The End of Innocence: Childhood and Schooling for a Post-Pandemic World
Abstract
The global pandemic has dramatically impacted the lives of billions of children all over the world, creating a massive disruption in education and exacerbating existing multidimensional inequalities that, in North America, disproportionately affects racialized and Indigenous children. Given the ubiquity of the virus’s reach, is COVID-19 the end of childhood innocence? Building on an understanding of childhood as social practice, I describe how childhood innocence has been enacted through, and pivotal to, education as a social practice since the late nineteenth century. I consider how the pandemic is challenging the normative views of childhood that have long informed teaching and learning and outline the possibilities for reimagining childhood and schooling in ways that could promote a radical transformation of public education for a post-pandemic world.
Presentation Description
Unavailable
Location
Stream C
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Garlen, Julie C., "The End of Innocence: Childhood and Schooling for a Post-Pandemic World" (2021). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 52.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2021/2021/52
The End of Innocence: Childhood and Schooling for a Post-Pandemic World
Stream C
The global pandemic has dramatically impacted the lives of billions of children all over the world, creating a massive disruption in education and exacerbating existing multidimensional inequalities that, in North America, disproportionately affects racialized and Indigenous children. Given the ubiquity of the virus’s reach, is COVID-19 the end of childhood innocence? Building on an understanding of childhood as social practice, I describe how childhood innocence has been enacted through, and pivotal to, education as a social practice since the late nineteenth century. I consider how the pandemic is challenging the normative views of childhood that have long informed teaching and learning and outline the possibilities for reimagining childhood and schooling in ways that could promote a radical transformation of public education for a post-pandemic world.
