Mona Gleason

Children, teachers and schools in the history of British Columbia

mention of the BC Treaty Process, and the Supreme Court decision in the Gladstone case affirming the rights of the Heiltsuks to sell herring roe is mentioned only in a note. While the chapter on the nineteenth century is specific and detailed, the material on the present context is marked by a remarkable lack of specific actors: a chapter dealing with the Heiltsuk people in the present day with not so much as a mention of such people as Chief Ed Newman will seem very peculiar to readers who are familiar with the BC scene. Another jarring note is the argument on page 26 that the shortage of newer housing on reserve is a factor contributing to the

From “Disgraceful Carelessness” to “Intelligent Precaution”: Accidents and the Public Child in English Canada, 1900-1950

Highlighting how medical professionals in English Canada understood accidents in childhood, this article explores the emergence of the idea of a “public child” throughout the course of the twentieth century. It asks how shifts in attitudes toward public health, domesticity, race, and gender shaped ideas about children, their safety, and their protection. The medicalized construction of a public child helped foster a more recognizable sense of community responsibility for the wellbeing of particular children at the same time as it increased and deepened the surveillance of families and parents. Although the management of children has always been a task ascribed primarily to women, the early twentieth century witnessed a new interest in categorizing children, whether as infants, workers, or students, as public health and safety risks worthy of public attention.

Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education.

Abstract Using examples from family letters sent to the Department of Education’s Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) in the western Canadian province of British Columbia in the early twentieth century, this article discusses three potential problems or traps associated with concepts of agency in the history of children and youth. Following a brief discussion of the emergence of agency in childhood studies, it focuses on three approaches to agency that it is argued limit our efforts to demonstrate the contributions of young people to historical change: contributory, binaried, and undifferentiated approaches to agency. Investigating the ECS family letters through these three approaches demonstrates their limits while also pointing the way towards more productive pathways. By focusing on more nuanced interpretive strategies, such as empathic inference, structural and relational analyses, and explicitly theorising around the key concept of age, young people emerge more clearly as actors in history, not merely subjects of history.

The land is my school: Children, history, and the environment in the Canadian province of British Columbia

This article explores archival letters written by children and their parents to the Elementary Correspondence School in the Canadian province of British Columbia in the early 20th century. Parents, anxious for their children to be formally educated, expressed concern about their remote location in rugged parts of the province. Children focused their letter writing on their informal learning with, and on, the land. This history invites adults to recognize the varieties of ways that children, on their own terms, connect with the natural environment.

Metaphor, Materiality, and Method: The Central Role of Embodiment in the History of Education.

Abstract Delivered as one of the keynote addresses at the International Standing Committee on the History of Education (ISCHE) Conference held in Chicago in August 2016, this paper offers a broad review of how the body and embodiment have been incorporated into histories of education. Based on this historiography, I extend three “inspiring provocations” intended to set the stage for new questions, new theorising, and new methods regarding the body in the field. By asking new questions of the past, drawing on innovative theoretical and methodological frameworks, I argue, historians can continue to give proper empirical standing to the body and embodiment in our histories of education. I conclude with a central question: What are the important questions in the history of education that the body might help us to answer?