Defining the "Child" in Educational Discourse:  
a history of the present*.







Bernadette Baker
University of Wisconsin-Madison
School of Education
Dept of Curriculum & Instruction
225 N Mills St
Madison, WI 53706 USA

Ph: (608) 263-4661
Email: bmbaker@students.wisc.edu




Paper prepared for the Australian Association for Research in 
Education,
Hobart, Tasmania, Nov. 26-30, 1995.


*This paper has been adapted from the chapter, "Childhood" in the 
emergence and spread of US public schools (in press) In T. Popkewitz & 
M. Brennan (Eds.)  Governmentality through Education: Foucault's 
challenge to the institutional production and study of knowledge  
Teachers College Press:  New York. 




What is a child?

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Louis XIII is being raised 
 like many aristocratic children of France at the time.  In his daily 
 life Louis is attended by his nanny, servants, parents, and doctor.    
 His doctor, Heroard, keeps a meticulous diary on the life and learnings 
 of the future King.  By the age of three Louis is playing the violin 
 and lute, dancing in ballets, singing satirical songs, learning tennis, 
 gambling in games of chance, playing with dolls and mixing with 
 soldiers.  From the adults around him Louis is also learning how to 
 relate to his body.  In what might be labeled at the end of the 
 twentieth century as anything but funny the young Louis entertains and 
 is entertained by palace staff, family and distinguished visitors,

Louis XIII was not yet one year old: 'He laughed uproariously when his 
nanny waggled his cock with her fingers'.  An amusing trick which the 
child soon copied.  Calling a page, 'he shouted "Hey, there!" and 
pulled up his robe, showing him his cock'.
He was one year old:  'In high spirits,' notes Heroard, 'he made 
 everybody kiss his cock.'  This amused them all.  Similarly everyone 
 considered his behaviour towards two visitors, a certain de Bonieres 
 and his daughter, highly amusing: 'He laughed at him, lifted up his 
 robe and showed him his cock, but even more so to his daughter, for 
 then, holding it and giving his little laugh, he shook the whole of his 
 body up and down'.  They thought this so funny that the child took care 
 to repeat a gesture which had been such a success; in the presence of a 

 'little lady', 'he lifted up his coat, and showed her his cock with 
 such fervour that he was quite beside himself.  He lay on his back to 
 show it to her' (AriŽs, quoting Heroard, 1962, p.100).

In the first three years of Louis' life nobody showed any reluctance or 
saw any harm in jokingly touching his sexual parts, including both of 
his parents.  By the age of  seven (the end of childhood for 
aristocratic children) Louis knew where babies came from, had amused 
the court and his parents with his first erections and had explored the 
"private parts" of adult men and women in the palace (AriŽs, 1962).
Louis XIII's early life undermines any simplicity or obviousness in 
 responding to the opening question, "What is a child?".  What we view 
 as a "normal childhood" is culturally and temporally specific.  To view 
 a person as a "child", as a distinct subject and therefore as an object 
 of concern and inquiry, is a relatively recent event.  While children 
 have always been identifiable by their physical size and age, the 
 meanings these differences have been given is not universal.  Our 
 present day "Western" beliefs in children as dependent, vulnerable, 
 requiring segregation and delay from responsibility is a particularly 
 modernist shift in views of the young (see further Archard, 1992).
The focus of this paper is the production of "childhood" in the public 
 school movement of the US.  I explore the boundaries of the "child" and 
 "childhood" through a "history of the present" (see Foucault, 1979).  A 
 history of the present "is a form of history which can account for the 
 constitution of knowledges" through analyzing "the modification of 
 rules of formation of statements which are accepted as scientifically 
 true"  (Foucault, 1980, p.112-117).  As such, it points to the cultural 
 and historical specificity of categories used to debate and practice 
 schooling today.
I focus upon two aspects of "childhood's" production in the late 
 nineteenth and early twentieth century.  The first aspect is the belief 
 in public schooling and "childhood" as a nexus of rescue.  I use the 
 slogan childhood-as-rescue adapted from the work of Peter Schnell 
 (1977) to symbolize this nexus.  
Second, I deconstruct the idea of childhood-as-rescue through an 
 analysis of the Child-study movement.  I utilize Morrison's (1992) 
 conception of encoding to explore the historical convergence of 
 discourses of "race" and "nature" that set limits on the "child".  I 
 argue that the boundaries of the "child" became manifest in the 
 differential provision of public schooling as an institution of 
 "rescue". 
I conclude by reflecting upon the prominence of the "child" in present 
 educational discourse.  I question the boundaries framing "childhood" 
 as "natural", as a taken-for-granted site for "rescue" and "reform", 
 and as a fail-safe place for the administration of "care".
Constructing Childhood-as-rescue and Public Schooling
Rescue of "the young" and "the race" or "nation" was a frequently 
 iterated theme in discourses of the 1800's.   The campaigns for public 
 schooling which began most strongly in Massachusetts frequently spoke 
 in terms of Christian salvation, moral protection and the moral, 
 intellectual and social improvement of the young.  The themes of rescue 
 have become a central part of present day historical explanations 
 concerning "childhood" especially.  
Histories of the simultaneous emergence of "childhood" and common 
 schooling fall primarily within the field of psychohistory (see further 
 deMause, 1975; Finkelstein, 1989).  A central premise of 
 psychohistorical narratives is that without the idea of "childhood" 
 there could be no idea of the school and with the idea of the school 
 came confirmation of the idea of "childhood" (deMause, 1975; 
 Finkelstein, 1975, 1976, 1989; Hawes & Hiner, 1991; Schnell, 1977).  
Despite this commonality there are more frequently disputed themes.  
 One assumption often debated is that contemporary ideas of "childhood" 

 and schooling are the results of an evolutionary process - a process 
 which has moved humanity from barbarism and cruelty towards children to 
 a softer, more Rousseauean, and "civilized" stance (1).  For example, 
 Lloyd deMause, probably the most well-known psychohistorian of 
 childhood in the US, begins his Evolution of Childhood with 

The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only 
recently begun to awaken.  The further back in history one goes, the 
lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be 
killed, abandoned, beaten terrorized, and sexually abused.  (1974, 
p.1).
There have been counterarguments to the evolutionary idealist view, 
 however, which lean towards more sociological explanations for the 
 emergence of schooling and "childhood" (Schnell, 1977).  These accounts 
 point to several origins which straddle descriptions of both broader 
 societal changes and more "mental" or individualized responses to them 
 (see Finkelstein, 1975, 1976, 1989; Kaestle, 1983, Katz, 1968; Sandin, 
 1988; Sommerville, 1982).  In particular, the pernicious or repressive 
 effects of a class-based system are emphasized.  For example, the rise 
 of industrialism, the emergence of the middle classes, urbanization, 
 the acculturation of European immigrants and a concomitant anxiety on 
 the parts of parents and religious workers at having the young "on the 
 streets" are often cited as  major stimuli for schooling and 
 "childhood" that revisionist theories of social control or social 
 conflict have highlighted (see further Schnell, 1977).
 Different psychohistorical accounts, then, have posited different 
relationships between the emergence of "childhood" and schooling in the 
US.  Schnell (1977) argues that what has been missed in accounts that 
deal centrally with this conjuncture is an idea of "childhood" as an 
ideology (in Erik Erickson's sense) of rescue.  Assimilated first by 
the middle classes in the US and Canada in relation to young boys, 
"childhood" was eventually intended to benefit all children even if it 
did not actually play out this way in practice (Schnell, 1977).  As 
such, the fundamental meaning of "childhood" implied "rescue" and the 
simultaneous rise of common schooling in the 1800's represented "the 
most ordered of rescues" (Schnell, 1977, p.39). 
 "Childhood-as-rescue" is a slogan I have adapted from Schnell's 
discussion to symbolize this nexus between ideas.  I use it as a 
concept which I draw upon and deconstruct.  That is, in the following 
section I elucidate the major themes of "rescue" in psychohistorical 
narratives.  I accept the slogan as a reflection of impulses in the 
1800's.  I then re-read discourses from the turn of the century which 
structured both the idea of childhood-as-rescue in the 1800's and 
psychohistorical accounts of it in the present.  I begin, then, with a 
brief synopsis of psychohistorical views of "childhood" and three 
dimensions of "rescue" that were prevalent iterations in the nineteenth 
century.
Economic, Moral and Intellectual Rescue in Psychohistorical Narratives
As I noted above, one point of agreement in psychohistorical narratives 
 is that a "concept of childhood" was important to the creation of 
 common schools.  "Middle class activism"  in the early 1800's is cited 
 as the mobilizing force for "childhood" and schooling,

The central role of the middle classes in the promotion of common 
schooling is a commonplace in all the major interpretations of 
nineteenth century education.  Whether their influence is viewed as 
beneficial of pernicious, all agree that middle class humanitarianism, 
Christian or secular, provided the campaigning that fired the cry for 
popular education.  That the middle classes first assimilated childhood 
as part of their ideology gives us a key with which to unlock the 
meaning of those campaigns (1977, p.46).
Specific meanings were inscribed in these campaigns.  The first of 

 these concerned calls for common schooling as a means towards 
 socio-economic betterment.  Some men of the middle classes in urban 
 settings had access to older forms of training like apprenticeships.  
 Other forms of training were needed, though, if mobility was desired.  
 More forms of training would lead to more future choices and social 
 improvement.  The four criteria for defining childhood as identified by 
 AriŽs (1965), dependence, protection, segregation and delayed 
 responsibility, "coincided nicely with their [middle class] existing 
 preference for extensive instruction" (Schnell, 1977, p.46).  A period 
 of training ("childhood") and a place of training ("school") made 
 sense.    
"Childhood", then, bolstered middle class campaigns for schooling by 
 articulating education to further opportunity for economic betterment.  
 Finkelstein (1975) suggests that such functionality did not simply rest 
 with a desire for economic mobility of men alone, but that it also 
 sprang from the desire of some middle class and working class women to 
 be freed (rescued?) from several of their younger children for part of 
 the day while working in the home, beyond the home or both.
 Beyond economic concerns, but bound to them, lies a second way in 
which "childhood" was seen as functional to the middle classes.  
Specific kinds of morality undergirded "childhood".   Ideas of "the 
family" as a safe haven for the young were integral to the form of 
morality desired (see Finkelstein, 1975, 1976; Hunter, 1983; Katz, 
1968; Marsden, 1988; Sandin, 1988; Sommerville, 1982).  "The family" as 
a nuclear entity, as a home or nest, and as a space where the 
segregation of the young and of the genders was lived out structured 
the meaning of "childhood" and the form of moral protection deemed 
appropriate for it by the middle classes.
In addition, moral protection was underpinned by ideas of salvation in 
 relation to Protestant Christian beliefs.  Morality was often judged by 
 the degree to which a person moved towards or away from "Godliness".  
 To be saved from the "old deluder, Satan", and to demonstrate one's 
 Destiny as "rescued" meant to entertain a belief in Falling, in the 
 possibility of Hell (2).   "Rescue" required, then, children to be weak 
 physically and spiritually.  Their weakness relative to adults was 
 portrayed as a temporary disability and inscribed as a childish 
 incompetence with moral consequences.  Schooling, and literacy in 
 regards to the Bible in particular, would be a means of guarding 
 against the possibility of "moral depravity". 
Ascribing vulnerability to children was a new concept.  It promoted 
 children's segregation, protection and delay into the risk taking of 
 the adult world on moral grounds.  The social groups whose children 
 were "still largely independent, not segregated, exposed to drink, 
 crime, neglect, and hard labor, and made to assume responsibilities 
 early" became identified as not providing their young with a 
 "childhood" (Schnell, 1977, p.47).
The proliferation of new services solely for children in the 1800's is 
 indicative of a shift in mentality regarding the moral vulnerability of 
 societyŐs youngest members.  Orphanages, corrective institutions for 
 "juvenile delinquents" and common schools were some of the material 
 realities that evidenced the production of childhood, its 
 institutionalization, and the systemic surveillance of its morality 
 (Finkelstein, 1975; Schnell, 1977). 
Related to notions of moral rescue were notions of intelligence (see 
 Summerfield, 1984).  "Childhood" was considered a time of inferior 
 intellectual abilities relative to adulthood.  To move beyond this 
 required some form of intervention.  The Boston School Committee, for 
 instance, in the 1860's defined the teachers' role as,

Taking children at random from a great city, undisciplined, 
uninstructed, often with inveterate forwardness and obstinancy, and 
with the inherited stupidity of centuries of ignorant ancestors, 

forming them from animals into intellectual beings, and...from 
intellectual beings into spiritual beings, giving to many their first 
appreciation of what is wise, what is true, what is lovely and what is 
pure (quoted in Katz, 1968, p.120). 
In summary, middle class conceptions of economic mobility, morality and 
 intelligence were linked in the production of "childhood" as a stage of 
 life.  "Having" a childhood meant being able to be rescued in all three 
 dimensions.  Childhood-as-rescue was a call for "social and individual 
 improvement" in a particular direction (Schnell, 1977, p.46).  Common 
 schools were a response in pursuing this direction.  Together, having a 
 childhood and attending public school were to protect and save the 
 young.    
Re-reading Childhood-as-rescue: encoding "race" and governing "nature".
Psychohistorical narratives assume a certain "logic" about schooling's 
 spread as a form of conscious class-based activism.  The relationship 
 between subjects and action is psychological and causal.  The economic 
 is taken as a pivotal structure which spawns notions of morality and 
 intelligence that further determine action and outcome.  A teleological 
 view of change results.
Re-reading childhood-as-rescue requires a less global and singular 
 perspective on history and causation.  Histories constructed today 
 (including this one) build upon concepts and binaries of the past.  
 Childhood-as-rescue embodies concepts and binaries which have been 
 transported to the present through psychohistorical narratives.  
 Therefore, my deconstruction of it as an historically specific artifact 
 also acts to deconstruct present histories which report it.
My re-reading of childhood-as-rescue takes place through the 
 Child-study movement.  First, I briefly outline the central ideas of 
 Child-study theory.  Second, I explore the ways in which oppositions of 
 "race" and ideas of "nature" circulated through the reasoning (3).  It 
 is here that  I draw upon Morrison's deconstruction of binaries of 
 "race" to nuance "childhood" as a concept incorporating in its 
 production a system of inclusions and exclusions based upon 
 blackness/whiteness.  I question who and what was meant by the "child" 
 and what "childhood" was meant to "rescue" the young from.  Third, I 
 explore the construction of the "child" as a complex of multiple 
 binaries that included but went beyond blackness/whiteness.  And 
 lastly, I consider some implications of a history of the present of the 
 "child" in educational activities today.   
Child-study, "Race" and "Nature": defining "childhood" 
Central Theories of Child-study.
The Child-study movement was the first curriculum reform movement in US 
 public schools, burgeoning in the 1890's and early 1900's (Kliebard, 
 1986).  It is a convenient site for deconstructing "childhood" and its 
 boundaries because it so explicitly spoke of both the "nature" of 
 "children" and the "nature" of "races" as though they were irrefutable 
 scientific truths in a decade where the persecution of African 
 Americans was escalating to new peaks.
The key idea of the movement was that children needed to be studied 
 closely so that a curriculum could be constructed in relation to their 
 "nature" (Hall, 1888).  Which traits were studied closely and what 
 inferences were to be drawn were guided by a theory called 
 culture-epoch theory.  It is through culture-epoch theory that 
 discourses of "race" and of "nature" met to define the "child".
Culture-epoch theory was a response to the new Darwinistic theories of 
 biological evolution as applied to the social realm ("Social 
 Darwinism").  It posited that children develop in ways that parallel 
 the evolution of "the" "human race".  That is, over the centuries, a 
 higher form of humans were thought to have evolved from ŇsavageryÓ to 
 ŇcivilizationÓ based upon the biological imperatives of genetics and 
 "natural selection".  The "child", in its growth toward adulthood 
 developed in stages marked by this history of evolution.  

In Genetic Philosophy of Education: An Epitome of the Published 
 Educational Writings of President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, 
 this parallelism known as the "law of recapitulation" is explained,

The most general formulation of all the facts of development that we 
yet possess is contained in the law of recapitulation.  This law 
declares that the individual, in his (sic) development, passes through 
stages similar to those through which the race has passed, and in the 
same order; that the human individual of the higher races, for example, 
in the brief period from the earliest moment of life to maturity, 
passes through or represents all the stages of life, through which the 
race has passed from that of a single-celled animal to that of present 
adult civilised man (Partridge, 1912, p.27-28; original emphasis).

A correspondence between "childhood" and "savagery" thus marks the 
 beginning of the development of the young.  For instance, 

That the passing traits of the child resemble the characteristics of 
the savage in many particulars cannot be denied.  In regard to 
fickleness and lack of power of long-sustained effort, optimism, and 
freedom from care and work, close relation to nature, the tendency to 
personify natural objects, and to confuse the animate and inanimate, in 
readiness to imitate, and to act upon suggestion, the child and 
primitive man are much alike.  Both child and savage confuse the real 
and ideal, the waking life and the dream life.  They are alike in the 
manner in which they see resemblances, in their use of analogy, in the 
way in which they construct language forms.  The sayings of the child 
much resemble the folk-lore of primitive peoples (Partridge, 1912, 
p.76-77).
Culture-epoch theory guided what teachers were to observe in children.  
 Physical traits like complexion, head circumference and limb length, 
 moral traits like obedience or disobedience and intellectual traits 
 like how many objects could be recognized from the environment were 
 recorded.  Thus "the passing traits of the child" were expected to 
 manifest themselves in ways that demonstrated a growth through 
 "savagery" and teachers were encouraged to monitor this so that 
 curricula could be constructed in relation to the child's "nature".
Re-reading Rescue through "Race" and "Nature"
The Limits of the "Child"
Culture-epoch theory embodies in its reasoning a particular narrative 
 about  "races".  It is a narrative dependent upon oppositions - 
 oppositions which Morrison (1992) suggests historically structure the 
 meaning of many concepts in the US.  Morrison argues that it is the 
 opposition of blackness/whiteness which drives the understanding of 
 literary texts.  Understanding "freedom" and "choice", for example, is 
 historically dependent upon the pervasiveness of slavery.  It was the 
 slavery of Africans and "the one step removed" work of Africans after 
 slavery's uneven and drawn out abolition that was crucial to 
 understanding what freedom meant and its embodiment in the Constitution 
 (Du Bois, 1918).  Thus, "freedom" has encoded a dependence of 
 "whiteness" upon constructions of "blackness".
This has significance for how childhood-as-rescue can be re-read.  
 Firstly, "childhood" as a "cultural-epoch" embodied oppositions.  The 
 reasoning in culture-epoch theory constructed a child/adult binary and 
 a savage/civilized binary simultaneously as "natural".  More 
 importantly, though, this description of evolution and "child 
 development" along axes of opposition was not a value-free narrative 
 about "nature".  
Sylvia Wynter (1995) argues for instance that what had been learnt in 
 the nineteenth century as genetic facts about the survival of 
 particular species had mapped onto them bourgeois and culture-specific 
 discourses that gave higher value to the evolution of "whiteness" in 

 the human realm.   The development of "eugenics" in the 1890's, a term 
 first coined by Francis Galton, coincided with the rapid rise of 
 Child-study's popularity.  Eugenics gave a moral and intellectual 
 commentary to the "nature" of "races".  The moral, the intellectual and 
 "nature" became grounded in the deployment of scientific techniques 
 which were used to create "data" about "race" (Gould, 1981).            
   
There were at the turn of the century, for instance, a variety of tools 
 through which "data" was collected and used to justify social 
 hierarchies between people in terms of "nature".  In "Western" contexts 
 the construction of "races" was particularly dependent upon a range of 
 pseudo-scientific theories heavily reliant on physical classification.  
 The practice of craniology, phrenology and physiognomy posited that the 
 measurement of physical attributes like head size, brain weight, jaw 
 angle, and limb length inferred human character and potential.  
 Frequently, the techniques of sciences like anthropology were 
 interwoven with justifications drawn from Biblical or literary 
 references (Marsden, 1990).  By the turn of the century these 
 techniques of external measurements had moved "inside" the head and 
 gained popularity in reference to intelligence testing especially 
 (Gould, 1981; Wynter, 1995).  "Backwardness" had become a category of 
 schooling (see Franklin, 1994).  
The practice of scientific techniques as "evidence gathering" acted to 
 normalize oppositions of "race".  The techniques employed assumed 
 differential values in what was measured.  Measurements of Africans 
 were positioned as evidence of "savagery", low morality and limited 
 intelligence.  Measurements of fair-skinned northern Europeans were 
 positioned oppositionally as signs of civility, high morality and 
 advanced intelligence.  The "data" gave "race" what appeared within the 
 discursive context  to be objective, material and "natural" qualities.
Child-study saw as its central task, then, the measurement and 
 observation of qualities of "race" in children.  Because the "nature" 
 of the "child" could not be divorced from the "nature" of its "race" 
 the techniques used to produce "truths" about "race" were transplanted 
 to produce "truths" about the "child".  Both "childhood" and "race" 
 were thus given a newly reinforced salience in a biologically 
 determined form.  
In the 1890's the salience given "race" permeated actions both within 
 and beyond education.  The violence directed at African Americans took 
 on a new intensity.  The large rise in lynching of African American 
 men, the reaching of new peaks of abuse of African American women and 
 girls, the disenfranchisement of African American men again after 
 gaining the vote (theoretically) through the abolition of slavery, and, 
 the lack of provision of public schools for African American children 
 are markers of the depth to which the subjectivities of "whiteness" in 
 particular were based upon a racialized hierarchy of "worth" (4).  
The import of this hierarchy in educational discourse was that not all 
 children could equally occupy the site of the "child".  While all 
 children were posited with a "nature" the subject who could occupy the 
 site of the "child" (and especially the child) could not have been 
 African American.  Africanism, positioned as the embodiment of both 
 "blackness" and "savagery", also occupied the base of the evolutionary 
 pyramid in culture-epoch theory.  "Blackness" was thus constructed as 
 synonymous with "savagery" and with "childhood" at all ages.  Being a 
 "child" and having a "childhood" encoded "whiteness" as the epitome of 
 "civility" and "rescuability" while "blackness" became the marker of 
 alterity which defined its boundaries.
The limits of the "child" and of having a "childhood" come into view.  
 One could only "have" a "childhood" if one was eventually able to 
 occupy "adulthood".  One could not occupy "adulthood" if one was 
 thought to have inherited "savagery".  "Nature" was thought to have 
 endowed different "races" and the young with particular limits.  In 

 Child-study, "blackness" was the "space of otherness" in giving meaning 
 to these limits.  To move beyond "childhood" meant in part to move 
 beyond "blackness". 

The Limits of Rescue 
The second point to note about culture-epoch theory is that this 
 intersection of "race" and "nature" impacted the rescue imaginable for 
 children.  For "the black child", schooling was thought to have no 
 effect because "savagery" was aligned with permanent "childhood" and 
 irrationality.  Hence public schools like those attended by "white 
 children" were not recommended for African Americans.  As G. Stanley 
 Hall, the father of Child-study explained,

...there are many who ought not be educated, and who would be better in 
mind, body and morals if they knew no school.  What shall it profit a 
child to gain the world of knowledge and lose his (sic) own health?  
Cramming and over-schooling have impaired many a feeble mind, for 
which, as the proverb says, nothing is so dangerous as ideas too large 
for it...Thus, while I would abate no whit from the praise of learning 
and education for all who are fit for them, I would bring 
discrimination down to the very basis of our educational pyramid (Hall, 
1901, p.25).
The "rescue" of the "child" had become a very shadowed moment.
Culture-epoch theory encoded not only a differential rescue of children 
 but also an idea of saving "whiteness" from "blackness".  "Blackness", 
 positioned as the ancestor from which others grew up out of or 
 playfully revisited, was integral to the "growth" or "evolution" of 
 "whiteness".  To interfere in the growth of "a white child" would be to 
 disturb its trajectory towards a destiny of "superiority" (eg. "the 
 higher race").  "Good teaching", then, was the building of a curriculum 
 that facilitated the growth of "whiteness" beyond its first "savage" 
 stages (ie. "childhood").  The rescue of "whiteness" from "blackness" 
 was pivotal in what it meant to learn, to care, and to respect 
 "nature".  Going against what was believed to be "educational", 
 "caring" and "natural" meant being a "bad teacher" (5).    
"Blackness", then, constituted a definitional presence through which 
 systems of inclusion/exclusion were inscribed in the "child".  Encoded 
 in the movement as "scientific pedagogy" or understanding the "nature 
 of children" and inflected in the meaning of "childhood" itself , 
 "blackness" became the property through which "whiteness" again secured 
 itself.  
Complexities in Child-study Discourse
To understand how discourses at the time enabled a positioning of 
 "blackness" as the means to "whiteness" and projected a local rescue as 
 though it were a rescue of all the young the very fine-tuned gradations 
 between populational groups that in specific, interrelated and complex 
 ways went beyond and yet included black/white binaries needs to be 
 considered.  Here I focus on some of the complexities that Child-study 
 traversed.  I look firstly at some general nuances surrounding 
 conceptions of savagery/civility in Child-study.  Secondly, I examine a 
 specific relationship between multiple binaries which created a special 
 child/normal child dichotomy shadowed by "race".

Savagery/Civility
The first example of complexity relates to what initially appears as a 
 simple correlation between savagery/civility and blackness/whiteness.   
 While "savagery" and "civility" were juxtaposed markers of identity, 
 there is at times an ambiguity surrounding whether this was imposed 
 strictly as a black/white positioning respectively.  "Blackness" and 
 "whiteness" were undeniably positioned as oppositional in many ways and 
 did contribute to the boundaries of savagery/civility.  However, the 
 savagery/civility binary was not only conjoined to polar conceptions of 

 color.  "Savagery" could be occupied by groups constructed as "Indian" 
 or "Oriental" or "Immigrant" and "civilized" required a very particular 
 alignment of qualities that included not just "whiteness" but 
 Protestant Christianity, English speaking, law abiding, maleness, 
 sedentariness, adulthood, heterosexuality, and economic independence.  
 For example, 

The mixed and roving character of our people makes good schooling hard. 
 New waves of humanity are constantly breaking on our shores.  There 
are something like a million newcomers each year.  But for this supply 
what would become of our increase of population, our industries, etc.?  
Once immigrants were Celtic, Teutonic, and from the north of Europe; 
now they are from the south and east, Italians, Armenians, Russians, 
Finns, and even Orientals (sic), despite the checks put upon the yellow 
peril.  More and more of these fresh arrivals speak a tongue remote 
from our own, and the most the school can do is to teach them a little 
English and induct them into our ways of living and thinking.  All must 
be smelted in one crucible...Again, having immigrated here, they 
continue to wander, and the traditions of their migratory, nomad life 
are very strong in all classes of our population...Truancy and other 
laws are easily evaded where humanity swirls, and education on the fly 
is sure to be superficial with these peek-a-boo pupils (Hall, 1911, pp. 
596-597). 
"Savagery" could then, be permanent in several alignments that fell 
 outside of "blackness".  To grow away from it required very specific 
 configurations of "whiteness" that included more than just "whiteness" 
 per se.  Hence, the Ideal School as Based on Child-Study included a 
 very narrow range of what the "ideal child" was (see Hall, 1901).  
 Being ideal meant being "the right race" in addition to an array of 
 other markers of identity that signified one as "rescuable". 

Special Child/Normal Child
In the Ideal School pedagogical strategies were differentiated for 
 girls and boys and different classes of children. The pedagogies 
 embodied a reasoning which naturalized categories of children and their 
 potentials.  The Ideal School, though, did not educate boys or girls of 
 any class who were deemed "special" and hence without "potential" at 
 all.
Rather, physically and mentally impaired children were discussed as 
 "Educational Problems" (see Hall, 1911),  In a chapter on "The Special 
 Child", for instance, the overlapping assumptions of its "race" are 
 implied,

If the rate of increase of the best children diminishes and that of the 
worst increases, the destiny of our land is sealed and our people are 
doomed to inevitable decay and ultimate extinction.  These three big 
DŐs we deal with, the defectives, delinquents, and dependents, the 
great Biologos or spirit of life would designate or describe by another 
adjective big D not fit to print or speak, for they are a fearful drag 
upon our civilization...From the standpoint of eugenic evolution alone 
considered, these classes are mostly fit only for extermination in the 
interests of the progress of the race.  On the principle of selection 
and the survival of the best, they should be treated as Burbank treats 
the huge pile of plants he has cultivated and bred from what would not 
yield the best products and so burns.  These are the tailings of the 
mine, the wastage and by-product of civilization (1911, p.77). 
It is here that categories of "race" and categories of physical and 
 mental health subliminally intersect.   "Nature" (God, "the great 
 Biologos") has created "defectives, delinquents and dependents" and 
 while "the progress of the race" is not positioned as a progress 
 evidenced by "blackness" the "three big D's" could still be occupied by 
 various children of "whiteness" and by either gender.  The impulse 

 which the reasoning embodies, though, is stacked toward filling the D's 
 with population groups that are already constructed as a "drag upon 
 civilization" through systems of knowledge imposed elsewhere.  Thus, 
 the interaction of discourses creates a "normalizing effect" where 
 "blackness" and "whiteness" both inform and are informed by other 
 boundaries.  In rubbing up against other binaries like special 
 child/normal child, "blackness" becomes aligned with the "special 
 child" and "whiteness" with the "normal child".  Despite the multiple 
 possibilities of who "the special child" could be in practice ie. any 
 child with physical or mental "disabilities" what is encoded is the 
 "naturalness" of "blackness" as "physically and mentally defective".  
 "The special child" is thus positioned as a "drag upon civilization" 
 and "blackness" as the body which straddles both.  The intersection of 
 value-laden binaries thus sets limits on who the "normal child" could 
 be.
Summary
The Child-study movement came to prominence in a social context that 
 seemed to be changing rapidly.  Modernity had brought to the North 
 American continent industrialization, urbanization, massive 
 immigration, migration within, a meeting of religions, languages, 
 dispositions, values, labor knowledge and styles, family formations and 
 foods.  By creating categories of classification that helped define the 
 form that inclusions and exclusions would take in educational realms 
 Child-study theory cast certainty into what appeared to be disarray.  
 Limits on the egalitarian principles of liberal modernity were thus set 
 through notions of caring for and centering the "child".   
The multiple binaries that set limits on the "child" did not generate a 
 static conception of "childhood" and its rescue however.  The 
 production of knowledge about "children" and about "races" and the 
 "normalizing processes" this incorporated was a never-quite-complete 
 task in a period of "crisis" (see further Baker, in press; Wagner, 
 1994).  Hence, by 1917, the provision of public schooling for African 
 American children was a discernible impulse in state discourse (see 
 further Bureau of Education, 1917). 
Child-study, then, like any movement, was not a simple matter of 
 liberation versus constraint, production versus repression, or desire 
 versus fear.  Rather, the multiple binaries which set limits on the 
 "child" embodied a range of liberatory and repressive moments that were 
 played out through the uneven provision of schooling and the 
 differential rescue of children.  Thus, while inspiring a protective 
 and romantic stance towards the "child" it simultaneously decentered 
 the protection of many "children" through its "spaces of otherness". 
NON-CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: "CHILDHOOD" IN EDUCATIONAL WORK IN THE PRESENT
How might this view of the boundaries of the "child" inform a view of 
 the "childhood" in the present?  I suggest three perspectives on the 
 "child" and "childhood" related to "nature", to educational "reform", 
 and to the administration of "care" as "child-centerdness".
Firstly, the "naturalness" of "childhood" may be better viewed as a 
 cultural phenomenon.  The "child" seems to be a product of categories, 
 concepts and hierarchies through which we perceive things as being 
 "natural".  In the present this means our categorizations of child 
 development, growth and abilities in relation to schooling (signified 
 by labels like "ready to learn", "at risk", "attention deficit 
 disorder", "emotionally disturbed" etc) may owe less to "nature" and 
 more to how we interpret the young in relation to culturally specific 
 ideals.  The "ideal child" who has an "idyllic childhood" encodes 
 certain habits, behaviors, dispositions and physical appearances as 
 "normal", aligning categories of "race", "gender", "class" and 
 "ability" in a multitude of inclusionary and exclusionary ways.  In the 
 US, the "categories of deficit" are disproportionately filled with 
 children further labeled as "minority" and "poor".  Being "not quite 
 the ideal child" for the schooling system to "deal with" seems a space 

 of otherness reserved for children already othered through a variety of 
 discourses.  It is important to consider, then, how the good intentions 
 of identifying children "having difficulties" inadvertently perpetuates 
 forms of social organization that see failure not simply as necessary 
 but as "natural", as a sign of limitations that centers blame within 
 "the child of difference" (or their "parent/s" or "communities").  
This leads to questions for which there are no single shot, reciped 
 answers.  What forms of social organization, what ways of looking at 
 the world would allow no space for springboarding the ideal "child" off 
 the back of "blackness" especially? What cultural contexts would enable 
 a view that it is "normal" to have a wide range of humans rather than a 
 narrow range of "normal humans"?
Secondly, it seems that efforts to reform the "child" or reform the 
 "teacher"  need to look beyond both.  The "child", whether it be in a 
 "child-centered" classroom or not already has centered within it 
 discourses of otherness.  The problem, then, may be not so much what 
 the "teacher" does to or with the "child" in constructing a curriculum 
 but with the categories and alignments that each contains in the first 
 place.  This is because the "child" and the "teacher" embody norms that 
 privilege certain ways of being.  The norms are not free-floating 
 "choices" that can be brought into the classroom through a series of 
 rational decisions.  They are already there, embodied in the meanings 
 of what it is to be a "child" and hence a "teacher" of children.  Thus, 
 questions directed at the level of "So what does this mean for 
 classroom practice?" miss the point.  The "teacher" and the "child" 
 cannot be extracted from a system of relations that set up the fields 
 upon which we play, are given meaning, and upon which we all come to 
 know and judge and each other through the languages we learn.   How 
 power circulates through asymmetrical and overlapping concepts in 
 discourses surrounding "childhood" and its rescue, then, produces the 
 "personal interactions" that drive classroom life.  The schooled 
 "child" and the educated "teacher" thus lie both within and beyond the 
 parameters of educational institutions.   
As such, it is important to consider what subjectivities the becoming 
 of a "child" and the becoming of a "teacher" make available.  In 
 current efforts to "get the right attitudes into teachers" in 
 pre-service courses and to get rid of students with "attitudes" in some 
 schools the scaffolding of the respective locations often remains 
 submerged.  Children are required to be dependent and teachers to 
 manage this.  The continuing efforts to reform both teachers' and 
 children's subjectivities often do not attend to the ways in which 
 identities are so deeply staked in "normalizing processes" - processes 
 that give value to some ways of being through marginalizing others.   
 The problems encountered through efforts at educational reform seem to 
 go beyond our attempts to fiddle with this or that technique.  While 
 practical strategies are important for getting things done and are a 
 part of every task undertaken the substantive changes that many reform 
 efforts like the creation of professional development schools, 
 culturally relevant pedagogies or feminist pedagogies are after remain 
 elusive on a large scale.  This is not through a lack of effort or a 
 misdirection of energies.  Subjectivities seem to bear the weight of 
 history even when that history is not known to individual subjects.  In 
 re-forming teachers' and children's attitudes then, it seems cogent to 
 examine how our discursive categories embody norms that set the stage 
 for inequities.  This needs to be considered as much a part of the 
 problem as the ways in which inequities and "attitudes" become 
 manifest.
Lastly, and related to the above, I wish to re-consider an assumed 
 relationship between "care" and "child-centeredness".  Currently, there 
 are many educational reform efforts dependent upon a notion of "good" 
 teaching as "child-centered" teaching.  Strategies which owe some 
 homage to whole language, multicultural education, the analysis of 

 learning styles, feminist pedagogies and critical pedagogies for 
 instance rely implicitly or explicitly upon a well-studied knowledge of 
 one's students as central to the strategies' success.  Further, 
 child-centeredness is so embedded as a sign of sensitivity, care and 
 "civility" that it is now difficult to imagine a teacher who is 
 described as having a "democratic classroom" as not being a 
 child-centered teacher.  While acts of great love, self-sacrifice, 
 empathy and anger at injustice have generated these movements it is 
 important to question what the centering of the "child" decenters.  At 
 the turn of the nineteenth century it seems that the acts of rescue in 
 constructing and centering the "child" contained moments of slippage.  
 The normalization of "childhood" produced "others" whose protection was 
 not guaranteed.  
Questions arise in the present then as to which child is being centered 
 in  demonstrations that are thought to mark "civility", "progress" or 
 "justice".  Are there assumptions about economic, moral and 
 intellectual characteristics which are posited in the subject, as 
 though they are "natural" features?  Similarly, what value-laden 
 construction of groups, what alignment of characteristics, may be 
 protected by projects of rescue that center the "child"?  Which 
 subjects can occupy the space of rescuer and rescued?  And what are the 
 boundaries of "care" that our new forms of rescue imply?  
These are questions which a history of the present of the "child" bring 
 to mind at the same time that we can note the failure of current 
 protective measures - the rising number of cases of child abuse, 
 homeless children, and school "dropouts" - the "not quite so ideal" 
 realities of life that exist concomitantly with a belief in ourselves 
 as "civilized".  One has to wonder, despite the administration of 
 "care" and the good intentions of educational reform, whether the place 
 of "childhood" in our memories is as "natural", protective or innocent 
 as Rousseau would have us believe.


FOOTNOTES

1.  Debate in childhood history exists over whether AriŽs' social 
history of childhood (translated as Centuries of Childhood: A Social 
History of Family Life) is accurate in asserting that prior to the 
seventeenth century French cultures had no conception of childhood.  
The debate which crosses scholarship primarily in France, England and 
the US generally divides between those who agree with AriŽs' contention 
based upon evidence of paintings, iconography, literature, games, 
pastimes, schooling and so forth (see Stone 1977; deMause, 1974) and 
those who accept that previous European societies did. have a 
conception of childhood (see Pollock, 1987, 1983; Hanawalt, 1993).  
Archard (1993) argues that the debate has occurred primarily because of 
confusion over distinctions between "concept", "conceptions" and 
"sentiments" of childhood.  While AriŽs' book was translated into 
English as a discussion of the concept of childhood, Archard argues 
that his original text speaks of a sentiment of childhood. He concludes 
that while previous societies have had a concept of childhood that its 
particular modern form (as in related to the historical shift called 
"modernity") did became apparent around the seventeenth century.  Thus, 
the sentiment, or a particularly modern conception of childhood seems 
to emerge at the same time that changes in the effects and technologies 
of power which Foucault identifies in relation to systems of sexuality 
and the family, prisons, sanity and so forth emerged in Europe.
 
2.  "The old deluder, Satan" refers to what is called the "old deluder 
law" of 1647, the first general school law recorded (in what was to 
become US history) which concerned the compulsory provision of (but not 
attendance at) common schools in New England.  The reason given for the 

need for a school reads,

It being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan. to keep men from 
the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in 
an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use 
of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the original 
might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, that 
learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers in the Church 
and Commonwealth... (quoted in Williams, 1937, pp. 80-81)

3.  My focus is narrowed here primarily to the construction of 
blackness and whiteness as essentialized poles in educational discourse 
at the time.  This certainly does not represent the vast array of 
configurations of ethnicities that were being "catalogued" in social 
science literature and popular parlance at the turn of the century.  
References to "Indians", "Orientals", "Southern and Eastern Europeans", 
"Jewish immigrants", "The Irish", "native whites" and "foreign whites" 
proliferated in this period of mass immigration to the continent, mass 
migration within and mass deportation to elsewhere.  Conceptions of 
blackness and whiteness in educational literature today occupy such a 
strong grasp upon identity politics, educational and social 
explanations, and revisions of explanations that it seems pertinent to 
pursue the reasoning by which such constructions became accepted as a 
plausible way of explaining behavior and of organizing and practicing 
education in the first place. 
What I am also not addressing at this point are the complexities 
 surrounding different configurations of gender as they related to the 
 construction of children and adolescents of different races and 
 ethnicities.  By the 1890's, the majority of elementary school teachers 
 in all US states were female.  Arguments over the creation and 
 expansion of schooling for older children ("adolescents" or "youths") 
 frequently invoked a common sensical assumption at the time that men 
 were more appropriate teachers of boys at these ages.  This is 
 certainly the view espoused by Hall in conjunction with educating some 
 girls for robust procreation as the apex and reflection of their 
 evolutionary status (Hall, 1901, 1902, 1911).
4. These constructions generated the formation of many oppositional 
interest groups in education who aimed to overcome or maintain the 
disparities associated with these positionings.  This chapter is not 
focused upon the arguments that different groups employed in these 
debates but rather upon the discursive context of oppositional 
categories that made such debates plausible.  For examples of the ways 
in which African American activists in education argued against the 
disparities in its provision and quality during and after the first 
crisis of modernity by utilizing what Bell (1980) refers to as the 
"interest convergence principle" see Du Bois (1918, 1973) and Woodson 
(1933).  This gives some sense of the range of positions articulated 
within interest groups forming around racial categories in educational 
discourse.

5.  "Teacher" in Child-study invariably meant "white teacher".  The 
permeation of  discourses of "nature" and "race" at the time not only 
positioned the way in which "teachers" could be perceived but also the 
way in which they could act or respond to such perceptions.  The 
Handbook of the Wisconsin Child Study Society (1898), co-authored by 
teachers and which was sent to every teacher in the state is an example 
of how many teachers attempted to do their jobs well in relation to the 
ideas of the time.  For example, the Handbook urges teachers to,
 
a) Ascertain the child's physical characteristics by individual 
observation, consultation with parents, and tests, and, 

b) The mental and moral characteristics are to be ascertained by 
observation, consultation and language exercises.  

Limb length, jaw angle and moral "virtues and perversions" could then 
be recorded on the worksheets provided and demonstrations of care could 
follow based upon the inferences made. The many teachers who joined the 
Child-study movement did not see categories of "race" as "bad" but 
rather as a common sensical way of explaining behavior and guiding 
work.  It was normalized in a way which was seen to be positive and 
helpful for the individual child and for society at large.  For a 
fuller account of how educational reform movements in the US, including 
Child-study, impacted teacher education see Herbst (1989).


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