An interview with Tanu Biswas and Toby Rollo about their co-edited volume, Confronting Adultcentrism

Q: What is this edited volume about?

This special issue of the journal Childhood & Philosophy explores three central themes: democratic education, liberation as an intergenerational project, and the decolonial critique of adultism and coloniality in education. The discussion of democratic education challenges conventional models that treat children as incomplete citizens who must be prepared for future participation. This perspective critiques the assumption that democracy is an adult domain and argues that children are already active participants in civic life. Democratic spaces should not merely shape children into future citizens but should recognize their current contributions, perspectives, and agency in shaping just and inclusive societies.

Liberation is framed as an inherently intergenerational project. Traditional liberation theories often exclude children from political struggles, assuming that they must first acquire adult-defined forms of rationality and autonomy. This view reinforces adultist hierarchies that marginalize children’s voices. A truly inclusive model of liberation must reject this division, recognizing that social transformation requires the full participation of all age groups, with childhood seen as an integral, not subordinate, stage of collective struggle. The critique of adultism and coloniality in education highlights how schooling systems reinforce hierarchical structures that suppress children’s agency. Colonial histories of infantilization and paternalism persist in modern educational institutions, where Eurocentric norms and adult-centered authority limit children’s autonomy. A decolonial approach to education requires dismantling these structures, valuing children’s knowledge, and creating learning spaces that do not replicate oppressive power relations but foster intergenerational justice.

Q: What made you initiate this volume?

This special dossier of childhood and philosophy, guest edited by Tanu Biswas and Toby Rollo, contributes to a philosophical reorientation in which children are recognized as epistemic agents and adultism and coloniality are identified and critiqued within educational structures. Grounded in critical discussions from the Childism Institute’s Transnational Childism Colloquium, this  builds upon the principles of childism to re-envision children’s roles within philosophical and educational discourse. Childism, here, is not merely a critique of adult-centered biases. It is an orientation that confronts the structural exploitation of childhood and promotes intergenerational justice by centering children’s agency, voices, and knowledge.

Educational institutions occupy a particularly central role in maintaining childhood as a social structure to lopsidedly serves adult-centric interests. The call for a critical childist lens in philosophy and education comes from the pressing need to rethink foundational structures and assumptions that have historically marginalized children’s experiences and perspectives. As outlined in Biswas et al. (2023), childism functions as more than a critique of adult-centered structures; it represents a profound conceptual shift that reimagines children as full participants in the social and epistemic spheres. Childism challenges the assumption that children exist in a state of “becoming” rather than “being,” a view that has relegated them to preparatory phases within developmental hierarchies, thus limiting their agency and voice.

Traditional philosophical frameworks have largely sidelined children, focusing on ideals of autonomy and rationality typically associated with adulthood. These frameworks, rooted in long-standing adultist assumptions, view children as incomplete or subordinate, awaiting the maturity that adulthood supposedly confers. As Biswas and colleagues point out, even philosophical disciplines that have engaged with concepts of difference—such as postmodernism and feminism—have often neglected age as a significant category of analysis, thereby leaving age-based power relations unexamined. By not only incorporating but also centering children’s and childhood perspectives, childism calls for a restructuring of social norms and philosophical inquiries, aligning them with pluralistic understandings of subjectivity that embrace diversity in age as well as other dimensions like gender, race, and ability.

Sharing this foundation, Rollo's interventions in childist and decolonial theory (Rollo 2016; 2023) highlight how studying adultism deepens the intersectional understanding of oppression by revealing its entanglement with coloniality. Rollo argues that the adult/child binary, foundational to adultism, was indispensable for Euro-centric colonial projects, where colonized peoples were infantilized and subjected to paternalistic control. By tracing the historical domestication of Europe’s own youth through hierarchical systems, Rollo connects intergenerational colonization to the global expansion of Euro-centric colonial dominance. His analytical approach further illuminates how the marginalization of children reinforces other forms of oppression, such as racism and ableism. Studying adultism, therefore, not only exposes the mechanisms of oppression but also expands decolonial efforts, making transformative childist perspectives central to dismantling interconnected systems of domination.

Childism then distinguishes itself by aspiring to expand transformative interventions such as feminism, critical race theory, and decolonialism. Much as these fields redefined social theory by centering marginalized perspectives and developing new modes of relationality and intersectionality, childism introduces concepts of “empowered inclusion” and “deep interdependence,” (Josefsson & Wall 2020) emphasizing that children are not peripheral beings but intrinsic participants in the human condition. Childism represents an invitation to rethink ontology, politics, and ethics in ways that do not presuppose adult-centric norms but instead celebrate the diversity of childhood as a fully realized state of being. This critical lens does not only seek to add children’s voices but to question and deconstruct the adultist frameworks that have historically suppressed them, making room for a relational ontology where both children and adults engage in mutual, empowered learning and existence.

Childism is particularly urgent in the current socio-political context, marked by climate crises and global socio-economic challenges, where children and youth are increasingly stepping forward as activists. These young activists not only exemplify the capacities of children as agents of change but also reveal the ethical failures of adult-dominated systems that have disregarded their futures. By foregrounding a childist lens, scholars and educators alike are invited to question the structural adultism that blocks intergenerational justice and prevents meaningful inclusion of children in decision-making. The ambition of childism is therefore not merely academic but profoundly practical: it aims to reshape democratic spaces, educational institutions, and social policies to reflect a more inclusive, intergenerational ethics that sees children as vital, active participants in both local and global arenas. It does so by recognizing the deep interdependence of adulthood and childhood as structures.

This collection of articles thus collectively argues for a transformative rethinking of educational, philosophical, and social paradigms that challenge adultist structures and embrace childist principles. By examining the intersections of childism, decoloniality, and democratic theory, the volume sets forth a compelling vision of intergenerational justice that sees children as active agents with unique epistemic contributions. These contributions to childhood and philosophy champion a new scholarly paradigm where children are valued not as future adults but as present participants in knowledge creation and social transformation, with the capacity to shape a more inclusive and equitable world. Furthermore, childhood is repositioned beyond its subservience to exploitative adulthood structures. The issue stands as a foundational text for future inquiries into childism and intergenerational justice, urging scholars, educators, and policymakers to foster inclusive spaces that respect children’s agency and recognize their philosophical contributions.

[the special dossier features contributions by Itay Snir, Yao  Luo, Elsa Roland & Serena Iacobino, Edgar Eslava, Pedro Hernando Maldonado Castañeda, Erick Javier Padilla Rosas, Manfred Liebel & Philip Meade, Otavio Henrique Ferreira da Silva, Martina Elida Victoria, Vanessa Vanin Chaves & Vinicius Bertoncini Vicenzi, Maria Louise Larsen Hedegaard and Stacey Patton]