Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Rewriting the responsible parent

Rewriting the responsible parent This paper is derived from a larger study that explored how the rationality of freedom became inscribed in educational practices that shaped and reshaped limits that constitute the responsible parent. Here, I draw on part of the study to diagnose how romantic discourse on childhood, which rewrote religious and secular discourse in the eighteenth century, was refashioned in the nineteenth century to rewrite the responsible parent. In this historical inquiry, I follow Foucault’s lead and analyse thoughts of freedom not as a value that we cannot live without or an illusion that hides the truth of our oppression but as a political tool for producing the ‘other’ as a means of inciting the autonomous parent to recognise the self as an ethical subject responsible for educating the child. What this exposes is how the writing and rewriting of the responsible parent in terms of educating the child within liberal government is reliant on fabricating ‘otherness’ as a threat to freedom. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png History of Education Review Emerald Publishing

Rewriting the responsible parent

Wayen S. McGowan
History of Education Review , Volume 35 (2): 5 – Oct 14, 2006
Download PDF
15 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/rewriting-the-responsible-parent-uH5yTAhZG2
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
0819-8691
DOI
10.1108/08198691200600010
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper is derived from a larger study that explored how the rationality of freedom became inscribed in educational practices that shaped and reshaped limits that constitute the responsible parent. Here, I draw on part of the study to diagnose how romantic discourse on childhood, which rewrote religious and secular discourse in the eighteenth century, was refashioned in the nineteenth century to rewrite the responsible parent. In this historical inquiry, I follow Foucault’s lead and analyse thoughts of freedom not as a value that we cannot live without or an illusion that hides the truth of our oppression but as a political tool for producing the ‘other’ as a means of inciting the autonomous parent to recognise the self as an ethical subject responsible for educating the child. What this exposes is how the writing and rewriting of the responsible parent in terms of educating the child within liberal government is reliant on fabricating ‘otherness’ as a threat to freedom.

Journal

History of Education Review – Emerald Publishing

Published: Oct 14, 2006

Keywords: Childhood; Education; Parenting; Class

There are no references for this article.