Infantilization refers to the attitude that adults have towards children, based on the contempt and undervaluation of their abilities, since they consider that they are not capable and treat them as something unintelligent.
There are two infantilizing strategies.
On the one hand, we can fall into waltdisneization, in which children are kept in a fantasy world, away from social inequalities and injustices. Reality is presented to them with unreal or fantasy characters, accompanied by cartoonish descriptions, and this makes children not know how to distinguish between reality and fiction.
On the other hand, with the tourist curriculum, we bring children closer to different cultures in a banal, superficial way, with stereotypes. For this, drawings are used, which make those cultures ridiculed and devalued; and although children know that the drawings are simply drawings, a vision of these situations as something unreal is promoted and it contributes to the preservation of dominant stereotypes.
Authorship
Mirella Barcenilla Vegara, Izan Cadavieco Miguélez, Adriana Gutiérrez Lavín y Nerea Gutiérrez Suárez, 2020.