The
Pedagogy Column: H-Childhood's
Syllabus Exchange
Lisa
Ossian
In
the syllabus for her course on children's history class, Amanda
Seligman asks her students, "How old are you?" David Macleod wants his students to consider,
"how much has childhood changed with time?" The Macleod and Seligman syllabi are just
two of eleven courses of United States children's history linked
to H-Childhood's Syllabus Exchange(http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~child/syllabi/). For this column I have examined these
syllabi; they represent
courses ranging from sophomore surveys to senior seminars taught
at small private colleges as well as large universities across
the country.
[Eds.
note: H-Childhood's Syllabus Exchange is maintained by Kathleen Jones. To add your course, send an electronic
file of your syllabus to kjwj@vt.edu.]
Based
on the Syllabus Exchange links (and Joseph Hawes's course syllabus described
in the last SHCY Newsletter), I found that six colleges
and universities offer children's history as a standard survey
from precolonial or colonial to modern day United States. These
courses include "Youth in American History" (or "Not
Always Adolescents") as taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
by Amanda Seligman, "History of Childhood in America"
at Rhodes College by Gail Murray, "Growing Up in America"
at the University of Texas at San Antonio by Harvey Graff and
also at Central Michigan University by David Macleod, "Childhood
in America" at Marquette University by Jim Marten, and "History
of American Childhood" at Memphis the University of Memphis
by Joseph Hawes. Two
colleges offer more specific courses limited to the 20th Century
surveys: "Childhood and Youth in Modern America" at the University
of Sydney by Stephen Robertson and "Childhood and Youth in
20th Century America" at Ramapo College by Alex Urbiel.
At
Central Michigan University David Macleod teaches the sophomore
level "Growing Up in America" each semester--twice in
the fall and once in the spring. Central Michigan places children's history
in the general education program as an interdisciplinary or integrative
course with twelve such courses offered on campus, and the course
is cross-listed with Women's Studies. Macleod comments that his
class usually consists of sixty students in history and ten within
women's studies; female students make up approximately 70 percent
of the class.
In
addition to the survey, another avenue for the teaching of children's
history is inclusion within family history classes.
Two examples from the Syllabus Exchange
are Frostburg University's "History of the Family" and
Hiram College's "The History of the Family and Childhood."
Other institutions offer special topics for the more advanced
student such as Scott Walter's "From Flappers to Slackers:
Youth Rebellion in the 20th Century" at Indiana University. Dr. Ilana Nash (co-editor of the SHCY
Newsletter column on the history of girls) has taught
a course titled "The American Teenager, 1925-1975,"
and Dr. Miriam Forman-Brunell (also editor of the girls history
column) also teaches courses on the history of American girls.
These courses frame generational and developmental issues
of a youth culture and coming of age at a particular point in
history with established patterns of adolescent rebellion and
challenges to authority.
Each
college or university appears to offer only one children's history
course, whether the survey or a special seminar.
When more faculty begin to offer children's history as
part of the regular curriculum, community colleges will then also
be able to offer the sophomore survey course, much like children's
literature.
At
this point in time children's history is not as "standard"
a part of the academic curricula as, for example, courses in women's
history or African-American history. This may be partly because children's
history is not often affiliated with a separate disciplinary field
of Òstudies.Ó That
is, it is not part of a larger academic program similar to womenÕs
studies or black studies. Perhaps "Child Studies" might
be a future option to strengthen not only course offerings in
the history of childhood but also to offer an inclusive setting
for children's literature, developmental psychology, and child
education.
Several
pedagogical patterns emerge from the collection of courses and
syllabi available at the Syllabus Exchange
website. Each of
the classes uses a variety of reading material as historical evidence. The number of texts per course ranges
from four to eight required books, and one course adds four pairs
of primary texts with students choosing one from each of the four
pairs. Readings include historical anthologies,
autobiographies, novels, personal essays, and books and articles
on developmental psychology, and legal history. Stephen Robertson's
syllabus for "Childhood and Youth in Modern America"
at the University of Sydney captures the extent of historical
sources. Writes Robertson, "The study of childhood and youth will
also challenge us to think creatively and critically about what
we can learn from historical material ranging from conventional
sources such as government documents, legal records, advice literature,
psychological and psychiatric writings, photographs, films, and
autobiographies to less conventional sources such as oral histories,
toys and games, clothing, and children's fiction."
Or, as one course simply stated, its reading list ranged
from Horatio Alger to Harriet Jacobs to Jacob Riis.
The
Syllabus Exchange also demonstrates the pedagogical creativity that children's
history instructors have brought to their courses. Classes offered at both the sophomore
and the senior level incorporate a wide variety of assignments
and the professors represented here have required students to
write personal journals, present group projects, craft research
papers, conduct oral histories, and compose personal autobiographies
-- assignments designed to engage students intellectually as well
as emotionally. Film
reviews are another popular assignment, and the syllabi include
lists of appropriate films dating from the 1930s to the 1990s. Joseph Hawes describes his discussion-based
class as a "writing-intensive" course, and many of the
syllabi stress written assignments.
Gail
Murray, who teaches "The History of Childhood in America"
at Rhodes College, believes that what is unique about her course
is its service learning component --six visits to any one of several
local agencies that deal with disadvantaged children. She has
found that, because most of her students come from very privileged
backgrounds, this exposure helps them understand the variety of
social/culture complexities that children can experience. [Note:
Gail's course was featured in Newsletter #1)
Finally,
several courses found on the Syllabus Exchange
are structured and presented as web pages on which faculty encourage
students to communicate with their professor, keep up with readings
and assignments, and locate archival resources on line.
Most on-line syllabi offer links to other sites that explain
in more detail such crucial concepts as the dangers of plagiarism
and the basics of conducting oral histories.
None of the syllabi represent distance-learning or entirely
online classes. If such courses exist they would be a
valuable addition to the Exchange.
These
U.S. children's history courses certainly possess a strong and
challenging intellectual framework but also a creative outlook
in their readings, projects, and perspectives. And the number of such "Growing Up"
courses should certainly grow within academia, benefiting all
undergraduate students who are or will become parents, teachers,
doctors, scientists, social workers, and politicians. As I looked over the variety of syllabi, I experienced that
yearning to be a young student again--sitting in that lecture
hall as the first class begins.
But, if I cannot go back and revisit my past, maybe I can
try to introduce this course and its excitement into my academic
future.
Topic
for the Next Pedagogy Column: Suggested Readings
What
texts and documents best emphasize or contribute to the teaching
of children's history, either surveys or upper division? What
kinds of readings should perhaps be avoided and why? Are certain archival sources recommended? What assignments are attached to these
readings?
Please
write directly to my home e-mail (LLOssian@aol.com)
with your thoughts.
