Childhood within utopic societies: concepts and technologies

The image of childhood andchildren differs in various cultures. The present thesis isnt concentrated on the difference betweentraditional and industrial cultures, it is focused on the fact that different industrial cultures in 20th centurymanaged to produce their own specific images of the childhood. The European and Americancultures of the 20th century used to face the childhood as quite a special closed world and a childitself as a special being, who needs to be taken care of in order to avoid the grown-ups world withall the troubles they had to solve. Nevertheless, at the same time there were societies and communities(USSR, Nazi Germany, kibbutzim and communitar communities) which adopted totally different ideaof the subject: a child in these communities was interpreted as a partner, children actively participatedin the grown-ups life. The border, which was supposed to exist between children and grown-ups, inthe societies of that kind was unstable. The childhood culture was structured through the idea that thechildhood is not a special period of a human beings life. The pedagogical strategy was being createdas both on the contrary of the leading European model, and its issue was in uniting the grown upword and childrens worlds together, which had as a key moment the creation of common symbolsand rituals, common t the both parts.All these societies and communities have one common feature - they were created to realizeones attempt of utopian projects. Using some essential thesis presented by Pr. MacIntyre, we areable to understand, why these kind of societies and communities produced such an divorced type ofinterpretation of childhood, which is to be traced not only in the literature, art, artifacts (toys, clothes,buildings and cities structures). Not only mentioned above, but also pedagogical technologies (whichused to be thought as typical for children). Using the terms pedagogical technology we mean a numberof plays, practices and rituals, which are actual for the children and teenagers.

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