Abstract
This chapter discusses the notion of the ‘21st century child’ in the light of contemporary and often challenging and complex contexts in which children are now growing up. Children and young people are now labelled as ‘digital natives’, tangled up inextricably in the world wide web, with toddlers, tweens and teens seen as consumers of education as well as consumers of goods and products. As a result, education has also become a commodity. Reactions and responses to these modernist trends driven by information technologies and the media include various ‘back to nature’ initiatives such as the Forest School movement in the UK and Europe, and bush kindergartens in Australia. This chapter also addresses those who are charged with the care, support and upbringing of our children—parents, guardians and families. Parenting as a vocation is introduced and discussed, in the light of the various roles that parents have in educating their children and managing their own learning about parenting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Change history
19 April 2022
A correction has been published.
References
ABC TV. (2017, June 3). School’s out. Compass. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Albrecht, N. (2014). Wellness: A conceptual framework for school-based mindfulness programs. The International Journal of Health, Wellness and Society, 4(1), 21–36.
Baldwin, R. (1989). You are your child’s first teacher. Berkeley: Celestial Arts.
Baldwin, R. (2016). The great convergence: Information Technology and the new globalization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Barbour, C., & Barbour, N. (1997). Families, schools and communities: Building partnerships for educating children. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Barkham, P. (2014, December 10). Forest schools: Fires, trees and mud pies. The Guardian.
Bennett, R. (2016, September 12). Tiger mums are unhappiest parents. The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/tiger-mums-are-unhappiest-parents/news-story/b092b9ed68ad1c69b5814ef783cde4ea. Accessed 5 June 2017.
Burrows, L. (2017, May 30). Children benefit from mindful teachers. The Advertiser.
Corderoy, J. (2017). Massive cyber attack creates chaos around the world. http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/hacking/massive-cyber-attack-creates-chaos-around-the-world/news-story/b248da44b753489a3f207dfee2ce78a9. Accessed 2 June 2017.
Creed, B. (2017). Stray: Human-animal ethics in the anthropocene. Sydney: Power Publications.
Dahlin, B. (2006). Education, history and be(com)ing human: Two essays in philosophy and education. Karlstad: Karlstad University.
Demos, J., & Demos, V. (1969). Adolescence in historical perspective. Journal of Marriage and Family, 31(4), 632–638.
George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. (2015, December 8). New report finds 43 percent increase in ADHD diagnosis for US schoolchildren: Girls showed a sharp rise in ADHD diagnosis during eight-year study period. ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151208150630.htm. Accessed 3 June 2017.
Gibran, K. (1923). The Prophet. New York: Alfred A Knopf.
Gross, R. (1963). The teacher and the taught. New York: Dell Publishing Co.
Harford, T. (2014, March 28). Big data: Are we making a big mistake? Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0. Accessed 21 July 2017.
Hicks, M. (2013, August). Why the increase in ADHD? New research reveals causes for ADHD type behaviors. Psychology today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/digital-pandemic/201308/why-the-increase-in-adhd. Accessed 3 June 2017.
Hopkins, N. (2017a). Social giant faced with difficult balancing act. The Guardian Weekly, 26(05), 17.
Hopkins, N. (2017b). Revealed: Facebook’s rules on sex, racism and violence. The Guardian Weekly, 26(05), 17.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Marion Boyars.
Kearney, V. (2014). Bush kindy as a childcare centre. Chapter 3, In T. Stehlik & L. Burrows (Eds.), Teaching with spirit: New perspectives on Steiner Education in Australia. Murwillumbah: Immortal Books.
Knight, S. (2017). Forest schools in practice. London: Sage.
Kramer, R. (1976). Maria Montessori: A biography. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York: Algonquin Books.
McMillan, M. (1919). The nursery school. London: Dent and Sons.
Merga, M. K., & Roni, S. M. (2017, March 10). Children prefer to read books on paper rather than screens. The Conversation.http://theconversation.com/children-prefer-to-read-books-on-paper-rather-than-screens-74171. Accessed 3 June 2017.
Moore, R. (2014b). Nature play and learning places: Creating and imagining places where children engage with nature. Raleigh: Natural Learning Initiative and Reston/National Wildlife Federation.
Morita, E., Fukuda, S., Nagano, J., Hamajima, N., Yamamoto, H., Iwae, Y., Nakashima, T., Ohira, H., & Shirakawa, T. (2007). Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction. Public Health, 121(1), 54–63.
Newton, M. (2002). Savage boys and wild girls: A history of feral children. New York: Picador.
Peters, M. (2017). Education in a post-truth world. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(6), 563–566. Special Section: History Education.
Postman, N. (1994). The disappearance of childhood. New York: Vintage.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1–6.
Pridham, B. (2014). Bush kindy. Chapter 2, In T. Stehlik & L. Burrows (Eds.), Teaching with spirit: New perspectives on Steiner education in Australia. Murwillumbah: Immortal Books.
Reingold, J. (2015). Everybody hates Pearson. Fortune. http://fortune.com/2015/01/21/everybody-hates-pearson/. Accessed 16 May 2017.
Salinger, J. D. (1951). Catcher in the rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Schwartz, E. (1999). Millennial child. Great Barrington: Anthroposophic Press.
Seligman, M. (1995). The optimistic child: A revolutionary approach to raising resilient children. Sydney: Random House.
Seligman, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5–14.
Stehlik, T. (2002). Each parent carries the flame: Waldorf Schools as sites for promoting lifelong learning, creating community and educating for social renewal. Flaxton: Post Pressed.
Stehlik, T. (2015). Each parent carries the flame: Waldorf Schools as sites for promoting lifelong learning, creating community and educating for social renewal (2nd ed.). Adelaide: Mylor Press.
Sun, Y., Mensah, F., Azzopardi, P., Patton, G., & Wake, M. (2017, May). Childhood social disadvantage and pubertal timing: A national birth cohort from Australia. Pediatrics. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/05/19/peds.2016-4099. Accessed 25 May 2017.
UNICEF. (1989). United Nations convention on the rights of the child. https://www.unicef.org.au/Upload/UNICEF/Media/Our%20work/childfriendlycrc.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2017.
US Census Bureau. (2017). The Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood: 1975–2016. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2017/demo/p20-579.html. Accessed March 22, 2018.
Veen, W. (2006). Homo Zappiens and the need for new education systems. https://www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/38360892.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2017.
Whitbourne, S. K. (2013, June 2). The joys of generativity in midlife. The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-krauss-whitbourne/generativity_b_2575916.html. Accessed 16 Sept 2017.
Young, J. (2017, January 25). The effects of “helicopter parenting”. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-your-adult-child-breaks-your-heart/201701/the-effects-helicopter-parenting. Accessed 5 June 2017.
Zajonc, A. (2016). Contemplation in education. In K. A. Schonert-Reichl & R. W. Roeser (Eds.), The handbook of mindfulness in education. New York: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Stehlik, T. (2018). The Twenty-First-Century Child. In: Educational Philosophy for 21st Century Teachers. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75969-2_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75968-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75969-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)