TY - CHAP

T1 - Speculative Fantasies

T2 - Infancy in the Educational Discourse in early modern Germany

AU - Althans, Birgit

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - If we look at current discourses related to the care of newborn infants we see the newborns firmly fixed in the hands of doctors, nurses and midwives. Medical experts can be seen as educators as well – for example they give advice to the mothers about the right way to handle their babies and show them how to hold, (breast-) feed or wash it. Later, during the prescribed checkups in the consulting rooms of the paediatricians one can also observe the pedagogical performance of doctoral consultants. The discourse of medicine seems thus to dominate the interaction between the mother and the child. Situated in this context and based on a twofold genealogy of philosophical and scientific texts and of artistic and scientific representations of children this chapter examines the works of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel about the meaning of education in very early childhood in relation to the public imagination and pictorial representation of early childhood in that time.

AB - If we look at current discourses related to the care of newborn infants we see the newborns firmly fixed in the hands of doctors, nurses and midwives. Medical experts can be seen as educators as well – for example they give advice to the mothers about the right way to handle their babies and show them how to hold, (breast-) feed or wash it. Later, during the prescribed checkups in the consulting rooms of the paediatricians one can also observe the pedagogical performance of doctoral consultants. The discourse of medicine seems thus to dominate the interaction between the mother and the child. Situated in this context and based on a twofold genealogy of philosophical and scientific texts and of artistic and scientific representations of children this chapter examines the works of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel about the meaning of education in very early childhood in relation to the public imagination and pictorial representation of early childhood in that time.

KW - Educational science

KW - Early Childhood

KW - Early Childhood Education

KW - Unborn Child

KW - Educational Discourse

KW - Anthropological Perspective

KW - Literature studies

KW - Cultural studies

U2 - 10.1007/978-94-007-0243-1_7

DO - 10.1007/978-94-007-0243-1_7

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-94-007-0242-4

T3 - International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development

SP - 103

EP - 115

BT - Children, Development and Education

A2 - Kontopodis, Michalis

A2 - Wulf, Christoph

A2 - Fichtner, Bernd

PB - Springer

CY - Dordrecht

ER -