Godność dziecka – odkrywana, zdobywana, niszczona

Abstract

Dignity – engraved in every man’s nature – demands affirmation
all the stronger the more person is threatened in his basic
and inalienable rights. This threat makes itself felt in particular
periods of human life, it certainly refers to childhood. Child’s
dignity was „discovered” at a relatively late stage of development
of Western societies. At the same time, the history of the past
one hundred years can be deciphered as the time of trampling on
child’s dignity as a result of the dominance of totalitarian systems.
Both fundamental sources of threat to child’s dignity lie in the
sphere of social communication, where because of the mass
media child is reduced to the consumer of impressions, which is
why his natural world becomes impoverished. Similarly, in socio-
economic dimension childhood is threatened due to the progress
of marginalisation processes affecting more and more
Polish families.
The text constitutes a starting point for pedagogical survey
orientated around the concept of child’s dignity. In this sense, it
emerges either as an epistemological category, whose application
will allow for clarification and description of the peculiar
character of childhood, or as an object of axiological reflection
considering man’s relations with transcendental reality.