The official records and reports of social welfare agencies and institutions provide insight into societal beliefs and attitudes related to deviance and changes in those beliefs and attitudes over time. While review of such documents may in some… [more]
This case study uses reports from an institution that housed some children with disabilities and helps students understand children's experience of disability over time, giving the institutional perspective on how such children were classified and how attitudes toward disabilities might have influenced how society dealt with them during the period. echo [more]
Folktales and fairy tales are resources for dealing with historical topics related to children and youth, and because 19th-century European editors, writers, and pedagogues presented folktales and fairy tales for the moral and cultural education of children, they also reveal how children and childhood were perceived by the societies that produced them, helping to examine the construction of childhood and the experiences of children from a socio-historical perspective. echo [more]
This module examines the founding principles of Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement in terms of its vision for decreasing social tensions and fostering adherence to generationally transmitted values; the module illustrates the complexities of the Scouting movement among African youth living under European colonial rule.
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This module examines the impact of colonization on childhood experiences in New Zealand’s bicultural society of indigenous Maori and mostly European Pakeha between the first encounter in the 18th century to the 20th century, including issues of language, child labor and schooling as well as changing values concerning family structure, identity, and social policy. [more]
In this excerpt, an adult Horeta Te Taniwha recounts childhood memories of a cultural encounter with Europeans for a Pakeha researcher. Te Taniwha, as an indigenous child of Aotearoa/New Zealand, participated in one of the first meetings between… [more]
This extract from an annual report on Native Affairs reflects two realities of the 1870s: the on-going disruption of indigenous communities caused by settler and state demand for land acquisition; and the diversity of Maori experience, even within… [more]
Children's literature in this case study uses Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69) to explore changing notions about childhood, giving insight into the changing position of girls and women in American society, from the ordinary aspects of children's daily lives in the late 19th century to the ethical and moral assumptions that guided young people at this time in their thinking about class, gender, nationality, friendship, marriage, parenthood, and other issues. echo [more]