NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Show and Tell: Not Just for Kindergarten
James Marten, Marquette University

I teach “Childhood in America” at Marquette University about once very three or four semesters.  The class normally attracts 30-35 students.  Many are history majors, but a sizeable minority are elementary education, nursing, and psychology majors, among others.  Interestingly, an overwhelming majority are women—perhaps 85-90 percent on average.

I’ve been requiring a version of an assignment I now call “Show and Tell” for a number of years.  It’s a fun little project that asks students to consider artifacts as historical sources, gets them into the library, and asks them to present their findings orally as well as in writing.  The exact wording of the project goes like this:

SHOW AND TELL.  This assignment will take the form of a brief class presentation as well as a paper.  Choose an object related to childhood—a toy, a children's picture book, some sort of childrearing object, etc.—and show (and tell) how it fits into the history of children and youth in the United States.  It can be something from your own childhood; it can be an artifact that you find on the internet (in which case you'll need to provide images of that artifact and/or the URL of the site on which you found it).  Answer as many of the following questions as well as you can (but feel free to explore other ideas as well): Who produced the object?  Who was the audience?  What were some of the ideas and values assumed by the makers and users of the object (for instance, gender roles, ethnicity, religious beliefs, patriotism)?  Were there equivalent versions of this object in earlier time periods?  Are there equivalent versions still being used?  Whose interests were or are being met by this object (parents or children, teachers or students, etc.)?  You must use sources beyond class lecture notes and readings.  At least one of your sources must be a book. 

The paper runs about 500 words (this is one of three short, formal papers; the others are on children in fiction and on three generations of advice books for parents) and comprises 10 percent of the final grade.  Students also write four shorter, less formal papers (called “Through Children’s Eyes”) and take two essay exams.  Half of the class make their presentations about halfway through the semester, while the other half presents late in the semester.  Papers are due on the days of the presentations.

The stage is set for these individual projects on the first day of class, when the students participate in an un-graded group activity called the “Instant Museum Class Project.”   After going over the syllabus and other administrative details during the first portion of the 75-minute period, I divide the class into small groups and distribute the following instructions: “For the next half-hour or hour you and a team of classmates will be “curators” in a new museum related to the history of children.  Examine and read the artifacts scattered around the room.  Then 1) write a 2-3 sentence museum label for each, and 2) jot down some thoughts of how each might add to our knowledge of children’s lives in the past.”  Their thoughts are to be organized around the “Mission Statement” of the fictional “Museum of Children’s History,” which is dedicated to “a) Showing and describing the forces shaping the contours of children’s lives in the United States, b) Demonstrating how attitudes about children and childrearing styles have evolved over time, and c) Displaying the ways that children were expected to act—and how they really acted.  We spend the last ten minutes of the period discussing their responses.

The first time I did this was very spur of the moment; I literally spent the half hour before class selecting a rather random bunch of objects or pictures that I happened to have in my office or could access quickly on the internet.  Since then I’ve been better about planning ahead.  The current lineup of objects cover most of the 20th century: 

1. A photograph of a memorial statue to a little girl at her Buffalo, New York, gravesite, ca. late 19th century.

2. A letter from boy to official of Milwaukee Home for Dependent Children, 1905.

3. The History of the United States in Words of One Syllable, ca. 1900.

4.  A tinted photograph of a couple of dozen children playing on a merry-go-round (an old wood and iron model that could be found in small town playgrounds when I was growing up) in a Milwaukee park, ca. 1910s.

5. An issue of Pluck and Luck, a juvenile magazine, published in the 1920s.

6. WWII propaganda posters featuring children.

7. This is Jim, a picture book ca. 1950s. (This is actually a book given to me by my grandmother; it features a little boy thinking about all the jobs he could do when he grows up, with his little sister Jan—my sister’s name is Jane—tagging along.)

Items from the "Museum of Children's History"

	#4. Children on a Milwaukee playground, ca. 1910
#1. Gravesite memorial	#7. This is Jim, a child's picture book from the 1950s

This is a pleasing way to break the ice and to get the students thinking about objects and images from their own childhoods that may have more meaning than they had previously considered.
           
The Show and Tell projects have revolved almost exclusively around toys.  Not surprisingly, most come from their own childhoods.  Last spring we were treated to presentations on Play-Doh, one of the first video game platforms, an Easy-Bake Oven, Crayola Crayons, and the first generation of Star Wars action characters (borrowed from a student’s older brothers).  But mainly—and this was a bit unusual—students chose to write and talk about dolls.  Inevitably, there were several presentations on Barbie and several on the American Girl series. 
           
Mostly, the students stick to the facts they learned about the artifacts in books, articles, catalogues, corporate websites, and so forth.  But the doll presentations were much more lively.  The young women were, of course, talking about issues in their own lives when, for instance, they showed how Barbie had evolved from a Malibu blonde into a professional woman.  They described conflicts with mothers who wanted them to preserve the integrity of the expensive American Girls dolls, which limited the amount of actual play that could occur.
           
One of the themes of the course—and of most courses in children’s history, I imagine—is the notion that childhood is a social construction.  The best Show and Tell presentations grapple with the ways in which makers and adult purchasers of toys create those constructions of childhood, reflect societal assumptions and pressures, and participate in the consumerism that has affected children’s play since the 19th century.  Most of the students got the latter point, especially; one woman recalled being a little bewildered—and bemused—by her father’s insistence on buying for her every Barbie that ever came out, but making her keep them in the their boxes.  Perhaps the most amusing—and most telling—presentation was made by a woman who horrified her mother when she trimmed her American Girl’s hair and “pierced” her ears.

Like most assignments in undergraduate courses, this one works on a number of levels and is more or less effective depending on how the deeply the students reflect on the issues presented in class.  At its simplest, Show and Tell teaches students that historical “documents” include more than just books and papers.  At its best, it encourages students to explore the multiple meanings of childhood.