NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

From the President, Paula Fass

I had the best and most satisfying experience teaching an undergraduate course in the history of childhood this past fall semester.  Several things came together to make the class especially engaged and put the pedagogical stars into favorable alignment.  I was asked by the Dean of Undergraduates to offer a liberal arts course under the aegis of the College of Letters and Sciences,  called Discovery Courses at Berkeley.  These are aimed at upperclassmen eager to expand their intellectual horizons beyond the usual departmental offerings into new and exciting (cutting edge) fields of research.   All the students are there voluntarily and come from across the campus. 

The class was filled, all one hundred allotted spaces, and we could have drawn two hundred had I asked for a larger classroom.  With two excellent teaching assistants (rare in upper division lectures) and an assortment of outstanding monographs chosen from our burgeoning list of books in the field, we were able to use Mary Ann Mason and my compilation as the reading base and went from there.  By committing myself to refreshing my older set of lectures (I have been teaching a course in the history of childhood for about eight years) with new visual materials from the internet and lots of printed sources that I put on power point  (newly learned during my leave last year), the course now had a wide set of teaching tools, excellent readings, and an enthusiastic audience.  I had the best time ever and a class of very happy students with grades way above the usual.  Several of these students have now enrolled as history majors and are in my undergraduate research seminar this semester.

There is clearly an eager audience of students out there and we are well positioned to fill a growing consciousness about the history of children and youth.  Taking the history of childhood to the people has become my goal for the next several years.  In April, I will be talking about the history of childhood to the organization of development psychologists at Berkeley who have asked me to give a lecture in their lunch series.   In addition to bringing the subject to as a large a campus audience as possible, I am taking the subject off campus.  In February I will be speaking with the association of public school teachers of Alameda County about how they can use children’s history in their high school history courses.  They invited me, a good sign that there is growing knowledge about our field as an important new source for history in the schools.  I have also lectured to University of California alumni and alumni retirees about the history of childhood.

All of us have the opportunity to make what we do available to a large audience.  Public school teachers are an important source for encouraging the incorporation of the history of childhood into history curricula.  We want to make them aware of the growing literature in the field and about our brand new journal where they can get some of the latest scholarship. Alumni too are eager to stay on top of things.   Our own students, both undergraduate and graduate, many of whom will themselves become teachers, remain our very best audience. I will be making use of all the teaching opportunities that come my way and hope that others will join me.  There is an audience out there eager to learn and eager to teach about the history of children and youth.

With my very best wishes for a happy and peaceful New Year to all,

Paula S. Fass
January 9, 2008