The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman, Marty Asher (Editor)
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(Paperback - Reprint)
- Pub. Date: August 1994
- 192pp
- Sales Rank: 114,661
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 1994
- Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Format: Paperback, 192pp
- Sales Rank: 114,661
- Series: Vintage Series
- ISBN-13: 9780679751663
- ISBN: 0679751661
- Edition Description: Reprint
Synopsis
From the vogue for nubile models to the explosion in the juvenile crime rate, this modern classic of social history and media traces the precipitous decline of childhood in America today-and the corresponding threat to the notion of adulthood. Deftly marshaling a vast array of historical and demographic research, Neil Postman suggests that childhood is a relatively recent invention, which came into being as the new medium of print imposed divisions between children and adults. But now these divisions are eroding under the barrage of television, which turns the adult secrets of sex and violence into popular entertainment and pitches both news and advertising at the intellectual level of ten-year olds.
Publishers Weekly
The author of Technopoly examines the embattled nature of childhood in contemporary American culture. (Aug.)
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Disappearance of Childhoodby Anonymous
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June 04, 2006: Postman provides a brilliantly insightful and extended analysis of both the 15th-century rise, and the 20th-century loss, of childhood innocence. His thesis that childhood became extended by a decade (up to about age 17) as an unexpected result of Gutenberg's printing press is fascinating and compellingly argued, as are his further arguments that the concept of childhood innocence arose concomitantly with the arrival of widespread schooling for literacy, and that such innocence lasted until the 20th century, when television demolished the metaphorical wall guarding the magic garden of childhood innocence. Postman does more than explicate that loss--he mourns it, and hopes against all odds that somehow it can be restored.
Disappearance of Childhoodby Anonymous
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May 04, 2001: If you are looking for a careful analysis of why our culture exibits much of the social and personal level quirks that it does, you could not start with a better book.
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