Images of childhood in Comparison: Between Divergent Thinking and Technological Thought

Abstract

Gianni Rodari gave us an ideology of childhood that revolutionized the way we interpret its experiences and with them the educational proposals. The category of Fantasy has become a lens through which to read a world that, for the first time, appeared fabulous, incorrupt, creative and, above all, competent. On the other hand, and in stark contrast, the adult pan-paedagogism turned out to be boring, reactionary, moralistic and even harmful. The Rodarian utopia begins to fade already in the 1980s when the educational but also economic values of technological pragmatism (Bini G., 2000) are imposed. These reflections try to compare that image of childhood with the one we see today in the school, among the gears of technology, in the reverent attitude that adults give to digital natives. The investigation has an interpretative nature and follows a qualitative approach while making use of the quantitative contributions of previous research conducted on the subject.

Keywords

• Childhood
• Education
• Creativity
• Technology
• Epistemology