The subject of this issue of “Elementary Education in Theory and Practice”includes the way of understanding the child in the contemporary world. Referring to the Report for UNESCO prepared by Jacques Delors (1998), in which it was indicated that the 21st century education should be based on four pillars: “learning to know; learning to do; learning to live together; learning to be”, we wish to reconsider the child and childhood, especially their “being a child” and “learning to live in the modern world”.The research on children and childhood is carried out by many Polish and foreignscientists who analyse those issues from the historical-comparative, sociological, pedagogical and psychological perspective (inter alia Ariès 1995; Brzeziński 2002; Kehily 2008; Smolińska-Theiss 2014; Szczepska-Pustkowska 2009; Waloszek 2006). On the basis of their books we may conclude that education is the reflection of the image of child and childhood functioning in the society. So what is that image like? Are we able to overcome the tension between the child’s infantilism and independence
