Stephen Lassonde

Office: University Hall, First Floor

ph. 617-495-1942
e: slassonde@harvard.edu
Office Hours: Monday Lamont Library Caf, 1:00-3:00,
or by appointment, Room 106, University Hall

Children and Childhood in America, 1640-Present

This course explores the emerging literature in the history of children and
childhood in America from the 17th century to the present. While it is
organized chronologically, it is also topical in approach. Fundamental
questions posed by historians in this burgeoning field will be examined, such
as: How has the regard for children changed over the last three and a half
centuries? What is the role of children in the popular imagination? How has
childrens work evolved since the colonial period? How does gender affect
the way children grow up? How has the emergence of the field of child
development shape childrens experiences? These and other questions have
been partially answered by historians, but much of the excitement of this
field lies in work yet to be done, which we will explore through its
historiography and through primary sources that inform our knowledge of
the past as children experienced it.

What you will learn/do in this course:

You will learn the literature of the history of childhood in North America
You will learn how American society conceived of childhood and how
children have been treated during the past 300 years
You will become familiar with primary sources in a local archives, museum,
or library
You will learn how to find, examine, and interpret a primary source
You will work on your writing; learn to write a book review or to write a
research paper
You will practice critiquing the arguments of professional historians

Assignments:

Reading Responses: Each week, beginning in Week 2, students will submit

a two-paragraph reading response to the weeks reading.

Primary Source Report: Each week, beginning in Week 4, students will

take turns examining, interpreting, and presenting a primary source
pertaining to the history of childhood and youth. I will select the documents
and students will choose (or be assigned) to work with primary sources so
that they can experience how historians make sense of the past. During the
week you present a primary source, you do not need to submit a Reading
Response.

Final Paper: Research Paper or Review Essay

Research Paper: A paper, 20 pp in length, based on primary sources in a

local archival collection will satisfy your Research Paper Requirement for
the History concentration. The final paper is due in class on Sunday, May
4, a dinner at Mather House.

Review Essay: You have the option of writing a review essay on two or three
books (if you review three books, one of them may be a book we read for this
course) on a related theme in stages involving drafts, critique, and revision.
The final paper will be written in four stages (Review #1; Review #2;
Transition; Introduction & Conclusion). By the fifth week of the semester
you will have written a draft of a book review of the first of the two (or
three) books selected for the review essay. At the end of the seminar you will
have produced an essay of 15 pages, due on Sunday, May 4, a dinner at
Mather House.
Please see handout on the Final Paper assignment for more detail on each of
these paper options.

All of you must meet with me no later than February 24 to discuss the
suitability of your paper topic.

Grading:

Class participation: 20%

Attendance: Part of class participation includes showing up. There are 13
class meetings, which means that each meeting is worth about 8% of your
grade for Class Participation. If you are present for every class meeting but
do not contribute to class discussion, you will only be awarded half points
for attending. If you are someone who has difficulty speaking in class, this
may not be the course for you, but you should speak with me if you have
concerns about your ability to participate. If you miss a class for a reason
unsanctioned by your Resident Dean I will deduct points from your grade.

Reading Responses: 15%

Reading Responses are due by 5:00 p.m. the evening before class meets.
Late submissions will not get credit for that assignment. What I am looking
for is not merely a summary (in fact the response may not necessarily
include a summary of the work) but also some perspective on the argument
being advanced by the author or authors. I am especially interested in
responses that make some connection between readings in the course.

Primary Source Report: 15%

See handout for this assignment when I distribute it in class.

Final Paper: 50%

C L A S S M E E T I N G S

Week 1: Course Overview (January 30)

Lecture; course aims, expectations, discussion of syllabus

Week 2: Origins of Childhood (February 6)

Ann Gibbons, The Birth of Childhood, 14 November 2008, v. 322, Science,
1040-43; www.sciencemag.org
Anthony Volk, "The Evolution of Childhood," Journal of the History of
Childhood and Youth, Vol 4. (Fall 2011): 470-494.
Melvin Konner, The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind
(2011), 206-226; 277-95.
Discuss Primary Source and Final Paper assignments (Handouts:
Source Report/Final Paper/Art of Reviewing; Instructions)

Class Exercises:
Primary Source: Instructions for the Punishment of Incorrigible Children in
Massachusetts, 1646
Survey of Students Ideas about Age Markers

Week 3: Museum Visit (February 13)

Artifacts from Native American collections, Harvard Peabody Museum of
Archeology and Ethnology

Discussion: The Ideology of Childhood

Edmund Morgan, A Puritan Education, [excerpted from The Puritan
Family], reprinted in Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann Mason, eds., Childhood in
America (2000), 288-91.
John Locke, The Use of Reason in Child Rearing [excerpted from Some
Thoughts Concerning Education], reprinted in Paula S. Fass and Mary Ann
Mason, eds., Childhood in America (2000), 45-48.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, [excerpt from Emile] reprinted in Paula S. Fass and
Mary Ann Mason, eds., Childhood in America (2000), 292-93.
Steven Mintz, Inventing the Middle Class Child, in Hucks Raft: A History
of American Childhood (2004), 75-93.

Assign primary source reports

Week 4: Childrens Morbidity, Mortality, and Memorialization
(February 20)
Richard A. Meckel, Levels and Trends of Death and Disease in Childhood,
1620 to the Present, in J. Golden, R. Meckel, and H. Prescott, eds., Children
and Youth in Sickness and Health: A Historical Handbook and Guide (2004),
3-24.
David E. Stannard, Death and the Puritan Child, in Stannard, ed., The
American Way of Death, Death in America (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1975), 9-29.
Ellen Marie Snyder, Innocents in a Worldly World: Victorian Childrens
Gravemarkers, in Richard C. Meyer, ed., Cemeteries and Gravemarkers:
Voices of American Culture (1989), 11-29.
Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child (1985), 22-55.

Source Report: Headstones (from Mt. Auburn Cemetery; anonymous and

Victorian)

Week 5: Childrens Work and Child Labor (February 27)

Steven Mintz, in Hucks Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004), 133-
53.
Hugh D. Hindman Child Labor: An American History (2002), 3-43.
Hugh Cunningham and Pier Paolo Viazzo, Some Issues in the Historical
Study of Child Labour, in Cunningham and Viazzo, eds., Child Labour in
Historical Perspective, 1800-1985 (1996), 11-21.
Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the
Antebellum South (2000), 131-54.

Source Report (TBD)

Week 6: Racial Thinking in American Childhood (March 6)

Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from
Slavery to Civil Rights (2011).

Primary Source Report (TBD)

Author visit (Robin Bernstein)
FOR BOOK REVIEWERS: DRAFT OF FIRST REVIEW DUE IN CLASS

Week 7: Children and Schooling (March 13)

Massachusetts School Law, 1648.
Stephen Lassonde, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New
Havens Working Class, 1870-1940 (2005).

Source Report (TBD)

SPRING BREAK NO CLASS MEETING MARCH 20

Week 8: The Material Culture of Childhood (March 27)

Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Life of Early Childhood,
1600-1900 (1992).

Source Report: The childhood journals of the artist Sarah Gooll Putnam
(University of Massachusetts Historical Society)

Week 9: Picturing Children (April 3)

Anne Higonnet, Picturing Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal
Childhood (1998).

Source Report: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer

Sargent, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Week 10: Children and Play (April 10)

Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (2007).

Source Report (TBD)

DRAFT OF SECOND REVIEW DUE IN CLASS

Week 11: Children, Race, and Civil Rights (April 17)

Rebecca de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World: Young People and
Americas Long Struggle for Racial Equality (2009).

Source Report: Look magazine cover by Norman Rockwell, The Problem We

All Live With (1964)

Week 12: Children and the Developmental Paradigm (April 24)

Stephen Lassonde, Age, Schooling, and Life Stages in the West, 1500-
Present, in Paula Fass, ed., The Routledge History of Childhood in the
Western World (2013), 211-228.
John B. Watson, Behaviorism [excerpt] (1925), 82.
Barbara Beatty, Transitory Connections: The Reception and Rejection of
Jean Piagets Psychology in the Nursery School Movement in the 1920s and
1930s, History of Education Quarterly, 49 (November 2009): 442-64.
Barbara Beatty, "The Debate over the Young 'Disadvantaged Child':
Preschool Intervention, Developmental Psychology, and Compensatory
Education in the 1960s and Early 1970s," Teachers College Record, 114:6
(2012): 1-36.

Author visit (Barbara Beatty)

Source Report (TBD)

DRAFT OF INTRODUCTION, TRANSITIONAL PARAGRAPH AND

CONCLUSION DUE IN MY OFFICE IN UNIVERSITY HALL
Week 13: Final class meeting Sunday dinner, Mather House (May 4)
FINAL PAPERS DUE IN CLASS; PRESENTATION OF RESEARCH
PAPERS

Books to Purchase
(listed in order of appearance on the syllabus)

Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from

Slavery to Civil Rights (2011).

Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Life of Early Childhood,
1600-1900 (1992).

Anne Higonnet, Picturing Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal

Childhood (1998).

Stephen Lassonde, Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New

Havens Working Class, 1870-1940 (2005).

Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (2007).

Rebecca de Schweinitz, If We Could Change the World: Young People and

Americas Long Struggle for Racial Equality (2009).