The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria describes children as the heritage of the society because children occupy a special place in societal survival and continuity. Children are esteemed and appreciated. Thus, the embedded culture propagates the essentiality of children, the need for proper socialisation and internalisation to make a responsible…

The B-baby Program is a hip-hop dance curriculum designed to prepare dance instructors to teach and lead toddlers in the safe and effective practice of "break dancing" (breakin'). In 2011, my twin sister and I founded a hip-hop organization called Child of This Culture. We have over 32 years of combined experience as competitive break…

Ever since Katniss Everdeen, the arrow-slinging heroine of Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy, was snatched from the cruel clutches of a ruthless government, one can't stop thinking about the feisty 16-year-old from District 12. What sort of flesh-devouring, mutant killing machine awaits her next? How can she possibly lead a successful…

An authority on the history of American children and families, Steven Mintz is a professor of history at Columbia University, where he also directs the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center. Previously, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Moores Professor of…

The messages students receive through popular media such as movies, television, the internet, and music videos have a powerful influence and can shape their thinking. A national survey of media use by 8- to 18-year-olds found the average adolescent spends over seven and a half hours daily with entertainment media (KFF 2010). Rather than viewing…

Video games have become a powerful force in the culture. Depictions of women in video games are scarce and highly stereotypical. Women are usually minor characters, are seen as victims rather than heroines, and are depicted in highly sexualized ways. Whereas early games had only a few representations of people of color, people of color were often…

A preeminent play-theory scholar reviews a lifetime devoted to the study of play in a lively, even playful, recounting of his illustrious career and some of its autobiographical roots. The author covers the development of his three major theories of play--as a viability variable, as culturally relative play forms, and as a co-evolutionary…

Scholars interested in the lives of children and in the social contours of childhood have remained largely inattentive to the consumer popular culture in which these lives are embedded and out of which particular versions of childhood have arisen. Consumption, and its kindred areas of media and popular culture, are arenas of social action and…

Studying imagery, irrespective of the kind, must focus equally upon its aesthetic attractiveness, its sensory lures, and its oftentimes dubious social ideology. The terms "aesthetic" and "ideology" are addressed as problematic and are defined in current, ordinary language terms: aesthetics as visual appearances and their effects and ideology as a…

Culturally diverse as they are, Asian-American children and youth share quite a few features among themselves. Most of them are children of foreign-born parents who came to America during the post-1965 immigration waves. As they grow up in culturally isolated environment, they are often faced with identity crisis. The society's racial exclusion…

Discusses changes in the history of childhood. Argues that the change was not caused by reform pedagogics, but by a movement to popular culture. Describes the functioning of a commercialized children's culture and its definition of happiness. Analyzes possible concepts of education within the framework of such learning environments. (CAJ)

When teachers allow students to write stories that include elements of popular media, we must ask what to do with these media elements once they have entered the classroom. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on children's media-based story writing. The study looks at children as producers of new media texts and describes…

The dietary intake of children in the United Kingdom and other minority world countries is an area that is causing increasing concern. These concerns are often expressed around the high levels of childhood obesity and the early onset of dental caries. In this review of the literature, I examine a range of approaches to the study of food and…

American culture appears to be the enemy of childhood. Children now look, dress, talk, and behave like adults. At the same time, adults have become more like children. (Author/JM)

Discusses using visual representations of children to help pre- and in-service teachers reconsider the ways they, as adults, relate to children. Focuses on historical depictions of children, images of children from today, and the photographs Anne Geddes. (CMK)