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Foreword
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
We acknowledgethe financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishingactivities. Canadian Cataloguing in PublicationData Sutherland, Neil, 1931 Children in EnglishCanadian society: framing the twentiethcentury consensus (Studies in childhood and family in Canada) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0889203512 1. ChildrenCanada. 2.Child welfare Canada. 3.Education. 4.Education Canada. I. Title. II. Series. HQ792.C3S97 2000 305.23'0971 COO9307087© 2000 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 Cover design by Leslie Macredie, using a photograph entitled "Children at Brittania Beach, BC, 1907," by P. Timms. Photograph courtesy of Vancouver Public Library, photo #7681. Printed in Canada Children in EnglishCanadian Society: Framing the TwentiethCentury Con sensus has been produced, with a new Foreword, from the University of Toronto Press edition 1978. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be repro duced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, tap ing or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6. Contents Foreword / v Preface / ix Acknowledgments / xiii PART I: 'ELEVATE THE HOME' Changing Attitudes to Children in EnglishSpeaking Canada, 18701900 1 'A Good Home and Kind Treatment' LateNineteenthCentury EnglishCanadian AttitudestoChildren and ChildRearing / 3 2 'Multitudes Better Equipped ... than Their Fathers' A New Childhoodfor a New Society / 13 PART II: TO CREATE A STRONG AND HEALTHY RACE' Children in the Public Health Movement, 18801920 3 'Our Whole Aim Is Prevention' Public Health in the Schools, 18801914 / 39 4 'Education ... Carried on Principally in the Home' The Campaignto Reduce Infant Mortality, 18951920 / 56 5 'Invariably the Race Levels Down' Mental Hygieneand CanadianChildren171 6 'How Can We Reach Them?' Making Child Health a NationWideEnterprise/ 79 111 [44.200.230.43] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:18 GMT) iv Childrenin EnglishCanadian Society PART III: 'REMOVE THE YOUNG FROM SCHOOLS OF CRIME' Transforming the Treatment of JuvenileDelinquents, 18851925 7 From Reformatory to Family Home LateNineteenthCentury Young Offenders in the Context of ChangingTheory and Prevailing Practice / 91 8 Towards 'Intelligent and Progressive Legislation for the Prevention of Crime' Preparing the Way for the Juvenile DelinquentsAct, 18861908 / 108 9 Trying to Make a 'Child into What a Child Should Be' Implementing the Juvenile Delinquents Act, 19081925 /124 PART IV: THE SCHOOL MUST BE THE AGENT' Using the New Education to Make the New Society 10 Changing Albert School The Institutional Context for Education Reform in Canada, 18901920 /155 11 'A Very Strong Undercurrent of Dissatisfaction' Setting the Stage for the 'New' Education, 18851900 / 172 12 'The Common Centre from which Radiated Plans and Labours' The MacdonaldRobertson Movement Demonstrates the New Education to Canadians, 19001913/182 13 From Proposals to Policy The 'New' EducationEnters the Main Stream, 19101920 / 202 PART V: CHILDREN IN ENGLISHCANADIAN SOCIETY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 14 'Launch a Generation' Organizing to Implement the New Consensus/ 227 Notes / 243 Bibliographic Note/ 315 Index / 323 Foreword The eminent sociologist Norbert Elias postulated that no true understanding of human society is possible without a grasp of the "historicity of each indi vidual, the phenomenon of growing up to adulthood." According to Elias, civilizing processes involve a continual redefinition of certain forms of con duct as "childlike" and consequently not appropriate to adults, and, at the same time, a widening sense of childhood as appropriately distinct from adulthood, a realm with its own characteristics and requirements, its own peculiar culture.1 This is the story that unfolds in Neil Sutherland's Children in EnglishCanadian Society: Framing the TwentiethCentury Consensus, which we are pleased to offer to a new generation of readers. Looking back over the twenty years that have elapsed since its original publication, Professor Sutherland remarked that, despite ongoing public interest in childhood and family, these subjects "made but fleeting appear ances in high school and university courses or in texts in national history" until very recently. His own adult sojourns in the realm of childhood, born of his teacher training and time spent in public school classrooms, led him first to the education faculty at the University of British...