Adult-Centered Constructions of Childhood and Children’s Worldviews: Educational, Cultural and Artistic Perspectives

This article examines the tension between adult-centered constructions of childhood and children’s own worldviews within educational, cultural and artistic contexts. The main aim of the study is to challenge the dominant tendency to interpret childhood exclusively through adult-defined social norms and to foreground children’s agency, perception and lived experience as essential analytical categories. To achieve this aim, the study pursues several objectives: to analyze historical and theoretical perspectives on childhood; to investigate how children are positioned within modern educational systems; to explore representations of children’s worldviews in literary and artistic works; and to identify the gap between the legal recognition of children’s rights and their practical realization in education.
The research employs a qualitative and interdisciplinary methodology, combining historical-cultural analysis, qualitative textual analysis and comparative-interpretive approaches. Literary texts, poetry, manga, animation and film are examined as cultural forms that articulate children’s perspectives often excluded from institutional educational discourse. In addition, the study considers the educational implications of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified in 1994 by both Japan and Uzbekistan, with particular attention to how children’s rights to participation and expression are implemented in practice.
The findings demonstrate that, despite formal recognition of children as rights-bearing individuals, contemporary educational systems continue to treat children primarily as passive recipients of instruction rather than as active agents of meaning-making. Artistic representations, by contrast, depict children as complex and autonomous subjects whose worldviews are marked by paradoxical qualities such as innocence and cruelty, imagination and violence, vulnerability and resilience. These portrayals challenge idealized adult images of childhood and expose the limitations of adult-centric pedagogical assumptions.
The article concludes that understanding children as full human beings with distinct modes of perception is essential for rethinking education and cultural representation. Recognizing children’s agency not only enriches childhood studies but also calls for more reflexive, inclusive and ethically responsible educational practices.