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Traditional developmental psychology is increasingly critiqued for its adultcentric bias, which conceptualizes childhood as a state of functional deficit and a mere transition toward the teleological actuality of adulthood. This ideological framework provides a scientific sanctuary for bleak pedagogy-a repressive educational paradigm characterized by will-breaking and corrective violence. This paper conducts a meta-theoretical deconstruction and reconstruction of the concept of development by tracing its philosophical inheritance from Aristotelian entelecheia through Enlightenment rationalism to modern Darwinian linear evolution. By exposing how these narratives legitimize the systematic marginalization of children's current agency, the study proposes an ontological inversion. It shifts the developmental paradigm from a linear, bio-reductionist "ladder" toward a Relational Developmental Systems (RDS) framework that emphasizes Aionian presentness and situational becoming. Under this lens, development is reimagined as a non-linear, intersubjective process of co-becoming, where the child is no longer an incomplete subject in need of repair but an active social agent within a reciprocal context. By establishing a relational pedagogical paradigm, this research dismantles the operational pillars of bleak pedagogy-future-investment instrumentalism and the tyranny of developmental norms. It concludes that the holding environment restores the ontological dignity of childhood, transforming education from a standardized production line into a cradle for vital diversity and the flourishing of life.
Luo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.