This document discusses posthumanist perspectives on childhood and education. It argues that from a posthumanist view, we should see children and educational materials as mutually influencing each other through "being-with" and "becoming-with" rather than seeing children as the sole focus of education and materials/environment as merely instrumental. Taking this approach has important ethical dimensions and could transform how we conceptualize education if children and materials were not exploited but invited to jointly unfold learning.

1. Being-and-becoming-with:
Finding Child beyond Child

3. AT THE ONSET…
At the onset of my installation the agency of different materials that made up
my installation were encountered by viewers, both in the dark and the light. I
asked them to consider the boundaries and body of the torch, the block-out
fabric, sponge, headphones and the relation of these to their own bodies. I
asked the reader to consider them not as inert, inactive matter but as matter
with material-discoursive agency (from Taguchi 2010:40).”

4. THERE IS NO CHILD HERE, NOT ONE
The challenge that arises from this initiative is how to bring the idea of
Child into play with this ‘acknowledgement’ of material agency;
especially when there are no actual children around and ideas are all we
have.

5. LIKE A STREETLAMP THAT PASSES FOR
THE MOON.
In the absence of ‘actual’ Child (by no means any easier to pin down)
ideas of Child and Childhood must somehow be fashioned from other
materials, symbolised and represented; evoked through other medium,

6. It feels ironic that in order to express posthumanism, we rely so heavily on
human language and description, so as to acknowledge and give credence to
intra-actions in our surroundings. Is it not perhaps humanistic after all, to
want to inscribe agency into everything, and then tell each other about it, in
words?
Then again, perhaps the reliance on language is temporary or at any rate
introductory. After all, I have found that ideas of posthumanism have sunk
deeply into places where verbal language cannot go or be retrieved.

7. ON BEING-WITH…
I think of the activities we did of ‘being’ with paper, rock, beach debris.
Perhaps understanding this theory is also a matter of learning to ‘be’ with
it and to let it be with me.

8. …AND BECOMING-WITH
Here I suddenly saw a way to return to the idea of Child, a way to let Child
into the space. The key word (truly in the manner of one that unlocks) is
‘with’, a grammatical preposition denoting a relation between one object/
subject and another. ‘With’ doesn’t stand alone, however, it is accompanied
by two other concepts, ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ so that instead of seeing the
child, or the teacher, or the table or chair or sand or water or book or idea as
simply being, they are seen as ‘being-with’ one another. Standing proudly in
the present tense, these beings intra-act with one another and ‘being-with’
becomes an acknowledgement of mutual influence.

10. ENTANGLEMENT
From here, instead of trying to distinguish the processes of child
becoming adult; student becoming teacher; tree becoming paper; paint
becoming picture, an entanglement of all these material-discursive
existences ensues and they are all ‘becoming-with’ one another.

11. ‘BECOMING TEACHER’
As a prospective teacher, I too am embroiled in a process of being-and-
becoming teacher, and I have undergone this process by being-with and
becoming-with my PGCE class and lecturers, our classroom, my two
Teaching Practice classes and mentor teachers and numerous other
influences. The next step in this journey of ‘becoming teacher’ is to
become a teacher with a class of children, in a classroom environment
and school. Each Child in turn will be and become Child with me, and
with one another, and with the materiality of their classroom.

12. ETHICAL DIMENSIONS
To me, this process, and how I approach it, has crucial ethical dimensions,
particularly in relation to how the non-human elements of Child and
Childhood are constructed and used in learning environments.

13. ‘DELIBERATELY AND CONSCIOUSLY
NON-EXPLOITATIVE’
I see posthumanism as a perception and philosophy that seeks to
understand non-human matter and material beyond the reductive and
simplistic idea of what that matter or material can do for humans. In
other words it is

14. The idea of exploiting materials (be it other human beings, animals,
buildings, plants, books or all manner of other matter) for the purpose of
educating ‘the Child’ is hardwired into our very idea of what education is.
Child is at the centre, everything else is simply instrumental to their being
child and becoming adult.

16. POSTHUMANISM ASKS,
‘what would happen if the child was not at the centre of our idea of Child
and Childhood, and Education?’ What would education look like if the
materials of education and childhood were not exploited, but invited or
even incidental to the learning that unfolded, between Child and Other?

17. AT THE AQUARIUM
At the time of filming I was drawn to the penguins because of their uncanny,
collective stillness. This surreal stillness, which makes the video-frame seem
like a photograph, is interrupted suddenly by a burst of movement as a group
of pre-schoolers rustle and bustle their way in and out of the frame, behind
the penguin enclosure.

18. THE VIDEO

19. THANK
YOU