Disappearance_of_Childhood

Introduction Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood New York : Vintage Books , 1994 Pgs . 155 The book The Disappearance of Childhood written my Neil Postman describes the historical development of the ideal and social makeup of modern childhood childhood even though it is something biological , its core rest with a cultural construct . He begins in the Renaissance a period of time that saw the invention of the printing press and the need for literacy . The author insists that social pressures and especially the electronic media of today are pushing childhood to its end as a social institution . Postman uses examples to show that everywhere we look the behavior , language , attitudes , desires and even physical appearance of children and adults are becoming harder and harder to distinguish the differences . In essence , children are becoming adults sooner . He gives encouragement and suggestions for parents on how to stand firm against this change . His thesis for writing the book is , ``the main contribution of this book , such as it is , does not reside in the claim that childhood is disappearing but in a theory as to why such a thing should be happening (xiii . The book is comprised of two parts the first , chapters one through four , discusses the historical aspects as when the notion of childhood began , the influence of the printing press , the period of time that the printing press began to when the concept of childhood took hold and brings everything up to the point of the beginning of the disappearance of childhood . The second half is the disappearance of the notion of childhood covering chapters five through eight . The author contends that , ``The maintenance of childhood depended on the principles of managed information and sequential learning (72 . I liked the way he put the question to what we would pay for openness and candor he answered , ``if we turn over to children a vast store of powerful adult material , childhood cannot survive (88 . Postman gives a very good show of how childhood has not always been a concept well known in culture . It was something created only since recorded history . Before written history there is no clear evidence how society viewed children and their development . Print media was being conveyed to a large audience and began , with no doubt , social change in larger numbers . At one point in history children were known as small adults , then perhaps this was something that we stopped doing when childhood was developed and we are just coming around again in a circle to treating children as adults again . At the end of the book he does address six questions that many wonder and he answers very well . The one that asked what technologies will work needing the concept of childhood , he answered the computer . The author mentions the potent influence of television American children spend more time watching television than they do engaging in any other activity besides sleep . It is a very significant influence on child development and societies ideas of childhood . Although the...