Problematizing the Absence of "the Experience of Hardship and Deprivation" in the Childhood of (Most) Iranian Children Today
Subject Areas :
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Keywords: Childhood, Experience of Hardship and Suffering and deprivation, Overindulgence, Problematization, False Consciousness, Foucault, Habermas,
Abstract :
Over the past century, as Iranian society has undergone a transition from its traditional foundations toward a (semi-)modern condition, the experience of childhood in Iran appears to have been subject to profound and multifaceted transformations. Among the most significant of these shifts is the gradual attenuation—and in many cases, the deliberate elimination—of "the experience of hardship and deprivation" from children's lives. The parental generation—tempered, as it were, in the crucible of that earlier childhood—now acts from a well-intentioned desire to shield their offspring from the very hardships that shaped them. The educational crisis, however, emerges precisely at the point where such an approach to child-rearing comes to be regarded not merely as understandable, but as a "desirable educational ideal." Following the spirit of a Foucauldian inquiry, one might pose the following question: Does the systematic effort to eradicate experiences of deprivation and hardship from childhood truly constitute a "desirable" end in the education of future generations? The research aims to challenge the taken-for-granted desirability of this prevailing approach to child-rearing in contemporary Iranian society, reframing it not as an educational value or ideal, but rather as an "educational challenge and problem" in need of critical examination. To this end, the study employs Huberman’s method of "transcendental and positive critique" to interrogate the "false consciousness" that underlies and legitimizes the systematic effort to eliminate experiences of hardship and resilience-building from the lives of today's children.
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