Political Maturity
An Elegy to the Death of Childhood
Do we not hear anything yet of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? … How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 120
Political Childhoods
Do we not hear anything yet of the gravediggers who are burying childhood? The bloody knives of politics have drowned our schools in the blood of youthful innocence. According to some, our children are born pieces of clay for whom only parents are the intermediaries. My own state’s Department of Education has stated that it is a parent’s right to “attend individualized education program meetings to represent [their] child’s interests.”
This innocuous-seeming document comes at a time of straining challenges to the education system: a teacher shortage, declining faith in teachers, and challenges to established curricula. In this crisis of innocence, it is instructive to examine the contradictions implicit in our treatment of children in political and socio-scientific discourse.
