to become a good teacher, a
virtuous teacher , the teacher needs knowledge of his or her own specific circumstances: the good teacher
always asks questions, wonders and searches.

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Korczak says: “the question is much more important than the answer. It is a guide for thoughts on the way
towards goals.” For Korczak the knowledge of the specific circumstances, the knowledge about what
matters, is tied to self-knowledge. Research is not simply gathering “data”, but seeking understanding, and
in order to achieve new understanding one has to go into different conversations: conversations with
oneself, with literature and with colleagues. I fully agree with Korczaks request for teachers who recognize
how their insights, beliefs and values inform their actions, and who systematically research their own
practice as an entry to deeper understanding of their students and their own theories of practice.

--------------------------------------

Bae, B. (2009). Children’s right to participate - challenges in everyday interactions. European Early
Childhood Education Research Journal, 17(3), 391–406. http://doi.org/10.1080/13502930903101594

Biesta, G. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement. Ethics, politics, democracy. Boulder, Colorado:
Paradigm publishers.

Biesta, G. (2015). How does a competent teacher become a good teacher? On judgement, wisdom, and
virtuosity in teaching and teacher education. I R. Heilbronn & L. Foreman-Peck (Red.), Philosophical
perspectives on teacher education.

Juul, J. (2011). Your competent child: toward a new paradigm in parenting and education. Bloomington:
Balboa press.

Korczak, J. (2009). The child´s right to respect. Janusz Korczak’s legacy Lectures on today’s challenges for
children. (Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, Red.). Strasbourg: Council of Europe
Publishing. Hentet fra http://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/source/prems/PublicationKorczak_en.pdf

Manen, M. van. (2008). Pedagogical Sensitivity and Teachers Practical Knowing-in-Action Max van Manen
University of Alberta. Peking University Education Review, 1–23.

Ritchie, T. (2008). Viewpoints on recognition and education. I N. Krüger & B. Ravn (Red.), Learning beyond
cognition (s. 187–198). Copenhagen: Danish University of Education Press. Hentet fra
http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RCED/article/viewFile/RCED0707220197A/15681

Schibbye, A.-L. L. (1993). The role of “recognition” in the resolution of a specific interpersoanl dilemma.
Journal of phenomenological psychology, 24, 175–189.

Tankersley, D., & Ionescu, M. (2016). The ISSA principles of quality pedagogy: quality early childhood
education and care through democratic processes. Learning for well-being magazine, 1(1).

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Texts that will be distributed:

Bae, B. (2009). Children’s right to participate - challenges in everyday interactions. European Early
Childhood Education Research Journal, 17(3), 391–406. http://doi.org/10.1080/135029309031015

Efron, S. (2005). Janusz Korczak: Legacy of a Practitioner-Researcher. Journal of Teacher Education,


56(2), 145–156. http://doi.org/10.1177/0022487104274415

Juul, J. (2011). Ch. 1: Family-values: Methods of upbringing. From: Your competent child: toward a
new paradigm in parenting and education. (Introduction: upbringing). Bloomington: Balboa press.

Korczak, J. (1967). The child´s right to be himself. From: Selected works of Janusz Korczak.
Washington: The National Science Founcation

Tankersley, D., & Ionescu, M. (2016). The ISSA principles of quality pedagogy: quality early childhood
education and care through democratic processes. Learning for well-being magazine, 1(1).

Video:
http://bupl.dk/forskning/stoettede_projekter/bupls_forskningsprojekter/paedagogers_forstaaelser?O
penDocument

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Appendix1: Figurations of child

Figurations of child Theoretical influences What child lacks by What culture needs to
nature provide
Developing child Aristotle, Darwin, Maturity Maturation, Guidance
Piaget, Vygotsky

Ignorant child Plato, Aristotle, Locke Rationality; Experience Instruction, Training

Evil child Christianity, esp. Thrustworthiness, Control, discipline,


branches of natural goodness Inculcation, Drawing in
Protestantism

Innocent child Romantics, Rousseau Responsibility Protection, Facilitation

Communal child African Philosophy, Social relationships, Socialisation by elders,


Ubuntu Norms and values Inculcation

Fragile child Psycho-medical Resilience Protection, Medication,


scientific model Diagnoses; Remediation

Competent child Daniel Stern, Jesper The child is a being, not Competent adults who
Juul, Korczak only a becoming, so van recognize the child
let´s focus on what it is as an active aprticpant
not on what it lacks!

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Appendix 2: The ISSA Quality principles concerning the learning environment
The learning environment greatly influences children’s cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.
By creating a physically and psychologically safe and stimulating environment that offers a variety of developmentally
appropriate materials, tasks, and situations, the educator encourages children’s learning through independent and
group exploration, play, access to diverse resources, and interaction with other children and adults.
By ensuring that every child feels welcomed, the educator gives children the message that every individual is
respected, that each child and family is an important part of the classroom community, and that every child has
opportunities to benefit from the shared community space and resources and to participate in maintaining them. By
offering children a secure environment and accommodating specific learning needs, the educator encourages children
to work cooperatively, to engage in different kinds of activities, and to take learning risks. Outdoor areas of the school
and community resources are also valuable components of a rich learning environment.

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