5b Children and Family Life in the American Colonies Part I

0:03 welcome back today we continue our series of lectures on everyday life in the colonies and today we're looking at children in family life in the American colonies this this slide gives you an outline of what we're going to cover let me start by saying saying this children education in the American experience experiment one of the most notable aspects of social life in the American colonies was its progressive attitudes towards education its attitudes towards early childhood education were very advanced for the time and we'll explain why in a second but they were particularly advanced in Puritan New

0:48 England the principle of compulsory free public education that is to say everybody has to go to school for a certain number of years this was established very early on in colonial New England around 1650 and this was the first in the world to do so the idea once again that early childhood education should be provided by the state free of charge was nothing less than revolutionary this first occurred in Puritan New England due to the compact nature of settlement that they settled in towns due to the close cooperation of church and state and this emphasis on early childhood education education really related to the

1:34 religious zeal of the Puritans who wanted to raise pious children to read the Bible so for the Puritans early early literacy was very important around 16 fixe sixth around 1650 50 the New England colonies beginning with Massachusetts made laws that made having public primary schools mandatory they had to be established in all towns of 50 households or more these were supported by public tax funds and similar laws for grammar schools applied to towns with more than 100 house a Grammar School was a secondary school based on the study of Latin history in the classic so it was a secondary school this emphasis on early literacy and

2:22 early childhood education was nothing less than revolutionary the New England colonies were the first society in the world to do this actually this emphasis on early childhood education was nothing less than revolutionary in light of free 18th century attitudes towards childhood what we might call at early modern Europe snow childhood culture and I'll explain that in any case the American experiment with education resulted in dramatically higher literacy rates than in Europe just to give you some numbers on the eve of the American Revolution literacy rates were as follows for men in the New England colonies eighty-five percent of the population is literate

3:09 for women in the New England colonies the number was 50% 50% literate among men in the middle colonies 63% were literate and 33 percent of women were literate and in the South among men 55% of males were literate and 25% of women were literate so if you're listening you would you have noticed that Puritan New England had the highest literacy rates in the colonies both for men and women followed by the middle colonies of the southern colonies with dramatically lower literacy rates for girls in the middle and southern colonies now you might be thinking why is this so notable

3:55 haven't children always been educated during childhood well the answer is really not really as we think of it what we're going to be talking about today is the Enlightenment discovery of childhood how this applies to the American colonies looking at thinkers like Lockett or so and how this actually affected life in the American colonies that we can observe through clothing portraits other Aspen of everyday life so the first topic that we're talking about is the Enlightenment discovery of childhood okay let me just say briefly what I mean by the Enlightenment many of you might be familiar with this the Enlightenment was

4:40 a 17th and 18th century rebirth of knowledge and science the Enlightenment was influenced by the principles of the Scientific Revolution and above all the Enlightenment was an intellectual movement in many fields stressing the importance of science and reason to many fields of academic study whether government social relations various fields are influenced by this idea that reason must die everyday life and we're gonna leave it at that but any case this rebirth of knowledge learning in the 17th and 18th centuries so Enlightenment

5:27 thinkers who decisively influence the the framers of the American Revolution influenced the American colonies in many ways not just in terms of political thought life liberty and property but in terms of their ideas to our children and childhood so we're gonna be starting with this Enlightenment discovery of childhood and its effect on the American colonies Enlightenment thinkers put forth radical new ideas toward childhood and education laying the foundations for what we have today but Enlightenment thinkers challenge the traditional hereditary and model of child development in favor of a new environmentalist model of child development so what do I mean for centuries Western civilization had accepted the idea that the that the

6:15 intelligence of a child as well of its as well as its personality was determined solely by genetic factors and that environmental changes to the upbringing of a child really only caused minor fluctuation stated otherwise for centuries Western society believed the fear that a child inherit both congenital and what we would call acquired characteristics from its parents so parents passed on genetic factors like hair color but also distinctive personality features and their intelligence in other words everything about a child's development was hereditary insofar as childhood was recognized as a distinct stage of human development childhood was measured in

7:02 terms of its deficiencies not positive attributes so stated otherwise childhood was not a positive time that was celebrated but it was a negative time Christian moralist regarded children this is a very important idea Christian Laurel is regarded children as semi animalistic savages to be broken or molded through harsh discipline and corporal punishment so children were little better than animals and needed to be forced into adult role as soon as possible however Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Rousseau as we'll discuss specifically later Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Rousseau turned all of this on their head they emphasized the perfect ability of human

7:49 beings through a reason and education this is a critical idea of the Enlightenment a critical idea of the Enlightenment are basically is basically all human beings are equal and can perfect themselves through education and reason this starts with Enlightenment thinkers but Enlightenment thinkers taught that children were not necessarily not necessarily semi animalistic savages but that they were innocent and impressionable blank slates they had the capacity to become rational adults so we'll talk about this later John Locke is the originator of the tabula rasa theory of child development and rather than looking at children as

8:35 sinful creatures were sort of like savages or animals locked said that children were simply innocent impressionable blank slates like a empty class bored chalkboard and there mines were wait waiting to be written on with reason John Locke's book that will talk about some thoughts concerning education it's widely associated with a radical paradigm shift shift it was a new theory new attitudes with regard to learning play and really it is associated with the idea of discovering childhood as a separate and special stage of human development what exactly

9:21 do I mean by the discovery of childhood well um basically only in the late and 17th only in the late 17th and 18th centuries did Western society recognize childhood as a unique stage of human development that was different special and it merited special protection and education so against the hereditary in paradigm model that basically said everything in a child's life is determined by biology what was hereditary Enlightenment thinkers believed that a child was shaped by in its environment and that specific training specific education might result

10:08 in a better adult this idea is so sort of common to us but was actually new in the 17th and 18th century and profoundly shaped these for instance New England attitudes towards early childhood education so let's talk about what I mean by the invention of childhood in the Enlightenment let me refer to the work of a famous scholar a famous French scholar Philippe Arya's wrote a book in 1962 called centuries of childhood he famously argued that quote in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist and in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist what he meant

10:53 was not that children people under age 18 or whatever did not exist but what he meant was that the social cultural ideals we commonly associate with children as being like natural on timeless or unchanging what he meant was not that children didn't exist but the ideals of childhood that we commonly think of like children being innocent curious whatever he said that these ideals of childhood are historically and culturally specific prior to the Enlightenment the 17th and 18th century European society treated children as miniature adults the child was treated basically as a minister

11:39 adult and childhood was measured in terms of its deficiencies from adult standards childhood in other words was not a positive time aside from the swaddled cradle bound incent medieval society thrusts children into the adult world just as soon as possible just as soon as they could leave the care of their mother or nurse insofar as children before 1700 had a childhood at all their childhood ended early at age 7 as early as age 7 chilled children wore miniature versions of adult clothing just like this painting from the 1600 here children were miniature versions of their mother and father's clothing children performed the same labor tasks

12:27 as adults and at age 7 or so they began to apprentice in the same trade as adults affectionate family bonds were the exception to the rule of parental and difference parental neglect or even what we would classify as abuse I'm not saying that parents didn't love their children before 1700 but we do have a very different situation in terms of infant mortality in the medieval Europe medieval mothers and fathers rarely bereft reached the loss of a child or infant and parented those who survived it but the infancy with strict and severe discipline so strict and severe discipline including corporeal

13:13 punishment bodily punishment you know the saying spare the rod spoil the child given high rates of infant mortality infancy was widely regarded as a fragile realm between existence or non-existence infants weren't really looked at as fully human but looked at like something between this world and the next before 1700 more than half of the children born into a family did not survive to their fifth birthday that's pretty staggering the four 1700 mo more than half of the children born into a given family did not make it to their fifth birthday it was very common for parents to name new children after

13:59 deceased sibling so if you were a married couple having children it was very common that you would lose one two maybe three children to the extent that children are infants are depicted to the extent that children and infants were depicted in religious or secular art artists made little attempt to capture any state of youth or immaturity rather if you go into the medieval galleries of the Met Museum you'll see that if you look at paintings of children children appear as deformed miniature adults and this is a good example of how pre-enlightenment Europe measured children in terms of its deficiencies negative qualities not positive things another thing relating this to this

14:46 cultural attitudes towards play cultural attitudes towards play both for children and adults were overwhelmingly negative in pre-enlightenment Europe in America play was condemned as a sinful idle dissipation play was condemned as bad play was condemned as a potential obstruction to learning add it to this what we think of us play things in toys toys were not the exclusive preserve of children prior to the Enlightenment this is very different children joined adults in the same games and communal festivals and pastimes so play wasn't necessarily thought of as

15:33 something that only children did children joined adult in the same children joined adults in the same communal games and pastimes like market fairs religious festivals feast day Maypole traditions and these this communal type of celebrations like jousting tournaments or fairs this was often rife with sexual innuendo so cultural attitudes towards play where negative play was condemned not so as a sinful waste of time and like I said TOI wasn't didn't necessarily refer to something that was for children it was not until after the Enlightenment that

16:19 the word toy came to refer to a separate category of objects made especially for children and we'll look at Locke's views on toys in the prior to the Enlightenment the word toy stood for material objects of an inconsequential nature that might have amused children or adults alike like trinkets baubles miniatures like miniature miniature replicas of things or automata automata are like pre-modern robots mechanical devices that conform tricks so what I'm trying to tell you is what that what we think of as toy didn't mean the same

17:05 thing before the Enlightenment they were toys that adults enjoyed and vice versa in fact the entry in Samuel Johnston's English dictionary very famous 18th century English dictionary so made the entry in Samuel Johnson's English dictionary from the 18th century for toy the entry for toy didn't actually refer to children or childhood so what I'm trying to tell you with all of this is notions of children childhood and play we're very different than what we think of today generally speaking and this painting really shows this very well pre-enlightenment Europe and America

17:50 well talk about how some of these attitudes carried over into America and how some did not but generally speaking pre 18th century Europe and America tended to believe in the so called upright child 3 18th century American and European culture in terms of attitudes toward children was marked by a fundamental preoccupation with uprightness and straightness the upright child what we might call in the upright child both in the moral and physical sense look at this picture of this infant this child looks pretty stiff it's straight its upright it looks like it's not moving what do we mean

18:36 prior to the Enlightenment there was very little sense that children would naturally develop that they would naturally naturally learn to stand walk or talk of their own accord there was very little sense that this would develop naturally as a matter of course rather quite literally children had to quite literally be molded into adult roles as soon as possible and I really mean molded in a literal physical sense children had to be molded into adult roles as soon as possible and had to be forced to lie straight stand straight or walk or erect so I meant that literally after infants were born infants had to

19:22 be molded into correct human forms by midwives without her help they believed this would not occur naturally right after a baby was born directly after cutting the umbilical cord the mid midwife began a process of molding the baby into human shape she molded the head they pressed out any misshapen this from Labour they smoothed the eyes they shaped the nose they opened the mouth they pulled along the arms and legs to their full extension they pressed the bones on the baby's skull together on the soft spot on its head and they bound the head tightly with strips of cloth next the shapeless lump of infant flesh was molded into

20:07 human form through the practice of tight swaddling you know what swaddling is swaddling was considered imperative to mold the bent lives bent glimpse of the infant into the straight limbs of the adult like this they wanted the babies to be upright stand upright like a human without swaddling parents and doctors believe that a child would not grow correctly that a child would go grow bent and misshapen and a child would never learn to walk on his or her own or never become a fully human being what is this emphasis on the upright child all about well the upright child you need to think about it as up rightness in the

20:54 moral and physical sense upright in terms of morality means a very moral virtuous good individual remember pre-enlightenment Europe and America's understanding of children and children nature equated children to a savage like state children were like savages animals and they could easily descend into a fully animalistic state at any time very young children were believed to totter precariously between up my upright humanity and the beasts of the field and it was for this reason that parents were so concerned with making their children

21:42 physically upright physically straight more like humans and less like four-legged beasts right they wanted to make their child stand up and this applied to being morally upright as well as physically upright so in terms of being morally upright 'add upright they wanted children indoctrinated early in the Christian religion and trained away from their animalistic desires harsh discipline so this emphasis on harsh discipline and breaking the child and breaking their sinfulness is really critical to pre-enlightenment attitudes it is not surprising well first of all let me say that there was very few types of furniture that were designed

22:29 specifically for children before 1700 there was furniture for children but it was always furniture that was homemade self fashion in the home like cradles very few things were made specifically for children but what was had a specific purpose the very few pre-enlightenment children's furniture forms like this what is called the standing stool marked a fundamental preoccupation with upright uprightness the standing stole was a device similar to the modern rocker but I'm sorry the standing sole was a device similar to the modern Walker but with the exception that there's no seat and

23:14 basically infants as early as about five months or so were put into this thing a standing stole and made to stand and made to walk early the standing stole first the standing stool forst forst early standing or walking while specifically preventing crawling crawling as you might guess was likened to an animalistic form of locomotion that was beneath the dignity of the civilized human being the standing still as I mentioned was an infant sole consisting of a circular wooden waste ring you see here from which there were supports great radiating in this square

24:00 base but unlike modern day walkers there was no see it forced children to stand and walk early the same thing applied to these things they were called leading strings they forced children to stand and be physically and hopefully morally upright fun piece of trivia I suppose it was precisely this reason this obsession with uprightness that most babies in Western Europe or America did not crawl for 1750 parents distinctly distinctly discourage children from crawling until about 1750 because crawling was too much like an animalistic beat beast was there perhaps another deeper reading reason explaining

24:47 these feelings towards childhood that children were thrust into adult roles as soon as possible and made to stand early well you could think of this idea of infant mortality right chill childhood and infinitely especially was a very fragile state so many children and infants died that on one on the one hand children wanted to get their children as out out of childhood as soon as possible so that they wouldn't die so that they wouldn't lose them so insofar as childhood existed before seventeen or eighteen hundred it was short and brief however Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and JJ were so dramatically turned

25:36 on these traditional attitudes towards children let's look first at Locke now I'll just say a few words about Locke in general Locke was the most widely influential political thinker of the 17th century his first and second treatises on government were works that seminal II influenced the founders of the American Revolution right Thomas Jefferson especially the idea that that government must exist for the sake of the government the governed and it was the duty of the governed to overthrow a government if the ruler was

26:23 tyrannical was too powerful to absolute I'm not going to really get into that now but I'll just mention briefly his ideas were very important to the framers of the American Revolution and Constitution he stood for religious toleration but what is sometimes lesser-known are his ideas on childhood and education and we're going to be discussing this book some thoughts concerning education so some thoughts concerning education with Locke's very popular educational manual it actually laid out the ideal education for a gentleman's son it was extremely it was extremely popular and became the standard work on

27:11 early childhood education it was reprinted thirty-five times in English it was we've written pre-printed in French German Italian etc etc and I can attest to you that it was very widely read in America it was the standard work in 18th century colonial America in the widely influential work Locke countered the conventional notion that children were inherently sinful some semi animalistic creatures that had to be broken through harsh discipline rather he put forth his famous tabula rasa theory according to the tabula rasa theory children were merely blank shapes blank slates I'm sorry so going back

27:57 here according to his tabula rasa Theory children were merely blank slates who were shaped by environment and education not just genetics as he argued the child is to be considered only as white paper or wax to be molded or fashioned as one places so whereas earlier experts looked at infants as semi animalistic savages and measured childhood in terms of its imperfections thinkers like John Locke saw children as full of possibilities and children and childhood was a special time children were in need of nurture and education all of this is so commonplace to us but it was actually

28:43 something new at the time of the American colonies whereas previous ages pushed children into out adult roles soon as possible Enlightenment thinkers solved childhood as a vital preparatory stage for adult roles and they also believe that children's entrance into the adult world had to be delayed until their education was finished and fundamentally that childhood was a special stage of life to be devoted to education this attitude was tremendously influential on the American ideas toward education and mandatory public schooling okay so going to Locke's educational manual some thoughts concerning education Locke was

29:29 in favor of the environmentalist paradigm of child development Locke growth with the conventional hereditary impera dime of child development to assert a new environmentalist one he argued that differences in children's abilities were not the result of genetics but the result of education and environment according to Locke it was critical that children learn reason and obedience from an early age as Locke argued quote nine parts out of ten children are what they are good or evil good or evil useful or not by their education tis that that makes the greatest difference in mankind

30:15 make no mistake his blank state Theory only went so far the child is a blank slate with regard to ideas intellectual abilities but not regarding like their temperament their personality some thoughts concerning education it's regarded as a classic on children's education but it was never really intended to become a systematic treatise on education some thoughts concerning education was actually a series of letters that were often repetitive and long-winded that he wrote to a cousin and her husband on the upbringing of their son so it was a series of private letters that he wrote to his cousin on

31:01 advice for bringing up their there boy a noble boy but the letters were so popular that he was prevailed upon to publish them and it became this phenomenal bestseller Locke's position towards children was radically liberal his great educational Maxim was reason with the child children must be reasoned with children must be treated as rational creatures and however childish they were children were equipped with a childlike reason eventually children would grow into a fully rational adult who loved liberty and freedom why is this revolutionary first time we'll remember the traditional idea is that

31:47 children are like animals savages and he's saying children have reasoned the way it just has been the way to discipline children was not through harsh corporeal punishment beating or whipping not bribes a reward but through Reason through children's psychological sensitivity to praise or criticism you praise them for good behavior so you don't spank them or punish them you praise them young children had to learn to submit submit their will their appetites their primal instincts and drive for Dominion to the reason of others Locke believed that these animalistic drives in children threatened the natural rights and property rights of others the purpose of

32:33 Locke's education was to produce a rational adult governed by reason who could keep his animalistic desires in check as Locke wrote quote the child will submit to his own reason when he has a age to make use to it and he will recognize that the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them the child must learn to respect the natural rights of others children were not to be overindulge or spoiled according to Locke they were to learn the importance of obedience la was vigorously opposed to corporal punishment beating whipping spanking

33:21 children in all of but the extreme cases very different than before Locke said I am apt to think that the great severity of punishment does but very little good nay great harm in education so stop beating your child why beatings and floggings or spankings did not promote reason they did not teach the child to recognize the wrong of their misdoing but merely promoted a sort of slavish obedience meaning that beatings only reinforced humans natural desires to avoid pain and seek pleasure not being spanked is less painful than being spanked but spanking did not teach children what was morally

34:06 right and wrong and Locke argued that spanking only resulted in a sort of quote slavish obedience meaning that the child would submit and pretend obedience while the fear of the rod hangs over them but as soon as the fear as soon as the rod is removed he would indulge his natural violent inclination so basically Locke said with regard to spanking and corporal punishment that beating a child resulted in two types of children either a bland spirited child who has sort of has the personality beaten out of him or the wild child who is just as violent as the punishments inflicted on them so here's what here's

34:56 what Locke said about spanking such a sort of slavish discipline makes a slavish temper the child submits and and pretends obedience whilst the fear of the rod hangs over him but when that is removed and being out of sight so when the the rod the whip whatever is out of sight he can promise himself in pewdie he gives the greatest scope to his natural inclination which by this way is not at all altered but on the contrary heightened and increased in and usually breaks out with the more violence as an educational theorist Locke is most famous for encouraging parents and tutors to make learning enjoyable to children again why is this new and different well it conflicted

35:44 with the traditional cultural attitudes towards play Locke believed that children should be taught to read early and should be proposed to learn reading as an honor and dignity children should be desired to be taught and not be forced into it through route memorization not through scoldings or beatings in contrast to the traditional traditionally negative attitudes towards play remember play was a sinful dissipation a waste of time Locke invested play and playthings with vital educational importance block thought that education could be combined with clay and learning could be fun

36:29 this is radical when he's writing in 1690 Locke wrote quote thus children may be cozened into a knowledge of the letters be taught to read without perceiving it to be anything but a sport and play themselves into what others are whipped for children thought Locke thought that children should be taught that reading as an honor and dignity and like for instance older children in the family should be praised for their reading ability in the presence of younger children and the younger children would want to imitate them so use this sort of psychological praise and not just force them to memorize stuff breaking with traditionally negative attitudes towards play Locke

37:15 belief that play could be combined with learning Locke invented the idea of the modern educational toy by promoting the use of lock blocks lock blocks are what we think of as alphabet blocks and alphabet blocks were designed to teach children the alphabet as they play now the idea for offa alphabet blocks was something that he actually fathers to do they were to take their old gambling but a gambling dice and paste alphabet letters onto them making alphabet blocks for children so lock blocks alphabet blocks soon however merchants begin to sell and market these so-called lock blocks alphabet blocks

38:03 nothing that's nothing less than revolutionary some thoughts concerning education celebrates a father who replaces beatings and scoldings with a set of alphabet blocks more broadly speaking locks writing triggered a broader commercial explosion of children's books toys and games that were specifically designed to teach children so Locke is really the father of the modern educational toy it was also at this time that the word toy was redefined to refer to a special category of the objects designed for children's use and it was at this time that play came to have more positive connotations ok well that's some of the basic ideas

38:51 of Locke's let me talk more about the specifics Locke actually thought that the best education was accomplished not in a school but by a private tutor at home focusing on the classics this was the exception in the not the norm in America he urged that children should have a relatively plain diet no alcohol no wine no beer children should be exposed to the weather they should enjoy vigorous outdoor exit exercise parents should abandon physical restraints like swaddling or the standing stool and children should actually wear loose comfortable clothing that would allow them to exercise in a general sense

39:38 Locke was one of the first to reassure parents that children would outgrow the ordinary deficiencies of childhood without parental intervention or physical restraint manners were important but there were certain childish behaviors that nature and age would correct naturally so basically it was a much less interventionist interventionalist attitude than this sort of forced molding into the upright child in other words you don't need a standing stool for your kid your child will learn to walk on his own that is the basics of Locke some thoughts concerning education now in a broad sense we also credit

40:24 Locke with the invention or discovery of childhood Locke believed that childhood was a unique stage of human development and that children should have the chance to be children they should enjoy a certain freedom and childhood should last a little while longer before adulthood begin children should have the freedom to behave as children before they are forced into adult work adult roles and above all children should a childhood should be devoted to education nothing less than revolutionary now I want to go over this was a book that was published in 1690 it was the most widely read educational book in colonial

41:11 America but there was another book a bit later that was even more radical than Locke and I'll go over it briefly now the name of the book was a meal and it was written by the Swiss felis off jay-j row in 1762 again I'm not going to a teach the entire enlightenment right now but basically Rousseau was a political thinker that was much more radical than Locke he argues for something called the Democratic General will I'm not gonna try to cover his political ideas right now but suffice it to say he was much more radical and Locke and in terms of

41:57 it if it's attitudes towards politics and also early childhood education so the Swiss political thinker Rousseau wrote his book and me'll as a challenge and critique of Locke in 1762 now this was a book that was also read in America around the time of the American Revolution was but would have had a much more select influence among a more select group of intellectual this was widely read so let's look at a meal although we're so acknowledged Locke as his predecessor and actually agreed with him on many points like the importance of the outdoors and physical education we're so fundamentally disagreed with lock on the preconditions for a free liberty-loving citizen and what

42:44 childhood was about fundamentally we're so thought Locke was too focused on intellectual training for childhood and that Locke shaped the child into a man before he was ready essentially that Locke made them in made children into fruits that were prematurely prematurely ripe and raw quickly whereas Locke emphasized reason what Rousseau thought was cold reason we're so believed that children should be ruled by impulse by emotion and feeling here's an excerpt that demonstrates this perfectly it's a really emphasis on children childhood

43:32 for the sake of being children nature wants children to be children before they are men if we deliberately pervert this order we shall get premature fruits which are neither right nor well flavored and which soon decayed childhood has ways of theme seeing thinking and feeling peculiar to itself nothing can be more foolish to substitute our ways for them and this very famous quote love childhood protect it's games its pleasures its amiable instinct so what this actually meant was that he thought locked for instance emphasized too much academic teaching too much emphasis on early literacy and child children really needed to have a lot more freedom than Locke's education gave them so the book Emil the

44:19 book Emil described the ideal education of a young man a fictional protagonist a fictional character named Emile Emile was also taught by a tutor he was guided by his tutor and enjoyed almost complete freedom in a state of nature removed from civilization he was removed from middle-class morals removed from any sort of external values according to Rousseau the child should be brought up according to the ways of nature meaning maternal breastfeeding no swaddling and nothing forced upon it it was like permissive parenting permissive parenting to the extreme the emphasis on

45:04 in Rousseau is learning by doing learning by doing more radically Emile meant the child that the child should learn by doing learn through things and nature rather than through people or books or so believed that reading an intellectual training should be delayed until age 12 or so early education up to age 12 should merely be learning by doing whereby what did this actually mean so early education up to age 12 should merely be learning by doing whereby the tutor tutor did not actually teach anything but let the pupil teach themselves by experiment so the child

45:50 would see feel touch observe and learn lessons himself like a gardener the tutor was merely to weed out any obstacles to the child's natural development and we're so believed that things that should be weeded out would be like the influence of cities civilization any sort of external values ideally Rousseau's Emile would be brought up without human contact and simply learn lessons from nature Locke as we saw had taken a positive attitude towards play but with an ulterior motive he wanted the child to become a rational adult so learning should be fun but play had a strictly

46:36 didactic purpose it was to teach children things and academic content we're so rejected this view and asserted the right of the child to play for the sake of enjoyment and asserted that childhood was a state that should be cherished and prolonged like we see right here again this idea of childhood being special is present in Locke's writing but is much more radical in a meal like Locke were so Accord special importance to the choice of a tutor but whereas Locke's tutor Locke's tutor was a traditional academic scholar who was charged with a straightforward job of academic classical education where soles

47:25 tutor is a bit different he was like an invisible manipulator a master teacher designed to subtly direct a meal to learn the lessons of nature himself it's difficult to explain moreover the moreover the tutor tutor doesn't just teach academic subjects history in English or whatever but teaches a meal the lessons of life and humanity in the broadest sense as Rousseau wrote quote the tutor must be master of the science of humanity and in his relationship with students the teacher must not just lecture or instruct or impart information but the tutor should guide demonstrate and question so it's a very hands-off approach

48:11 towards education at face value this hands-off approach of Rousseau's tutor would appear to be totally at odds with Locke's tutor who exercises almost total control over the students but on a deeper level we're so non interventionist tutor is sort of similar to deluxe why well Rousseau's tutor does not directly control and forcibly impose his will on a meal but nonetheless controlled his pupil indirectly it's a very clever style of teaching as Rousseau put it quote let him always think that he is master the pupil while you are really master so we're so put it

48:59 quote let him always think that he is the master while you are really master so what was the impact of these books on life in the colonies we're focusing on American history collectively Locke and Rousseau x' ideas are widely influential both idea both books were bestsellers and however we should mention that Emile was very controversial much more of a fringe book as a testament to its controversial success Emile was banned publicly in France before the Revolution it was censured so in addition to Locke and Rousseau I mentioned before Locke's some thoughts concerning education was

49:46 widely read in eighteenth-century America it was the number-one educational manual but there were also of hundreds other publications other writers who popularized the ideas of Locke and Rousseau and advocated for proper educational toys so what was the practical impact of the writings of Rousseau and Locke on the American colonies well we're going to cover we're going to cover the emphasis on early childhood education in the next lecture but I already hinted at that but we can say that by 1700 or 1750 in the

50:33 colonies that most people accepted this new enlightenment idea of childhood by 1700 most people in the colonies at least in urban areas had abandoned swaddling and allowed babies to crawl before walking types of furniture and children's clothing became looser and less focused on moral uprightness for instance after 1700 in the American colonies the use of the standing stone became much more uncommon we can say that the colonists abandoned notions of the upright child and generally speak

51:19 speaking standing stools and leading strings were abandoned and people began to take Locke's advice that children would grow naturally of their own accord in addition to this after 1700 we begin to see more furniture forms specifically produced for children like this high chair from about 1700 and what this signifies was that childhood was being recognized as a special stage of human development just like walk had said um so let me let me tell you this sometimes um yes there are countless parents in the colonies who write specifically about John Locke their fathers writing

52:06 that they needed to go out and purchase alphabet blocks but sometimes the influence of Locke was more subtle they're not parents aren't always writing in their Diaries I discovered childhood as a special stage of human development sometimes we see this shift more subtly expressed in material cultural objects so objects artifacts like this high chair or also in in art and portraiture so I am going to as a sort of case study look at child portraiture and dress really to show you an example of how these new Enlightenment ideas of childhood took root perhaps most obviously the new recognition of childhood was apparent in

52:53 a new genre of child portraiture and new types of children's clothing that celebrated children as children and the idea that childhood was a special stage of human development perhaps most obviously portraits of children were much more common after 1600 and especially 1700 before 1600 you really don't see portraits of children in European art they just didn't exist and radically children begin to be portrayed as children not deformed miniature adult keep in mind that this was all being done in very expensive formal portraits that would be kept for generations so fYI I've given you the names of these paintings at the bottom you certainly

53:40 don't need to memorize that but I'm using these paintings to visualize the ideas that I'm trying to tell you about that are often hard to pin down so let's look at this shift in 17th century Puritan portraits of children like this portrait of the Mason children from Massachusetts from 1670 we very much see a visualization of the upright child and the idea that children were miniature adults the children were elaborate copies of their parents clothing and there's nothing childlike about these children I would say as was common in the colonies boys would be breached as early as age 7 when when children were

54:26 babies they wore long gowns the long gowns of infancy these long gowns were specifically designed to help avoid them getting into trouble like crawling into the fireplace but basically boys and girls both wore a long gown baby gown and we were about age three but boys would be breached as early as age seven they would leave behind the gowns of infancy and wear a grown man's breeches like this child David here breeches were tight fitting pants that stopped at the knee and we're worn with socks and garters while um and and you can see that these children there's nothing childlike about them and they are portrayed with adult like

55:11 accessories a man's walking stick gloves fans I'm sure that these kids are playing with these in their spare time not really but again elaborate versions of adult clothing miniature adults jumping to a century later it's very different the children from this 1757 portrait from Virginia still wore clothing influenced by adult fashions but there were clear signs that the rigid dress clothes was being relaxed that these children aren't as upright that these children aren't as upright as these perhaps most obviously both children here are holding accessories

55:57 signaling their connection to a children's world of play the boy is holding a pet bird while the girl grasp a doll this idea of posing with children's toys was very uncommon in paintings before 1700s but after 1750 children's portraits frequently included toys that signaled a new acceptance of play as a natural part of childhood and related to Locke's ideas on the educational potential of toys for girls girls posed with dolls hoops and dominoes and boys posed with balls rolling hoops toy wagons toy horses tin soldiers pets like this pet bird here as

56:42 we said Locke gave play Locke had pronounced play as a learning process clay was necessary for children's development and Locke believed that playthings were the natural tools of childhood and that clay recreation that is necessary as labor of food so I can tell you countless American families read Locke and agreed with Locke as their letters and diaries attest and bought their children alphabet blocks also signaling a new recognition of childhood at special are these children's facial expressions they're playful amiable smiling not Stern like we see here furthermore the the older boy man Paige dressed in a distinctive costume that

57:29 signaled his youth that he had a position between boyhood and adulthood and not this false maturity characteristic of this portrait this boy is dressed to a tee in the high fashion of his parents this child here from 1757 is dressed in a miniature version of it all of adult clothing but there are subtle accommodations to his age he is wearing an elaborate silk frock coat a waistcoat a vest and a knee breeches but unlike a fashionable gentleman of his time he does not wear a powdered wig which would have been hot and uncomfortable or a long white linen cravat a tie he just has this looser hair style and a simple white collar

58:17 these subtle accommodations to adult male dress signal the fact that he was still a boy his sister Elizabeth is portrayed in a miniature version of women's clothing which may simply have been the family's choice to portray her in a more formal way nonetheless although a similar sort of in-between in-between dress did exist for girls at the time she is still portrayed as a little girl at play with her doll despite the fact she's wearing this elaborate gown so giving a visual expression to the new ideas of childhood that we talked about were new types of children's dress that once again we see in portraits of actual American children and families after 1750 and particularly

59:06 after 1775 new distinctive forms of children's dress merged that facilitated more active forms of play and these ideas were totally in line with Locke's prescriptions for dressing children simply and in the looser clothing after 1770 yourself girls begin wearing a different type of dress that was a simple muslin frock it looks something like this a simple muslin frock white usually tied with a bow in front so what what's the big deal it was a dramatic break with the previous convention of American dress because it was different than the costumes worn by adult women it was simpler lighter looser then the then

59:53 the gowns and stays and heels and hairdo of the mature woman and allowed girls greater comfort and freedom of movement so after she began walking and left behind the gowns of infancy a girl wore a simple muslin frock which she wore into her teens and then graduated into the gowns of womanhood to put this in a different way it visualized the difference between women and girls and allowed girls to be girls longer before they were thrust into childhood the fact that there's a different costume now for girls signaled that children were to be children before they were thrust into adult roles exactly what we're so and

1:00:38 Locke argued at the same time around the same time 1750 1770 or so it was a new hairstyle adopted for both girls and boys previously children adopted the hair styles of adults as soon as they were old enough to wear gallons of breeches boys were their hair and long curls that cascaded over their shoulders in the 17th century later it was tied back in a queue and girls wore their hair on top of their head with a cap on top but after 1750 or so children no longer wore adult hairstyles but wore their hair straight loose to the shoulder or so and cut

1:01:24 in bangs across their foreheads this was a unisex style of children's hair too short in the front long in the back I guess we could say the eighteenth-century mullet at the same time boys between ages three and ten or so begin wearing a new costume quite unlike anything worn by the upper-middle classes it was basically this it was originally called a hustler suit but it its common name was a skeleton suit so the skeleton suit was the boys costume it consisted of long trousers and a short jacket worn over a shirt with a large square collar usually with ruffles

1:02:11 this boy the son of Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge was depicted in this skeleton suit in this portrait of 1790 so the father is posing in the traditional genom of gentlemanly attire of breeches and the frock coat but now the boy is wearing this special costume importantly the skeleton suit signaled that the boy was a boy and not a man and signaled the boys subordinates tatted status within the family by sort of subverting class expectations so what's the big deal about the skeleton suit it's the trousers at the time long trousers were only worn by the laboring classes by peasants soldiers or sailors and upper

1:02:57 class or middle class people would have never worn long pants long trousers the skeleton suit separated boys from toddlers of both sexes who still wore the gown of infancy and also the upper echelon of men in breeches so we can see that by 1775 male children passed through three distinct stages three or so years of infancy when they wore long gowns and skirts another three to five years of childhood in trousers wearing some variation of the skeleton suit and then after that they would wear a relaxed version of men's dress something like this before attaining the

1:03:43 full adult costume the pattern was the same for girls although their in-between form of dress was this muslin dress so in Maya fashion or costume historian absolutely not but what I'm using is the example of clothing to show you that childhood was recognized as a special stage of human development and children were allowed to be children longer before they were made into adults another and final example of this new differentiation of childhood youth and infancy and adulthood is apparent in other family portraits a final family portrait that we will look at is a portrait of the Angus Nicholson family from somewhere in New England from about

1:04:30 1790 the painting shows Angus Nicholson the head of the Nicholson household in a relaxed casual manner this was it this was something new this sort of portrait because he's not at work he's not at business he's not grasping family books or papers or letters but he's at home with his children in their park parlour this painting looks very different than it might have a century or 150 years ago in contrast to a century ago when the male head of household might have been portrayed with his eldest male heir his eldest son he actually holds his arm protective protectively about around one

1:05:16 of his youngest sons holding this little guy sort of on his lap who has his little toy drum this little boy has just began wearing the skeleton suit it seems the mother is portrayed with a toddler not sure if that's a boy or girl and a young daughter wearing the muslin gown but what is notable about the portrait is that it's not just child and adult but there's a whole pattern there's a whole intricate expression of sub-classifications based on age and gender gender we can see bear clearly the stages of infancy childhood and youth and adolescents for instance

1:06:02 all of the children wear bangs and the shoulder-length hair mullet right like that and even the older children wear this children's hairstyle even those who have begun to wear more complicated versions of adult dress the baby toddler where's the gowns of infancy and remain sexless in dress we don't know if this is a boy or girl the little girl needing next the little girl next term mother holds an open book which was an allusion to Locke's idea to childhood as a time of learning the brother here next to the father holds a toy drum again the idea of the toy the

1:06:48 older brother here wears a transitional costume he's still wearing the children's hairstyle but he's wearing a costume that combines the frock coat of manhood like his father with the trousers and loose hair of childhood like his little sister he holds an open book but if you look very closely you can see that it was printed in Latin a classical language that girls would have never learned like like their brother here one of the older daughters wears a similar sort of transitional dress a grown-up gown a little bit more advanced than the muslin gown but still wearing the child's hairstyle finally the two

1:07:35 eldest daughters wear the formal gowns the elaborate teased and powdered hairstyles of womanhood but without the the mother's matronly mob lace cap and without the mother's expensive lace collar that signaled that she was the female head of household so in summary today we looked at how Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and Rousseau put forth a radical new idea of childhood as being a special stage of human development that should be devoted to play and education it's a commonplace idea now but it was very very then and in the next lecture we're going to continue looking at children and family

1:08:21 only life in the American colonies and we're going to Center in on Puritan New England because many of these ideas are different and special there thank you very much