walter benjamin: “childhood, a devastating experience”

Abstract

Built on the dialogue between the processes of institutionalization of childhood and educational practices, this article considers data from a research project that aimed to gather knowledge of the experience of childhood in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The empirical basis of our study is a collection of  observational fieldnotes gathered in 21 public ECE institutions that serve  the city of Rio de Janeiro. In order to understand children’s experience in these settings, our theoretical framework is supported by a reading of Walter Benjamin's philosophy of childhood, by sources in the sociology and anthropology of childhood, and through an analysis of the political contexts that influence the practices of institutionalizing young children. The quote adopted in this text represents the results of a comparison between the speech and interactions of the children in the schools participating in the research and  textual fragments from Benjamin’s “Obras Escolhidas I e II.” We drew on the concept of childhood experience present in the work of this philosopher in order to explore how children experience their childhood within the context of the school environment. When thinking about childhood through the lens of children’s experience, we draw on the legacy attributed by Benjamin to Kant's work on the concept of experience itself. Here, the latter is understood, not just as an event, but as something that unites/brings us together through the  intersection of generation, history, and narrative. Regardless of the format of children's institutionalization–that is, whether they attend daycare centers, exclusive early ECE settings, schools or elementary schools that have preschool classes–based on our reading the fieldnotes we conclude that the experience of childhood takes place in the context of relationships with others, with objects, with culture, with society and with nature. Our research showed that, like the child as characterized in the work of Benjamin, the children of our day care centers and schools are attracted by what he calls “debris”and what the latter present to them as possibilities for action. They do not directly reproduce the world of adults; rather, they establish a new relationship with what the world offers them, which is not exactly coherent with that world. What children produce in their interactions is the result of a refined process in which collective and individual experience intersect, with culture as a meeting point.