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The Disappearance of Childhood

Author Neil Postman
Ebook
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Jun 08, 2011 | 192 Pages | 9780307797223
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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, author of Technopoly, 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 poprular entertainment and pitches both news and advertising at the intellectual level of ten-year-olds.

Informative, alarming, and aphorisitc, The Disappearance of Childhood is a triumph of history and prophecy.
Neil Postman was a University Professor, the Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology, and the chair of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, all at New York University. Among his 20 books are studies of childhood (The Disappearance of Childhood); public discourse (Amusing Ourselves to Death); education (Teaching as a Subversive Activity and The End of Education); and the impact of technology (Technopoly). His interest in education was long-standing, beginning with his experience as an elementary and secondary school teacher. He died in 2003. View titles by Neil Postman
"Postman persuasively mobilizes the insights of psychology, history, semantics, McLuhanology, and common sense on behalf of his astonishing and original thesis."
--Victor Navasky

About

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, author of Technopoly, 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 poprular entertainment and pitches both news and advertising at the intellectual level of ten-year-olds.

Informative, alarming, and aphorisitc, The Disappearance of Childhood is a triumph of history and prophecy.

Author

Neil Postman was a University Professor, the Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology, and the chair of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, all at New York University. Among his 20 books are studies of childhood (The Disappearance of Childhood); public discourse (Amusing Ourselves to Death); education (Teaching as a Subversive Activity and The End of Education); and the impact of technology (Technopoly). His interest in education was long-standing, beginning with his experience as an elementary and secondary school teacher. He died in 2003. View titles by Neil Postman

Praise

"Postman persuasively mobilizes the insights of psychology, history, semantics, McLuhanology, and common sense on behalf of his astonishing and original thesis."
--Victor Navasky

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