The phenomenon of child heroism as counteraction to extremism in safe childhood developments

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Abstract

The article is focused on the analysis of the phenomenon of child heroism in history and today as a primary prevention of countering extremism in a child and adolescent environment in the context of security. The paper presents the results of a study of the ideas of pre-school children about heroism and the hero. Problems are identified with examples of real heroes in the preschoolers’ minds, recommendations for the use of the educational potential of heroism still poorly used in educational institutions are proposed. At the same time, it is it which can resist the negative forms of attitudes towards violence and aggressive behaviour. The heroic deeds of our today’s children are considered; the large number of them makes it possible for us to assert that heroism is not only a phenomenon of the past but is typical of the children of contemporary Russia. The work substantiates the psychological and social meanings of a child’s feat in a special paradoxical property, the strength of a child, bodily, psychological, spiritual as his/her own resource of vitality, the ability to cope with psycho-traumatic, stressful negative attacks from the outside and the ability to provide protection to himself/herself and those who need it to a certain extent. In the safe childhood development concept, the concept of ‘child strength’ refers to the category of fundamental concepts that characterise the degree of readiness of children of different ages to overcome extremal situations, including an adequate response to external threats, including in the moral sphere. The overall result of the safe development of childhood is a psychologically, spiritually and morally healthy person capable of resistance and self-defence against all sort of threats.