The Century of the Rights of Children Ellen Key's Legacy towards a New Childhood Culture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1970-2221/6375Keywords:
Children’s Rights, Childhood Culture, History of Childhood, Childhood Education, History of Children’s RightsAbstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the most interesting insights expressed by Ellen Key in her famous work Barnets Århundrade [The Century of the Child]. Here she anticipates and fosters some of the principles concerning the new, twentieth-century concept of the Rights of Children. Thus, this paper will suggest that Key’s text, far from being a naïve and optimistic manifesto, can be instead defined as a clear and keen work, which shows the way to the development of a new childhood culture, focused on the full recognition of the child and of his/her rights.
The paper will focus on the main elements of the theoretical framework supporting the pedagogical perspective Key shows in The Century of the Child. Then, attention will be drawn to the meaning and the relevance of her position on children’s rights: central to the discussion will be those principles that turn out to be more influential in the current debate on the rights of the child: the right to be loved, to choose his/her parents, to be naughty.
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