Approach To Children's Life And Education From A Perspective Of 'the Writing Of Peter Pan'

In the field of education, the basic of kidology and paedeutics is built on the notion that children are objective in existence. Based on this self-evident notion, researchers have been trying to investigate what is the essence of child and what is the essence of education. They developed a series of theoretic discourse about child and education to guide educational practice in everyday life. However, in the guidance of sociology of education which demanded us to 'use an alternative perspective' to inquire into social problems, we found that those self-evident notions about child and education are virtually constructed historically. In this point, sociology of education, therefore, will discuss the following questions: why people take those notions about child and education for granted; how those notions are constructed throughout history; and how those notions influenced the education for children. Since children's literature keeps playing the important role of teaching children, setting a good example to children at all times, the thesis will begin to answer those questions with analyzing the text of children's literature from a perspective of sociology. Concretely, the thesis will analyze the image of child, point of view in narrative, structure of text, language and rhetoric in order to show the unitary and linear growing pattern in traditional children's literature and the arbitrary discourse both in socialization and in education.Firstly, the thesis began with analyzing the composition of children themselves, trying to use the language of children themselves to oppugn the common notion of 'children are angels', which is a restriction to children forced by adults. Based on this analysis, the thesis reviewed the history of children's literature to display its key mission, that is, to educate children.Secondly, the thesis analyzed the text of children's literature, including analysis of the image of child and language analysis. There are two different kinds of images of child in children's literature. One is the traditional model child, and the other is the alternative child in the writing of Peter Pan's perspective. Model child is the dominating image both in children's literature and in childhood narrative, becoming the model in children's life and education. Alternative children exist out of the institution and are excluded by the dominating discourse, but their true, natural and free figure provided us an alternative vision to approach to children's life and education. The thesis explained the authors' value and attitude by analyzing points of view in narrative and structure in narrative,trying to find the mechanism both in writing children's literature and in education. Thirdly, based on the analysis to text, the thesis tried to abstract two different kinds of discourse to explain growing. One is linear, the other is non-linear. 'The writing of Peter Pan' subverted the linear notion about growing, reminding us that children exist as a kind of other cultures different from adult, and that educational research need to reflect the notion of child from different perspectives to awake the power of children.