Postman's The Disappearance Of Childhood

The concept of childhood has been around for many of our lives, but it wasn’t in the lives of some of our ancestors. Childhood as an idea is something that has progressed and changed over time. Rather than childhood be biologically based like infancy, it is instead a socially constructed idea. Postman, in his 1994 publication, The Disappearance of Childhood addresses where the origin of childhood came from and how it has developed over time and changed to adapt depending on the country and what kind of society exists at that point, along with many more factors. The idea of childhood was created by the Renaissance and was considered to be one of its greatest inventions, if not, the most humane. Postman recognised this and his book analyses how
Not only did they implement schools, but they also constructed a connection between children and the idea of shame. This was a key step in developing the concept of childhood. Essentially, ‘without a well-developed idea of shame, childhood cannot exist’. (Postman, 1994) Although the Romans were the ones to understand this point, not enough of them did. Many would still walk around broadcasting whatever they wanted when they pleased, if a child swore or said something they shouldn’t know about it became something of a comedy to the Romans. However, after the fall of the Roman Empire all ideas of childhood vanished. During the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, four key things happened which effected childhood. Not only did literacy and education disappear, but as did the idea of shame. As a result of this, childhood
After the Renaissance, came the growth of the enlightened man. This was an adult who thought rationally about the world he lived in. The focus was taken away from religion in part, and the enlightened man could focus on what was going on in the world, beyond his small community. Elizabeth Eisenstein also recognised the press as a means for change, and suggested that as a result of the press, it gave the adult a new sense of entitlement, their words were being frozen and recorded indefinitely, thus giving the individual the idea of ‘selfhood’. With the invention of the press and books, newspapers and journals became more readily available. With books being so readily available it pushed more and more adults to learn to read, they would fall behind in society if they did not. As people were able to own their own books, and sit and read them in their own homes, the demand for literacy grew once more. It gave the adult a sense of individualism and an empowerment. But as Postman suggested ‘individualism alone could not have produced childhood’ (Postman, 1994). The press strongly aided the creation of the modern man. The printing press had such a large impact on the formation of childhood, as it provided a way to separate the population by age. It was this ‘knowledge gap’ (Postman, 1994), that aided individualism and the modern man, in creating