Abstract
The main idea of this text is that there is a political value in children’s temporality, which needs to be looked after and cared for much more than interrupted, as educational institutions do today. Thus, the ways of understanding the political context require reconsidering the temporal experience which is being provided and affirmed in educational institutions. Our strategy is to focus on three childlike characters, who come from literature, philosophy and education: Gonzalo Rojas, Gilles Deleuze and Paulo Freire. Time is a concept that permeates this essay. In the poetry of Gonzalo Rojas, the poet strives to honor the present time of childhood which is also the time of poetic writing. This is the time of reniñez: a time that does not pass, which is long-lasting, attentive and sensitive to the word of the world. For Gilles Deleuze, conceptualizing childhood as a “childlike scene” means to restore to childhood a truly infantile time, as Heraclitus says in his iconic ‘Fragment 52’. Finally, Paulo Freire expands childhood’s time to all ages: the aionic invasion of khronos, which urges educators of all ages to inhabit childhood’s time, a curious gift that makes one look surprised at the world with and restlessly wonder why the world is as it is and how different it could be. With Freire, we listen to a child’s word to think about the meaning of the presence of philosophy in school: it is not about making childhood something different from what it is, but it reminds us and leads us to childhood times.
Childhood; Gonzalo Rojas; Gilles Deleuze; Paulo Freire