Childhood: An Integrative Analysis

As a kind of organism, (Protestant and other) adult education shows a kind of “biography”, which facilitates development, “growing up”, and, thus, sustainability. Evaluating this “biography”, the “childhood” can be found in Antiquity and Middle ages, when adults encounter, in order to discuss the art of “good life”, depending on religious or on church programs or philosophical schools. The “adolescence” is characterized by becoming more and more independent from such institutional influences, which took place in the age of enlightenment. The “adulthood” began about 1800, when three types of peoples' education could be observed: encounters of citizens oriented at nobility models (Salons), training of workers in towns (by educational societies

By remembering one's own experiences with a biblical story or a current social problem, by exploring its current meaning and by imagining future developments and challenges, people gain a new, multidimensional and holistic understanding during the process of lifelong learning (Apsel, 1985). This integrative approach acknowledges the transformative theories of adult learning (Mezirow,1991; Cranton, 1994, and Freire, 1990), which emphasize the intuitive, mythical and emotional sense of human experiences, the concreteness of the here-and-now, and the (individual and collective) unconscious as the primary source of creativity, vitality, and wisdom ( Dirkx, 1997). Perspective transformation explains how the meaning structures that adults have acquired over a lifetime become transformed. These meaning structures are frames of reference that are based on the totality of individuals, cultural and contextual experiences, and that influence how they behave and interpret events (Taylor 1998). Because narrative is a bridge to the other, memory has a positive contribution to make in communities seeking reconciliation. Moments of catharsis represent nothing less than a hermeneutical shift from the horizon of the constructed Ego to the authentic Self, which is emphasized in philosophical (Heidegger, 1998) and spiritual tradition (Cohen, 2002) . In order to make possible reconciliation real, the Jewish tradition is a crucial model, because it reminds of victims as well as of blessings (Exodus, Shoa), and, thus, underlines remembering as a moral duty. Thanks to memory and the narratives that preserve the memory of the horrible, the horrible is prevented from being leveled off by explanation or from being abused by the excesses