Small Matters: Research on the History of Canadian Children and Education

Authored with my colleague, Tamara Myers, our Oxford Bibliography entry for the history of children in the Canadian context is available at http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com. We are delighted to contribute to this important resource in the field and to be able to highlight how much excellent work has been done in the last decade or so. The field in Canada is now well past its infancy!

I’ve published a new article in the March 2017 issue of the Canadian Historical Review  (http://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/chr.3564) that employs the concept of “social age” to interrogate adult constructions of children’s vulnerability, particular in the realm of sexuality and sexual health. Historically, adults have used assumptions regarding young age to keep children in the dark about their bodies and about sexuality. My research suggests that keeping children ignorant in the realm of sexuality often produced unintended consequences: they become more not less vulnerable to feelings of shame, confusion, and abuse at the hands of others.

I am happy to announce that Bringing Children and Youth in Canadian History: The Difference Kids Make (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2017) has just been published. Co-edited with my colleague Tamara Myers, the book is a collection of readings particularly tailored for instructors teaching history courses for students at the college and university level. A number of the articles in the book have not been previously published and we are thrilled that they appear for the first time here. We have also included useful primary documents that pair with each article. We hope this book supports students and instructors who want to learn more about the remarkable contributions that young people have made, and continue to make, to Canada’s history.

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Next week, I travel to Chicago to join my history of education colleagues around the world at the 38th ISCHE conference. This marks a unique opportunity for historians of education from around the world to come together to present their research. The theme of this year’s conference is “Education and the Body.” Over 90 parallel sessions will fill our four day conference.

The conference features daily keynote addresses and I am pleased to offer the first Keynote Address, presented in conjunction with the opening of an exhibit on the body in the history of education at the Newberry Library. My address is entitled “Metaphor, Materiality, and Method: The Central Role of the Body in the History of Education.” The paper reflects on how the body has been instrumental in shaping our histories over the last decades and I extend three “inspiring provocations” to scholars to develop new questions, new theories, and new methods in the field – all based on thinking through and with the body in educational settings.

For more information on ISCHE and the program of the Conference, see:

Main Page

My latest article entitled  “Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education,” will appear in a special issue of History of Education in the next few months. The issue focuses “Marginalized Children and Vulnerable Histories” and is edited by Johanna Sköld and Kaisa Vehkalahti.

I’m delighted to be a recipient of a Spencer Foundation Grant for my latest research project entitled Families without Schools: Rurality and the Promise of Schooling in Western Canada, 1920s to 1960s. The project re-visits the family letters of the Elementary Correspondence School files at the BC Archives and asks the following questions: 1) How did settler parents and children negotiate the demands of their rural settings in order to get an education? 2) How did they articulate the purpose and value of schooling and what impact did their rural location have on these articulations?  3) What can this history reflect about contemporary efforts to ensure that parents and students feel included in school communities?

At the end of March, 2016, I presented the first paper from the project at the European Social Science History Conference, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. My powerpoint presentation for that paper, entitled “Families Without Schools: Rurality, Remoteness, and the Promise of Schooling in Western Canada, 1930 to 1960,” is linked here:

ESSHC 2016 Valencia POWERPOINT Families Without Schools

My co-authored article with Claudia Diaz-Diaz is now available and we are pleased that this Hampton Grant-supported research is circulating!

Claudia Diaz-Diaz, Claudia and Mona Gleason (2015) “The Land is My School: Children, History, and the Environment in the Canadian Province of British Columbia,” Childhood 22 (4): 1-14.

I’ve also provided a link her to the Land is My School blog for some more information about this research project that wrapped up last year.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/thelandismyschool/

My very latest research project is entitled “Families without Schools: Rurality, Remoteness, and the Promise of Schooling in Western Canada, 1900 to 1960.” In it, I return to the archival collection of the British Columbian Elementary Correspondence School Collection and again concentrate on what letters from parent and students to governmental officials reveal. Here is a brief description of the focus:

“This project investigates a challenge to public schooling in the twentieth century that remains under-examined in the history of education: living in remote and isolated locations where attending a traditional public school was impossible. The research is based on the archival collection of the Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) that operated under the auspices of the Department of Education in the western Canadian province of British Columbia between 1919 and 1960. Between these decades, the ECS sent correspondence materials free of charge to families who indicated that they had school-aged children but lived more than five miles from the nearest public school. Along with being far from schools, these families were often limited by treacherous terrain. Contained within this larger archive is a collection of hundreds of letters exchanged between White settler families (parents and children) and ECS teachers and officials. Eager to take advantage of correspondence schooling, families received the approved curriculum in the mail, children then completed the various lessons, and sent them back to the ECS for marking and feedback.
The ECS family letters represent a remarkable repository of parent and child perspectives on the value and purpose of schooling over the twentieth century in rural British Columbia. They amplify the voices of those often silent in the history of education: parents and children generally, and rural parents and children, particularly. Through the letters, we gain a deeper understanding of their attitudes towards schooling even as they found themselves without the benefit of traditional public schools. Three key questions guide the project: How did settler parents and children negotiate their rural and remote setting with the desire to get an education? How did they articulate the purpose and value of going to school and what impact did their rural and remote location have on these articulations? What can this history reflect about contemporary engagement with school inclusion and exclusion?”

Stay tuned for more details of the project. In the meantime, see my co-authored article on another dimension of the ECS collection to appear in the fall in the journal, Childhood.

Claudia Diaz Diaz  and Mona Gleason,  “The Land is My School: Children, History, and the Environment in the Canadian Province of British Columbia,” Childhood (In Press, November, 2016).

I am very pleased to be joining my colleagues in the Department of Thematic Studies, Child Studies (TEMA Barn) for the month of April. Bengt Sandin, Karin Zetterqvist Nelson, Johanna Sköld, and Judith Lind are all members of TEMA Barn, not to mention their wonderful graduate students. At TEMA Barn, the emphasis is on sharing research. There is an thoroughly engaging atmosphere of intellectual curiosity, convivial conversation and collaboration. On April 9th, I presented a seminar to the TEMA based on my recent article entitled “Constructing Vulnerability and Producing Vulnerable Children: Sexuality, Innocence and Childhood in Twentieth Century Canada.” I look very much forward to the remaining weeks of research presentations, coffee chats, and intellectual enrichment.

I’m very excited to be invited by Dr. Geertje Boschma from the Consortium for Nursing History Inquiry, School of Nursing at the University of British Columbia, to present to their Nursing History Symposium, on November 20th, 2014.  My talk will focus on how the history of children and childhood might inform the history of nursing. Shifts in attitudes towards children and their medical treatment over the 19th and 20th centuries profoundly affected nurses and their practice. My talk will bring some of this to light.  For more information about the day, please see the poster linked here: Nursing History Symposium Nov 20, 2014