Camden professor examines childism and ethics
In his new book, Ethics in Light of Childhood (Georgetown University Press, 2010), John Wall, an associate professor of philosophy and religion at Rutgers–Camden, says viewing moral issues from a child’s perspective could change ethical thinking.
“The experiences of children need to become new lenses for interpreting what it means to exist, to live good lives, and to form communities – for the sake of children and adults both,” Wall writes in the book’s introduction.
Wall says understanding childhood can change how morality is practiced. He argues that “childism” is required to transform moral thinking and relations in systematic ways, much like feminism and environmentalism impacted societies.
“It has to be realized that children fully are members of our society,” Wall says. “Their concerns should be concerns for all people. That requires thinking of society in fundamentally new ways.”
Wall says this would result in further innovation, the construction of more vibrant societies in which children are less marginalized, and a greater understanding of morality.
He believes the solution is not to simply pay children more attention or provide them more protections, freedoms, and rights, but rather “to look at every discipline, action, and policy through the lens of children. Not just how they affect children, but how children affect them.”
Childism can change fundamental assumptions, like feminism did for women’s rights, Wall contends.
“Children represent a third of the world’s population, yet younger children aren’t necessarily going to be able to fight as strongly for their own issues,” he notes. “Human rights have traditionally been based on the idea of autonomously free individuals fighting for their rights, but in fact everybody ought to be able to make a genuine difference in their society.”
Wall says childhood studies is an emerging field in academia. He teaches in the Rutgers–Camden doctoral program in childhood studies, the first in the United States, and says it’s an exciting time to study children’s impacts on humanity and society.
“For about a century, childhood studies has mostly been about psychology,” Wall says. “But increasingly fields like sociology and history are entering the conversation. Childhood studies is now a highly interdisciplinary field. People in religion, philosophy and ethics have only just started to get into it. One of the things I’m hoping to do in this book is expand or create a field of study of children for philosophers, theologians and ethicists.”
A Haddonfield resident, Wall teaches the graduate seminar Philosophical and Religious Perspectives on Childhood at Rutgers–Camden. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and his master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Wall is the author of Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2005), and co-edited Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought (Routledge Publishers, 2002) and Marriage, Health, and the Professions (Eerdmans, 2002).
He has also co-edited a forthcoming book, Children and Armed Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), with Rutgers–Camden Department of Childhood Studies Associate Professor Daniel Cook.
Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
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E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu