Welcome to our website on this roundtable conference session, scheduled at 8:30, Friday, July 10 [coffee in hand] at the Society for the History of Children and Youth conference in Berkeley. We hope to provide you with information about the roundtable participants, share initial commentary, information, and publications, and invite you to be part of an engaging conversation on the topic of the intersections between public policy and the history of childhood. We are still working on this website, and will be adding on as we go, but do take this opportunity to see what we're all about and join in the discussion by adding a comment to our guestbook. If you have something you would like to add in the way of comments or an important link on this topic, send it along to Julia Grant at grant@msu.edu, who will post it for you. See you in Berkeley! Visitor Comments For the conference proposal for this session see the link: Abstract: Entering into the Fray? Historians of Childhood and Public Policy Participants in the roundtable panel: Barbara Beatty, Professor and Chair, Education, Wellesley College My publications include Preschool Education in America: the Culture of Young Children from the Colonial Era to the Present (Yale) and, co-edited with Julia Grant and Emily Cahan, When Science Encounters the Child: Education, Parenting, and Child Welfare in 20th-Century America (Teacher College Press). I have written extensively about preschool history, policy, and advocacy, including on the politics of preschool advocacy, the campaign for public kindergartens, the rise of the American nursery school as a laboratory for child development, and resistance as a lens for comparing international preschool movements. I have also written about the relationship of educational psychology and education and teacher education policy. Recent commentaries and op-eds on these topics appeared in Teachers College Record online (September 17, 2008) and Education Week (November 12, 2008). I am writing a book on the rise and fall of Jean Piaget’s psychology and the discourse of developmentally appropriate practice in American education. I teach courses on the history of American education, the history of childhood and child welfare, and education policy, and encourage students to get engaged in advocacy and to teach, to connect policy to practice where policy “hits the road,” in schools and preschools. Beatty Remarks - "Some Warnings About Mixing History and Policy" Beatty cv Julia Grant, Professor of Public Affairs and History, Michigan State University Dr. Grant is a member of the Executive Board of the Society for the History of Children and Youth. She has published Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers [Yale], has co-edited with Barbara Beatty and Emily Cahan, When Science Encounters the Childhood: Education, Child Welfare, and Parenting in Twentieth-Century America [Teachers College], and is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press to publish The 'Boy Problem' in American Education and Society. She has also published articles on gender, sexuality, and on the history of childhood more generally. A recipient of the Teacher-Scholar and Teaching Commons Awards at Michigan State University, she is committed to teaching undergraduates the relevance of children's and educational history for contemporary public policy dilemmas in education, family policy, and child welfare. Grant Remarks - "Reflections on the 'Boy Problem''" Grant CV Tim Hacsi, Associate Professor, History, University of Massachusetts-Boston Dr. Hacsi has written several books and articles that have been widely used to inform policy. His first book, Second Home: Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America (Harvard, 1998) helped to shape the public conversation about child welfare. His book Children as Pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform (Harvard, 2002) has been a mainstay of educational policy students. Once a fellow at the Harvard Center for Children and Schooling, Hacsi's work combines history, advocacy, and an attention to the methods, assumptions, and politics undergirding contemporary policy issues. Hacsi CV Roberta Wollons, Professor and Chair, History, University of Massachusetts-Boston Dr. Wollons has been actively engaged in writing about the intersections of children's history and public policy for a number of years. Her book, Children at Risk: History, Concepts, and Public Policy (SUNY, 1993) directly engages some of the central themes of this conference. In her book, Kindergarten and Culture: The Global Diffusion of an Idea (Yale, 2000) she explores preschool education in a global context. Wollons CV Please click on the link to our guest book and provide comments and questions for the panelists. We'd also like to hear from you about the work you are doing! Visitor Comments |