WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: THEMES: Despite our tendency to naturalize childhood, to treat it as an unchanging essence, childhood is socially and historically constructed: how childhood is understood, lived and treated changes in different historical periods. You will expand your knowledge of three important aspects of the history of childhood and youth in the modern United States. Changing ideas of childhood: Who was a child? How was childhood defined? On what basis were children distinguished from adults? What significance was given to social role, physiology, psychology and age in defining childhood? What traits and behaviors characterized children? Being a child: What did children do? How did children experience childhood? How far did adults ~ parents, experts, manufacturers, advertisers ~shape children's desires, behavior and experiences? What agency did children have to shape themselves and their lives? The politics of childhood: Who claimed authority over children? What was the relationship of the state to children? How was childhood represented and employed in politics and culture? SKILLS: You will develop the skills of critical analysis, communication and organization: we will not only read what historians say, but we will do what they do. Skills in Analysis You will critically read a variety of different primary documents ~ documents produced by people from the historical moments we are studying such as photographs, autobiographies, advice literature, comics, toys, clothing, movies and surveys. You will learn to consider what sources tell us about the past and what they do not tell us, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses, biases and distortions of particular types of evidence. You will learn to consider how sources convey meaning ~ the language, forms, assumptions, images, symbols they use ~ as well as their contents are crucial to what they tell us about the past. You will also read historians' interpretations and critically assess their arguments. The skill of critical reading involves not only trying to understand the interpretation put forward by a historian, but assessing the strengths and weaknesses of those arguments. You will learn to examine the evidence historians use to support their arguments and compare your interpretation of these sources with those of historians, as well as considering how far their arguments agree with other sources. You will also learn to analyze critically the different ways in which historical issues may be approached and understood, by recognizing the existence of competing interpretations, distinguishing the assumptions and evidence on which they are based and assessing their arguments. Both the tutorials and the essay topics make significant use of material available on the internet. In completing your assignments, you will learn to apply your skills of analysis to web-based sources and to take advantage of the flexibility and accessibility of web-based material to make your own way through sources and achieve a critical understanding by pursuing what interests you. Skills in Verbal and Written Communication: The written assignments will teach you the skills of formulating historians in appropriate language the understanding and opinions you have developed from your analysis of documents and the work of, organizing them in a logical and persuasive order, and supporting them with evidence. The tutorial paper is a short analysis of a limited set of sources. You will learn to communicate your close critical analysis of these sources and how to relate it to larger historical questions and debates. The essay will build on the tutorial paper and teach you to sustain an argument at some length. You will learn to analyze and identify significant documents from collections of primary sources available on the web as part of formulating your own argument in answer to the question. In the take home examination, the emphasis is on your ability to consolidate your knowledge and understanding, to reflect on what you have written earlier and to gather and express your thoughts more rapidly. For the examination, you will need to have organized and supplemented your knowledge and understanding of the issues covered in tutorials and lectures. The examination will give you the opportunity to answer a question on the topic about which you wrote in the essay, to allow you to reflect on and respond to the comments you received on your essay and to deepen your understanding by exploring the topic from another angle. In the tutorials, you will learn to listen and absorb the ideas of others, and respond to their ideas, as well as develop and express your own ideas, respond to constructive criticism and be ready to change or discard your argument in favor of one that is more convincing. Skills in organisation: This unit of study requires you to manage your time. To perform effectively, you must: Attend all lectures and tutorials ~ and arrive on time. Keep up with the reading. Meet your deadlines. If you meet all these demands, you will have developed good working habits that you can transfer to other studies and occupations.