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  • The game of children is an element of the culture of society

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    The game is not an internal quality of the child. And yet it is still associated with childhood. What is a child's age and childhood in general?

    It turns out that childhood in our understanding, that is, understanding, conditioned by modern European culture, is not a universal phenomenon, the period of childhood and the attitude to it in different cultures are different. Universal are only universal human features with which the child is born and which, as a result of cultural influences( often spontaneous, traditional, not realized by specific adults) receive a certain direction of development - some qualities and properties are encouraged, others, on the contrary, are suppressed.

    The very period of childhood and its characteristic activities for the child show a close connection with the culture of society - both with the level of its economic development, and with the traditional spontaneous ideas about what a child should be at every age stage. In some cultures, the period of childhood ends, as soon as the child is separated from the mother's breast, in others - it stretches to 18 years.

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    Childhood of a European or North American child is very different from the childhood of children in African or East Asian cultures. In particular, this difference is associated with the existence of specialized social institutions, the function of which is the upbringing of children. We are used to the fact that our children go to kindergarten, and then to school, in the period of preschool childhood they are freed from compulsory labor. And children, for example, some Polynesian tribes, as shown by ethnographic researchers, are very early involved in useful activities. The main function of a child aged 4-7 is to take care of younger children. Since children are very early involved in labor activity, by the age of 10-12 they are practically not different from adults in their social functions. Education here is carried out in a traditional way - by including the child in joint work with adults, and not through special education and training in kindergartens and schools.

    But even the release of children from compulsory labor, the availability of leisure does not yet determine the nature of children's classes. For example, if for a European pre-school child the typical games are story play, drawing, then in a number of African peoples games are most common among children - exercises for agility, strength, which are considered important for the child and encouraged by adults. The predominance of certain types of children's activities largely depends on their consolidation in cultural traditions.

    But within the same culture influences that determine more subtle features of children's activity, including children's play, can be found, including the children's game,

    For example, the nature and content of games of boys and girls brought up in the conditions of one European culture can vary greatly already in the early stages of childhood, and is due not only to the biological characteristics of sex. These differences largely depend on what kind of social ideas exist in society about the typical sex-role.behavior. As interesting studies by American and English psychologists show, adults very early( and most often unconsciously) begin to cultivate typical gender features in children: this is manifested in the choice of parents for toys for children, encouraging games that parents believe correspond to the child's sex, and suppressioninadequate semi games. Such reactions of adults occur already in the first year of the child's life. Particularly indicative is the parents' choice of toys. For the children themselves in early childhood, there is no game preferences, all of them, girls and boys, with pleasure play a variety of toys. But when examining 96 children from one to six years in families, it was discovered that children's rooms of boys and girls are equipped differently by their parents almost from the birth of a child. It turned out that the boys are dominated by transport toys, toy animals, puzzles and various items that are not actually toys. Girls are dominated by dolls and various attributes to them. The boys found 375 transport toys, and girls - only 17. A boy 2 years old had at least 3 such toys, 3 years old - already 11, and girls of this age - none. Only the boys had railroads and toys depicting weapons. The girls also had doll houses, plates, dishes, cradles for dolls and baby dolls.

    So, the society spontaneously, through the values ​​and stereotypes that have developed in culture, exerts its influence on the child, determining what it should be and what its activities should be, in particular, the game. In this sense, children's play is an element of society's culture.