Idolising Children?

There are blogs for everything.

Economists musing on politics, life and everything else. Emo teens expressing their angst and depression amid slightly thicker eyeliner (though not as think as goths). There are craft blogs, and blogs of pregnant women or soon-to-be dads. There are blogs people write pretending to be their pets and blogs that cover real time conflicts that get turned into books.

But, in my wanderings I haven’t found any blogs that discuss the policies and systems that govern the lives of children and families. (I’m happy for people to point me to one)

There are many blogs about parenting and countless message boards and online forums where parents band together for support, suggestions in those hours when bub just won’t sleep. But, few blogs discussing what childcare should really look like? How education or children’s media could be different? A blog that looks at what governments are doing in regards to children and whether it is what needs to be done?

This is what the Idolising Children blog aims to do.

The book, Idolising Children has been described as an anti-parenting manual. In a way that is an attempt to define it as different from the hundreds of books in the parenting section of your local bookshop. Idolising Children wants to find new ways of thinking about childhood and youth and then use our new idea of childhood to reshape the systems that guide our children’s lives.

How young should children be before they are allowed to vote in elections?
How can we support children to participate in the governance models of our businesses and organisations?
What knowledge and understanding can children give to us that we don’t have?

The questions in this blog need to be challenging. They need to be questions that are rarely, if ever asked. They need to be like this to help shift my own thinking. The extremes are only dangerous if pursued with speed. But, in the long term that can prove to be crucial. Remember that economist Milton Friedman was seen as an extremist about 50 years ago…

The fundamental point this blog will make over and over again is that we must respect children, not just as children, but as human beings and contributing members of our society.

That means that “the children are out future” line is useless and of no value in the ideas we will discuss here. To me, it is a cop out, children are here now and can participate now. By, talking about them as the future, we are ignoring the role they can play in our society now.

At the emotional core, children are the same us. They are more capable than we give them credit for - and this doesn’t mean they can learn to read and write earlier, it means they are engaging, learning and developing in ways we have not yet come to understand…and maybe we shouldn’t. Because if we do, we will again try and manipulate the process of growing up and developing into capable, competent adults.

I hope you enjoy reading.