Child Development

The notion that children 'develop' is a modern notion through an idea of time towards a future. This temporality takes development and progress (of children, of humanity, and the nation; see [[recapitulation theory]]) as inevitable. The modern conceptualization of history as past, present, and future was based on an arrow of time, in which the past represented the less developed and the future represented the further developed. The new sciences of education that emerged during the 19th century took this evolutionist rationale to think about the child. Development was one of the technologies used to construct the 'white', male child as natural and universal. Developmentalism is thus the rationale that separates the child from the adult based on binary oppositions such as nature/civilization. The child, as close to [[nature]], and thus to 'origin', made the senses (see [[education of the senses]]) and their taming as the raw material of education. Modern progressive arts education was based on this notion that, again, separated the child (as nature) from the adult (as reasoning).