NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

Pedagogy
Stephen Gennaro, Column Editor

What follows below is a description of an interactive seminar entitled What is Childhood Studies- and How Do We Teach It in the Classroom? from the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Cultural Studies Association, New York University, New York City, NY May 22-24, 2008.

Summary of the Seminar, by Mary Niall Mitchell, University of New Orleans

What is Childhood Studies? Stephen Gennaro, from York University, organized a session devoted to this question at the recent meeting of the Cultural Studies Association in New York in May.  Participants came from a number of fields—sociology, literature, history, education, religious studies—and each brought particular insight to the subject of childhood studies and how to teach it.  Professor Gennaro began the session by asking participants to try some of the group exercises he uses in his own childhood studies course.  For example, students must query their peers about the material, familial, and geographical aspects of their childhood.  The exercise is designed to encourage students to view childhood as widely varied set of experiences, dependent on factors such as race, nationality, economic status, kinship, and cultural practice, rather than as a universal condition.  In addition, Professor Gennaro asked each faculty participant to submit, in advance, a sample assignment incorporating the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This exercise opened a discussion about childhood studies and draw forth ideas from scholars in multiple disciplines regarding effective ways to teach and study childhood and its role within society. Some used the U.N. Convention to open up larger questions about identity and agency, with particular focus on religious education, creative writing, and political protest. Other exercises asked students to place the document within current political debates sparked by the U.N. Convention regarding the rights of parents (to date, the United States and Somalia remain the only nations that have not signed the document). The workshop’s participants hope to further their discussions via a web-based network and perhaps future conference sessions.

Attendees Included:

Amy Shuffelton, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater
Loren Weybright, Metropolitan College of New York
Mary Niall Mitchell, University of New Orleans
Laura L. Lovett, University of Massachusetts
Alicia Conner, Florida State University
Mayisha Priest, Santa Clara University
Prathim Maya Anandan, University of Oxford
Evelyn Reid, City College of New York
Laurel Koepf, Union Theological Seminary

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Teaching The UN Convention in Children’s Studies
Stephen Gennaro, York University

“Childhood” has become a hotly contested subject in academic discourse. Its growth in popularity parallels the emphasis over the last half century in the field of cultural studies to give voice to the “voiceless.” Childhood & Children’s Studies now occupy an important place in academia, as illustrated by the fact that York University in Toronto and Rutgers University have both recently added degree granting Childhood & Children’s Studies programs.  Much like any axis of difference to be studied, or social variable under consideration, age- and the construction of childhood, lends itself to academic study through a variety of fields and lenses. And while we can come to the study of children or childhood from multiple perspectives, one text or document that is key, or central, to any study of children is the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  In creating a course that specifically looks at Children’s Studies as a discipline, the Convention is first text that the students engage should with.  However, even in a psychology, anthropology, or art history course, where the lived experiences or social practices of children are being examined, having an understanding of what it means to be a child in the 20th and 21st century can be a very valuable context for all realms of study.   And ultimately, a discussion of the Convention that centers on its validity, limitations, realities, western bias, importance, or nostalgic impressions, can only deepen the engagement your students make with the rest of the course material throughout the year.

Accessing the Convention

I have found that I have had the most success in teaching the Convention when all of my students were given their own copy, rather than asking them to purchase or print it off of the internet.  In Canada, where I teach, contacting the Federal Government resulted in the delivery of free copies of the Convention to my university.  Over and above the legal speak of the convention, I have found that the Canadian Government’s translated version of the Convention into “child friendly language” as an excellent entry point both into the Convention itself, as well as some of the potential roadblocks for children accessing the Convention and their own rights (http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pdfs/NCD-poster_e.pdf)

Examples of Activities

One of the first activities I ask my students to participate in, is called the “Worlds of Childhood Scavenger Hunt,” which aims to separate students into working teams for the remainder of the semester, while highlighting the different lived experiences and childhoods of each individual.  Once teams are formed, the remainder of the first day of class is spent with teams each being given a copy of the UN Convention and then being asked as a team to pick one right of the child that they can identify with.  Their first assignment, as a team, is to create an NGO to examine this “right of child”- and for the remainder of the course, teams are asked to explore the weekly readings in relation to their NGO and the right that their NGO seeks to protect. 

The activities I create are centered around a popular form of media, which the student is asked to analyze, first based on their own knowledge, and then second using the theoretical constructs and terms from a piece of scholarly writing assigned for class. The goal is always to begin with having the student explore what do they already know about the subject, before moving into a more critical and analytical approach to the subject that is aided by the introduction of critical scholarly material and popular media texts. Some of the activities that my students participate in on a weekly basis to re-examine children’s rights issues include: creating a collage, building a Barbie, creating a television talk show, writing a letter to their local newspaper editor, or making a comic strip.  

Two additional classroom activities that I use in the first two weeks of class that deal with the UN Convention include:

The Question of Children’s’ Rights
Let’s Give them Something to Talk About

Activities shared by workshop participants include:

Persepolis for CSA
Persepolis and Rights of the Child
One Such Child
Exploring the (Cultural) Implications of the Term Children
Assignment on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child

[Ed. Note: pdf files; requires Adobe Acrobat to open.]

Parties interested in hosting or participating in future seminars in “teaching children’s studies” may contact Dr. Gennaro at sgennaro@yorku.ca