Socialization and Civil Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Politics as Supernanny

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 1-10

3. The Survival of the Fittest Child

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 11-21

4. The Modernity of Child Abuse

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 23-33

5. The Educative Civil Society as Remedy

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 35-55

6. Socialization for the Common Good

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 55-67

7. Evil as a Problem of Upbringing And Socialization

   • Micha de Winter

   Pages 69-93

8. Back Matter

   Pages 95-107

   PDF

There is a clear relation between the way children are raised and the way the world is heading. Famous philosophers and educationists such as Kant, Dewey, Montessori and Freire, exposed clearly the direct link between the social and political abuses of their time and the way in which children were brought up. From their analysis they each conceived the ambition of making the world a better place through educational reform. For various reasons it is not fashionable these days to make any kind of direct connection between child upbringing and ‘the state of the world’. The project of child-rearing gradually became focussed on individual development. In this book, Dutch child-psychologist Micha de Winter argues that there should be much more to child-raising, education and youth policy – for example, to learn to understand and practice democratic citizenship, humanity and freedom. What does it mean to live in a democratic society, how do you resist the seductions of ‘them-versus-us’ thinking which both offers the feelings of security and of belonging to a group and at the same time invites the risk of dehumanizing and excluding the other? Socialization from this perspective is a common responsibility that requires an educative civil society.

• Dewey
• Freire
• Montessori
• philosophy of education
• Kant

• University of Utrecht, The Netherlands

  Micha de Winter

Policies and ethics