Raising Philanthropic Children: Moving Beyond Virtuous Philanthropy, Towards Transformative Giving and Empowered Citizenship

This article seeks to explore how children and young people are socialised to give within a western democracy. Drawing on England as a case study example it tracks the political and pedagogical favouring of a virtues approach to teaching children about philanthropic giving, orientated around benevolence and individual character virtues. Whilst accepting virtues have an important role to play within the socialisation of children as philanthropic actors, this article argues that such approaches maintain the status quo and do little to help engage children, both now and in the future, in challenging systems of inequality and inequity. Instead, this article calls for a more justice orientated approach to cultivating children’s philanthropic behaviours, orientated around ideas of justice, activism, and system change.