In this module students will learn to reflect critically on the ways in which the experience and interpretation of childhood has shifted historically, and on the ways in which different versions of childhood have been argued for in different contexts and at different times.

The social history of the lives of children is hard to gather into one place, fragmented as it is between many different factors: the history of the family, the history of religion, of education, medicine, rights and legislation, of classes and cultures, states and nations, gender and sexuality. But the social history of ‘childhood’, is a little easier to trace, tied as it is to various attempts – particularly from the eighteenth century onwards – to construct childhood as a special zone, cordoned off from the world of adults, with its own rules and conditions.

Throughout the last two hundred years ‘childhood’ has been the object of intense social concern and debate, as something to be managed, safeguarded, shaped, idealised or demonised, developed, promoted or commercialised as the case may be. This module supplies an important background context to the themes introduced in year 1 and also links to issues of the ‘representation’ of children explored in ‘Children in Literature’ this year.

Focusing on British social history (in order to make the most of local resources, and to contextualise contemporary practice in Britain) we will cover some key stages in the development of modern social policies about children – the Factory Act (1833), the 1870 Elementary Education Act (1870), the Children’s Charter (1889) – but we will do so in the context of particular debates and arguments about children’s lives and experience. In this sense, the social history of childhood is very much about the history of conversations by adults and professionals about children. However, throughout the module the Moodle site for the course will be used to post vignettes from oral history and photographs alongside excerpts from key documents, and other materials so that we also get an understanding of the changing social experience of childhood in its various social dimensions. This angle on the experience of childhood will be supplemented by a field trip to the Museum of Childhood and The Ragged School Museum.

Aims

• To give students a broad historical overview of developments in the experience and understanding of childhood in Britain since the eighteenth century.
• To examine the lives of children in different social contexts in Britain over the same historical period.
• To introduce students to key debates in social history over the construction of modern ideas of childhood.
• To give students historical contexts through which to understand the development of modern educational and social policy around children.
• To use the historical record as a way of comparing different social experiences of childhood.
• To use the historical material as a springboard for critical reflection on, and evaluation of, the shifting meaning of childhood.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will gain an overview of key developments and phases in the social understanding of childhood in Britain in the last 200 years.
• Students will gain a sense of the varieties of childhood experiences in different social contexts in Britain in the last two centuries.
• Students will be informed about key debates over the way ‘childhood’ has emerged as a social construct in modern history.
• Students will gain knowledge of formative moments in educational and social policy towards children, and the supporting historical context for this.
• Students will have learnt to compare the experience of childhood in different social and historical contexts.