ABSTRACT WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHILD?: THE MCGUFFEY READERS

by Kaylie Elizabeth Schunk

This essay and exhibit examines the shifting notion of childhood in the American West during the Progressive Era, from 1890 to 1920, by evaluating the power and limitations of The McGuffey Readers in forging American childhood. Responding to Viviana Zelizer’s work on children’s social worth, the exhibit places this change into historical context by using The Readers to examine visual representations of children, youth death rates, toys and literature, education, and child labor. Set at the McGuffey House and Museum, the exhibit enables the target audiences (the museum’s docents, homeschooling families, and a general audience) to interact with objects that evoke memory and identity. This project takes a scholarly argument and translates it into a public, visual medium. Evoking a somber but hopeful mood in a partially radial floor plan, patrons reflect on their childhood by reading labels that allow artifacts to speak and facilitate an individualized experience.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHILD?: THE MCGUFFEY READERS

A Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by

Kaylie Elizabeth Schunk

Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Offenburger

Reader: Dr. Helen Sheumaker Reader: Dr. Elena Albarrán

©2019 Kaylie Elizabeth Schunk

This Thesis titled

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHILD?: THE MCGUFFEY READERS

by

Kaylie Elizabeth Schunk

has been approved for publication by

The College of Arts and Science and Department of History

______Dr. Andrew Offenburger

______Dr. Helen Sheumaker

______Dr. Elena Albarrán

Table of Contents Title………………………………………………………………………………………………...i Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………....iii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………….…..iv Note on Terminology and Periodization…………..………………………………………...….....v Introduction ...... 1 Historiography ...... 6 The Significance of the Exhibit ...... 14 Museum Methodology ...... 15 Creating an Exhibit: A Reflection on the Process ...... 20 Conclusion ...... 25 References ...... 28 Appendix A: Exhibit Photographs ...... 30

iii

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Miami University’s History Department for their support throughout my academic career. The Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts combined program was new and not yet explored. I appreciate the faculty’s guidance throughout the process. I would like to thank Dr. Elena Albarrán for her assistance as I learned a new historiography. I appreciated your book lists, kind words, and helpfulness during such a short time. The history of childhood will continue to fascinate me in the future and that is thanks to you. To Dr. Helen Sheumaker, you have been a lifesaver as I took the plunge to change my project to an exhibit. You helped me to learn the technical skills that were necessary to make my vision a reality. While our independent study was extremely helpful, your encouragement and understanding throughout this process was crucial to my success. I cannot express my thanks enough to Dr. Andrew Offenburger, my advisor and mentor. Since sophomore year, you have helped me to reach my potential as a scholar and individual. Your help has been invaluable, and I appreciate your support, especially when I decided to not pursue a thesis. Your dedication to student success is extraordinary.

I would like to thank my family, friends, and Dr. Charlotte Goldy. To those who read drafts, carried my exhibit’s artifacts, and supported me throughout this process, I am truly grateful. Dr. Charlotte Goldy, a friend and mentor, I thank you for always having your office open, always being a phone call away, and for never letting me lose sight of myself during this process. Finally, I dedicate this project to Stephen Gordon, my mentor and the Administrator at The McGuffey House and Museum. Steve, you are the best boss I have ever had because you did not simply manage me; you inspired me. You took my interests and used the history of William Holmes McGuffey and The McGuffey Readers as an opportunity for me to grow and explore new opportunities as a scholar, public historian, and young professional. I will never forget the quiet afternoons we spent talking on the McGuffey porch.

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Note on Terminology and Periodization

This study examines the shift in the conception of childhood between 1836 and the midtwentieth century in the American West. In doing so, I focus on the first period, from 1836 to 1880, which saw the rise of The McGuffey Readers and will be called “the McGuffey Era” or “the age of frontier schooling.” The second period, from 1890 to 1920, will be referred to as the “Progressive Era.” While my study does touch on ideas that expand to the mid-twentieth century, their genesis is in the Progressive era.

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Introduction “The Honest Boy and the Thief” Charles was an honest boy, but his neighbor, Jack Pilfer, was a thief. Charles would never take anything for his own which did not belong to him; but Jack would take whatever he could get, and when he found any thing that was lost, he would never restore it to the owner… The orange [peddler]…put the bridle into Charles’ hand, and went into the house to eat his breakfast…As soon as Jack found there were oranges in the baskets, he was determined to have one, and going up to the basket, he slipped in his hand and took out one of the largest, and was making off with it… But Charles said, Jack, you shall not steal these oranges while I have the care of them… [Jack] stepped too near the [orange cart’s] horse’s heels, he received a violent kick, which sent him sprawling to the ground…Jack was rightly served; and the orange [merchant], taking Charles’ hat, filled it with oranges, as he said he had been so faithful in guarding them, he should have all of these for his honesty.1

-McGuffey’s Eclectic Second Reader This story, “The Honest Boy and the Thief,” is a classic example of the stories that Professor William Holmes McGuffey included in his textbooks, The McGuffey Readers. McGuffey was a Latin, Greek, and ethics professor at Miami University from 1826 to 1836, and he composed children’s textbooks called The McGuffey Readers. McGuffey’s emphasis on honesty is demonstrated by this story, as Charles was rewarded for his honesty while Jack was punished for his thievery and deception. Charles and Jack are presented in a binary relationship—truth versus deceit. Honesty prevails, and deception receives its just punishment. Framed in this idealized vision of morality, McGuffey promoted Christian ethics like honesty through short vignettes strewn throughout the textbooks. Charles is symbolic of the type of American citizen that McGuffey envisioned occupying the American frontier, or the regions of the Old Northwest Territory, during the nineteenth century.2 McGuffey found honesty so important that it is the most prevalent virtue throughout the works—surviving multiple editions and editors.3 The professor published the first four textbooks in Oxford, Ohio, in response to the inflow of immigrants to the region to provide what he deemed as proper pronunciation and a standardized set of moral standards associated with this newly formed vision of American citizenship in the American frontier. McGuffey had humble roots, but he and his brother, Alexander McGuffey, felt a strong compulsion to provide a standard form of public education that was accessible, one that could assimilate all residents of the American West into a unified culture centered in language pronunciation and a Protestant moral code. McGuffey’s educational ambitions are not surprising since he has been characterized as a natural teacher and scholar from childhood. Folklore amplified McGuffey’s early talents in education. In an early example, his mother once prayed for

1 Harvey Minnich, William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers (Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936), 12- 13. 2 John H. Westerhoff III, McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (Milford: Mott Media, 1982), 167. 3 Westerhoff III, 75. 1

God to bless her son with the opportunity to pursue higher learning.2 While an interesting and unverifiable tale, historians have confirmed young William’s educational ambitions and struggles; he worked for his tuition at Reverend Hughes’ Old Stone Academy in Darlington, Pennsylvania and copied “Hebrew text by hand” because he could not afford the textbook while attending Washington College, Pennsylvania.5 Years later, McGuffey was appointed the Latin, Greek, and ethics professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, from 1826 to 1836 in spite of his humble origins. He believed that the purpose of education was to provide ordinary citizens with the skills that were necessary for informed citizenship and a moral code that would unify the frontier lands.3 He also had a young family and needed extra income, and so he authored The McGuffey Readers, a series of children’s textbooks, to fulfill his educational and personal goals. Approached in 1835 by Cincinnati publishers, McGuffey already had been experimenting with the appropriate teaching methods to teaching immigrant children migrating to the American West with the skills to speak and think like an American through elocution and moral instruction. He completed four of The Readers in his home in Oxford, Ohio; McGuffey’s brother contributed to the writing of these works and is formally credited for his contributions to the fifth and sixth level textbooks.4 The textbooks were a success. Over 122 million copies were sold between 1836 and the 1920s.8 McGuffey’s textbooks were popular because they were inexpensive and relatable to inhabitants of the American West. The accessibility and popularity of these works enabled the McGuffey brothers to achieve their goals of unifying the children of the American West in a uniquely American culture. McGuffey and his brother targeted elocution as one skill necessary for integrating American immigrants. According to his niece, “The slipshod speech of the average Middle Westerner of eighty years ago must have afflicted my father and Uncle William grievously, and they labored with a missionary zeal to amend it.”5 She points to an excerpt from an early edition of the Readers that emphasized pronunciation: “‘UTTER EACH WORD DISTINCTLY. DO NOT SAY OLE FOR OLD, HEERD for HEARD.’”6 The McGuffeys used elocution as a means of assimilating children into a common American culture and accent, abandoning their country of origin. The National Federation of McGuffey Societies (The McGuffeyites), an organization that was founded in 1936 to lobby for the return of The McGuffey Readers in public schools, went as far to say that the Readers “gave peoples of various backgrounds a common heritage based on…great English and American literature. The books also gave the nation, with a myriad of foreign language backgrounds, one common language. Many a foreign speaking parent

2 William Smith, About the McGuffeys: William Holmes McGuffey and Alexander H. McGuffey, who Compiled the McGuffey Readers of which 125,000,000 Copies have been Sold (Oxford: Cullen Print Company, 1963), 5. 5 Dolores P. Sullivan, William Holmes McGuffey Schoolmaster to the Nation (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994), 30. 3 Smith, 15. 4 Sullivan, 74. 8 Sullivan, 17. 5 This is an excerpt from an interview with William Holmes McGuffey’s niece and Alexander McGuffey’s daughter, Anna McGuffey Morrill. Alice Morrill Ruggles, “A Daughter of the McGuffeys: Fragments from the Early Life of Anna McGuffey Morrill (1845-1924),” in Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 42, no. 3 (July 1933): 252253. 6 Ruggles, 253. 2 learned, along with the child, English from McGuffey.”7 Language acquisition and pronunciation was a primary tenet of assimilating immigrants to the American West to American culture according to William Holmes and Alexander McGuffey. Aside from language, the McGuffeys, especially William, promoted Christian morality and civic leadership through the Readers. Morrill recalls that her “Uncle William’s aim was to have the Readers instill moral lessons as well as correct English.”8 Lessons emphasized “principles of fundamental moral behavior necessary in a good community: promptness, kindness, honesty, and truthfulness.”9 Children were taught virtues through story-telling. As future contributors to a democratic society, McGuffey included stories that taught children kindness and service to others. This is exemplified in the tale, “Three Boys and Three Cakes” where a child gives the rest of his cake so an elderly, blind man can eat.10 The child decided that feeding the less fortunate was more important than gluttonously finishing the cake with his friends. McGuffey used The Readers as a vehicle to teach compassion, generosity, and a serviceoriented mindset for the Old Northwest’s future leaders. McGuffey states that the purpose of education is to provide citizens with the knowledge that is necessary to support American democratic institutions and to perform their duties as citizens.11 McGuffey believes that “The blind are always liable to miss their way, however sincerely they may desire to walk the right path.”12 Because the American West was just being explored, McGuffey believed that these textbooks were an opportunity to guide “the blind” and build the foundations for a Christian, polite society as the United States continued to expand westward.17 McGuffey even “apologizes for not using the sacred scriptures more” in his more advanced Readers.18 Through morality and proper speech, students could contribute to the development of the American culture in the American frontier. During the nineteenth century, parents and The McGuffey Readers believed that education was necessary for character development and informed citizenship. This originated from an understanding about the inherent nature of children dating back to antiquity. First expressed by St. Augustine, Christians were concerned with original sin and its implications for children’s inclination towards good or evil.13 On the American continent, the Puritanical view suggested that children had a proclivity towards evil, but that they could be shepherded towards good remained true in McGuffey’s day.20 The McGuffey Readers were novel because they underscored a more hopeful outlook where children had the capacity to be good, while also affecting positive change in their communities. Children’s inevitability towards heaven or hell

7 Kenneth M. Glass, Golden Anniversary of the National Federation of McGuffey Societies and the Sesquicentennial of the publication of the McGuffey Readers (Oxford: The National Federation of McGuffey Societies, 1986), 2. 8 Ruggles, 252. 9 Minnich, 33. 10 William Holmes McGuffey, Old Favorites of the McGuffey Readers, ed. Harvey Minnich (Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936), 27. 11 Westerhoff III, 171. 12 Westerhoff III, 165. 17 Westerhoff III, 165 18 Minnich, 37. 13 Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 38. 20 Heywood, 38. 3 therefore became less important to American educators and parents alike. Nevertheless, Americans of the McGuffey Era still believed in steering their children towards the moral good, which was especially important in the “uncivilized” regions of the American West. According to Elliott West, parents of the American West believed that education was not only necessarily for basic skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic but also for preserving Christian values.14 Frontier schools focused on training children to become moral and responsible leaders instead of just trying to save their souls. Despite their immense influence and success before 1900, The McGuffey Readers were seen as dated in the industrial period of the Progressive Era. Elocution and moral instruction became less relevant with the rise in urbanization, new conceptualizations of childhood, and approaches to early education. The farm scenes of the McGuffey epoch gave way to skyscrapers and department stores by the turn of the century. Urbanization hit the United States to such a degree that the manufacturing output was twenty-eight times greater in 1929 than it was in 1859.15 Accounting for population differences between the two periods, manufacturing still increased by over seven times by the end of the 1920s. Concurrently with this change, children became viewed as fragile and susceptible to physiological damage and psychological disorder. Scientists soon became motivated to study high childhood mortality rates, which led to an evolved understanding of childhood as a series of psychological and physical stages that could be disrupted by trauma.16 Parents’ responsibility to properly raise their children reached nearly impossible heights as morality and speech patterns were not the only criteria to consider when raising their children. McGuffey and the Progressive reformers from the 1890s to the 1920s were all interested in building America’s future generations’ moral character, but it was the newfound interest in researching children’s health that truly defined the twentieth century as the period of “saving the child.”17 Before then, a significant portion of children died before reaching maturity. Data on infant mortality was not recorded until 1900 in the United States so specific data on juvenile death during the McGuffey period is unknown. However, in 1900, “More than 12 percent of children died before their first birthday, and another 5.7 percent died before they reached the age of five.”18 Additionally, fertility rates were reduced, which led to children having more emotional and physical space in the home.19 As a result, physicians and psychologists were interested in ways to reduce youth mortality rates to save future children and sustain the American population.20 Scientists did not realize that their investigations would change

14 Elliott West, Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 188. 15 Chester W. Wright, Economic History of the United States (New York: McGraw Hill, 1941), 707. 16 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Hard University Press, 2004), 188. 17 Mintz, 154. 18 James Marten, Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 9. 19 Marten, 8. 20 Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 1985), 12. 28 Mintz, 152. 4

American childhood. By studying pediatric medicine, scientists discovered that youths developed in distinct stages of psychological and physical development. Children were no longer considered mini-adults, but were instead viewed as fragile beings susceptible to neuroses.28 Due to scientific developments of pediatric medicine during the Progressive era, youth labor gradually fell out of favor in the middle-class society of the Progressive era. Progressives valued a childhood uninhibited by adult responsibilities, while The McGuffey Readers instilled a strong work ethic in children, who contributed to family incomes 21 Youth’s emotional and economic value shifted as fewer children were born, more survived, and children of the upper middle class were not expected to work.22 Parents started to idealized childhood innocence at the cost of financial and emotional investments. As children worked less and required more supervision, families perceived their children more as an investment than a contributor to the household income. With newfound time to explore and relish a created innocence, children had to find ways to appropriately use their spare time in environments that would not damage their development. Extracurricular activities and additional schooling were created to offer these types of environments. Children would be guided into adulthood step-by-step with adult supervision.23 Kids were taught life skills like fire-building and cooking.24 It was no longer acceptable to assume that children knew the skills that were necessary for adult life. Progressive reformers were so concerned about public health education that young girls were taught to be mothers in after-school programs. Technical education, like home economics and woodshop, were also added to schools as a means of properly preparing the next generation.25

As juvenile innocence became protected, young ones were encouraged to develop their brains and bodies through interactive activities created and supervised by adults. Due to this shift in pedagogical approach during the Progressive period, The McGuffey Readers started to fall out of favor on a national scale in the 1920s. Psychologists like John Dewey, influenced pedagogy; teaching became more interactive and personal.26 Dewey, founder of the University of Chicago Laboratory School, believed in pragmatism. Instead of the teaching model of the McGuffey era that consisted of recitation and biblical instruction, John Dewey believed that children learned through actively engaging with the world and learning from their experiences.35 He thought that teachers should simulate real-life experiences through activities that children could relate to from their own life. Education shifted from passive to active and from impersonal to personal in less than one-hundred years. Progressive Era reformers and teachers also idealized childhood and sought to provide children with the skills that were necessary to be successful American citizens like The McGuffey

21 Marten, 13. 22 Zelizer, 6. 23 Mintz, 174. 24 Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005), 174. 25 Cunningham, 173. 26 Carol Garhart Mooney, Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky (St. Paul: Redleaf Press, 2000), 4-5. 35 Mooney, 8. 5

Readers. The reduction in fertility rates and the staggeringly high juvenile mortality rates of the nineteenth century influenced the different approaches of The McGuffey Readers’ and Progressive reformers. As childhood medicine and psychiatry developed, childhood was newly understood as a series of physiological developments that could be damaged if not under the care of proper adult supervision. While McGuffey’s world of nineteenth century agrarian life believed that Christian values and a standardized language were key to an improved society and training these miniature adults, Progressive era parents looked to science and medical practitioners, which led to children being more sheltered in “child-proof” environments. In this work, I examine the shifting model of childhood in the American West during the Progressive era by sustaining a gaze at the constructive power and limitations of The McGuffey Readers in forging American childhood. Specifically, I am examining issues surrounding education, child labor, pediatric medicine and psychology, and the toy industry. As The McGuffey Readers were replaced by modern teaching practices that integrated science and demoted the importance of morality, the McGuffeyites (an organization that developed in the early twentieth century that pushed for the reinstitution of The Readers in public education) pushed for the textbooks’ return. While the majority of contemporary educators believed that McGuffey’s works were out of date, the McGuffeyites perceived the new instructional methods as robbing youth from learning the virtues of American citizenry. In the McGuffeyites’ pamphlet celebrating 150 years since the publication of the first four McGuffey Readers, there is an excerpt from the 1983 U.S. News and World Report that claims that there has been a rise in the amount of McGuffey Readers sold because Americans have “a yearning for a simpler life and the desire to promote honesty, industry and more responsible and humane behavior.”27 In other words, the current educational system was deprived of Christian values and human decency. Kenneth Glass, member of the McGuffeyites, notes that “150,000 McGuffey Readers were sold last year,”28 but the Forum on Child and Family Statistics states that there were 62.8 million children in the United States in 1982.29 This shows that the number of textbooks that were purchased is nominal to the juvenile population of the time. McGuffeyites may have mourned the replacement of their beloved McGuffey Readers, but the American educational system had abandoned the perception of childhood and the pedagogy associated with these works. The McGuffeyites themselves disappeared by the 1990s. The fight to return The Readers was ultimately lost, but the textbooks continue to be printed and used by some homeschooling communities.

Historiography Until about thirty years ago, historians had largely ignored children as a subject of study. Recent works have focused on the importance to familial infrastructures or young people as

27 Kenneth M. Glass, 5. 28 Glass, 5. 29 “POP1 CHILD POPULATION: NUMBER OF CHILDREN (IN MILLIONS) AGES 0–17 IN THE UNITED STATES BY AGE, 1950–2017 AND PROJECTED 2018–2050,” Child Stats, Forum on Child and Family Statistics, last revised December 2014, https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp. 6 malleable subjects to bolster nationalism. Because the history of childhood is relatively new, there is little scholarship on The McGuffey Readers, the famous textbooks popularly used for one-hundred years, in juxtaposition with the changing perceptions of childhood at the turn of the twentieth century. While this study does deal with how the textbooks were used to formalize a strict American identity in the immigrant communities of the American West, my study will focus on changing perceptions of childhood. The replacement of The McGuffey Readers in public schools and straying away from strictly moral-based education aligns with Viviana Zelizer, and Steven Mintz’s arguments that childhood mortality rates and scientific advances for child health enabled an increase in the sentimentalizing of children. But Zelizer and Mintz assert that the American process of sentimentalizing children can be viewed through an economic lens. Zelizer states that children became more sentimental to their parents as less children were born and society shifted away from agriculture. Mintz applies this notion on a larger scale in expansive analysis on social history during the Progressive era. This assertion parallels my own assertion that as society began to move away from the agrarian society of The McGuffey Readers, and children were understood in more scientific terms they were not expected to work in the adult labor force, were protected for their psychological development, education shifted from virtue-based to emphasizing pragmatic skills, a consumer market tailored for children formed, and parenting took on even more responsibility. Frontier schooling, demonstrated by The McGuffey Readers, sought to train children, who were treated like miniature adults, to be virtuous members of a Christian society. Progressive Era reformers also believed that they were helping children by understanding youths’ physiological development, which changed attitudes towards child labor and educational practices. Scholarship on childhood as a larger field of study began with debates about the existence of childhood in the Middle Ages, which has enabled other scholars to make similar inquiries for different epochs. According to one of the first scholars on youth history, childhood was not recognized as a stage of life during the medieval period.30 Phillipe Aries, grandfather of childhood studies, originally contended that “in medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist,”31 which has been vehemently disputed. According to Colin Heywood and Mintz, Aries is responding to a phenomena beginning in the Middle Ages where Medievalists were not interested in writing about childhood because they were considered “imperfect” adults.41 By extension, it is almost universally understood by childhood scholars that Aries conclusion were incorrect. I also agree that Phillipe Aries’ assertion is too simplistic; rather, children were perceived as imperfect, junior adults, which was an attitude that carried from the medieval period to the Christian communities of McGuffey’s American West. Dependent on adults for moral direction, children were considered deficient adults, which continued to be the societal norm into the nineteenth century. Within the context of the American continent, I particularly agree with Mintz’s example of the Puritans to demonstrate the perceived ‘imperfection’ of youths. Children were considered

30 Phillipe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 125 31 Aries, 125 41 Heywood, 2. 7 to be sinners from birth and behaviors like crawling were considered “bestial.”32 Influenced by the Calvinist principle of predestination, “children were adults in training who needed to be prepared for salvation and inducted into the world of work as soon as possible.”33 Demonstrated by the Puritanical, American textbook, The New England Primer, children are exposed to fear tactics to promote good behavior like using dark, religious themes for instruction and including an etching of the book’s author being hanged for his actions against the state.34 McGuffey responded to the harsh nature of this textbook and shifted the tone of his works to promote virtuous actions through scenarios that are lighter and more relatable. This included events like how to properly share toys, care for pets, and help your neighbor. However, McGuffey is still showing a societal demand in the 1830s to morally instruct these ‘deficient’ adults that dates back as early as the Middle Ages and remained prevalent during the McGuffey era. The push for moral instruction for youth also stemmed from the staggering death rates of children prior to the Progressive period’s push for studying juvenile health. The eighteenth century textbook The New England Primer has death as its central theme. Written for a society socialized to both fear and expect death at any time, the textbook’s rhyme to learn the letter ‘Y’ was “While youth do chear. Death may be near.”35 Children could not learn fundamental reading skills without encountering death. McGuffey, on the other hand, sought to lighten this burden on youngsters by discussing death but through a comforting, religious message. Fear is replaced by religious reassurance. He focuses on nature’s beauty and leaves death to God’s will.36 While children are exposed to death in stories about children’s parents dying and encountering near death experiences in winter weather, the youths are comforted by McGuffey’s extensive use of Biblical verse and virtuous motifs like hope and faith.37 The McGuffey Readers show an intermediary phase where children were exposed to death, but they started to be sheltered from its harsh reality through religious rationalization. Despite McGuffey’s attempts to give children ways to cope with death through Christianity, Zelizer points to infant mortality rates during the McGuffey period as integral to the shift in social value of children. As youths’ social values change, society pushed for research on pediatric medicine, and children started to been seen as entirely separate from adults— emotionally and physically. Instead of characterizing youths as ‘deficient,’ they were members of a separate, normal stage of life. Zelizer and Mintz understand childhood death rates serves as the catalyst for children’s social value changing, while Stearns sees a similar trend on a global scale. Zelizer states that children were loved by their parents before, but their economic worth changed. She posits that youths change in their economic value due to the “cultural process of ‘sacralization,’ of the American childhood.”48 Zelizer notes that the study of childhood had only

32 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Harvard College, 2004), 10. 33 Mintz, 10. 34 Paul Leicefter Ford, The New England Primer (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899), 1. 35 Ford, 5. 36 William Holmes McGuffey, Old Favorites of the McGuffey Readers, ed. Harvey Minnich (Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936), 21. 37 Harvey Minnich, William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers (Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936), 69. 48 Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers), 198. 8 been studied through the lens of psychologists, demographers, and economists with particular interest in motivations for having children and how this relates to fertility rates.38 However, previous work did not evaluate the cultural and social motivations of the criteria in which children were valued. While Zelizer’s primary objective is to situate this cultural phenomenon within a larger economic study of the valuation of children’s lives, Stearns and Mintz take Zelizer’s assertion and analyze this phenomena in terms of class. Stearns and Mintz argue that middle class parental values were imposed on the lower classes.39 They emphasize the advent of pediatrics and the depreciation of family sizes as the impetuses of sentimentalizing childhood. Childhood became characterized in distinct stages of development, time spent at home was extended, and parental guidance was needed to mold the malleable child. Stearns and Mintz assert that childhood mortality rates are an important factor for the transformation of childhood. This is demonstrated in the context of The McGuffey Readers as society quickly changed from high child mortality rates and a more distanced attitude from parents to a more industrialized society with fewer children and more parental supervision in children’s lives. Stearns determines that this reduction in infant mortality was one “basic transition into the modern model [of childhood, which] involved a dramatic reduction of the infant death rate, from traditional levels in which 30-50 percent of all children born had died before age two.”40 Stearns analyzes the effects of this development on a global scale unlike Aries and Mintz. He argues that birth rates reduced in the Western hemisphere, which “encouraged more concern about saving children who were born.” 41 The rest of the globe increased public health concerns and sanitation, which led to more children surviving and caused a need to reduce the amount of children born. Mintz also attests to the reduction of the birth rate giving rise to this new concern for children’s health in the West.42 In spite of their different trend results. Stearns and Mintz agree that infant birth rates are a significant determining factor as to the development of modern childhood as a concept and parents’ attitudes towards their children. Scholars may argue where and why families had less children during the McGuffey era, but it is a common assertion among childhood scholars that the reduced number of births and high child mortality produced a societal demand for research in childhood medicine. Along with the restrictions of child labor, the development of childhood as a science and childhood psychology contributed to children’s consumer culture. With Darwin’s study of his own child and G. Stanley Hall’s study of childhood development, they discovered that children were malleable and had to be taught the skills that are necessary for adulthood. Parents lost a significant amount of their authority as doctors agreed with leading psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud who believed that parents had the ability to cause their children lifelong neuroses. Parents could not simply trust their instincts and looked to science as an external authority. This directly contradicts The McGuffey Readers that teach the importance of obeying parents and other adults

38 Zelizer, 7. 39 Peter Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2011), 57. 40 Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2011), 73. 41 Stearns, 73. 42 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Harvard College, 2004), 77. 9 without question. The McGuffeyites did not want parents to lose their ability to have full control over parenting their children. Instead, beginning in the early twentieth century, mothers cared so deeply about catering to their children’s anxieties and fears that they subscribed to parental advice magazines and sought professional advice from psychological clinics.43 Inherent qualities, like intelligence or social class, were not considered to be indicators of criminality anymore. Juvenile delinquency was attributed to children suffering from psychological disorders.44 Toys were initially created to guide parents on how to properly instruct and assist their children through their stages of emotional and physical development. Toys and children’s literature eventually became directly targeted for children, consumers whose income source was their parents or from a job appropriate for their age, by the 1920s. Parents of the Progressive Era looked to the market and science to help them parent, which sometimes meant that toys and children’s literature served as a replacement for the parental authority of the McGuffey era. Stearns argues that toys were often used as bribes by their parents—by Americans and in Europe.45 Toys and other children’s goods were used to combat phobias, celebrate birthdays, and to combat boredom during the Progressive period. Stearns asserts that these attitudes instilled parental guilt then and now. Parents worried that their children were not properly entertained or were not given a sufficient amount of attention.46 The McGuffeyites believed that children had lost the example associated with strong, authoritarian parents who taught a strict moral code exemplified by The McGuffey Readers. Mintz underscores the importance of childhood psychology as children’s anxieties and fears are cared about more than ever before, and parents are upheld to nearly impossible standards. With the teddy bear being an example of a toy to comfort a child through trauma, this toy exemplifies the shift in parental values. Parents put the feelings and development of their children over a strict moral teaching. With the fear that children could easily be damaged for life, the parents’ role was less authoritarian and only one sector of a child’s life. By the 1920s, schooling was more important to the transfer of class and reputation so families became a more private institution with less discipline.47 Parents did not have the same responsibility to supervise morals unlike parents of McGuffey’s time. Zelizer disagrees with Mintz’s approach as she posits that too many scholars have devoted their analysis of the formation of modern childhood to science and the formation of modern adolescence. She states that parents were mostly unaffectionate to their children until the mid-eighteenth century. Her evidence is primarily the public outrage of accidental deaths of children from streetcar accidents.48 She states there is a trade-off for the increased sanctity of youths at the turn of the century. Children’s freedoms were limited as adults sought to supervise and cultivate their precious progeny.

43 Mintz, 219. 44 Mintz., 214. 45 Mintz., 127. 46 Stearns, 128. 47 Mintz, 216. 48 Zelizer, 175. 60 Mintz., 196. 10

While Mintz does rely on science as the impetus for the new social understandings of childhood, he does argue that the emergence of adolescence (children aged from approximately nine to twelve years old) to was shaped by society, culture, and the rise of the middle class.60 Stearns and Cunningham also see the middle class as the group that pushes these new standards of childhood on the lower classes, but Stearns is investigating the world, while Cunningham focuses on the Western Hemisphere. Mintz uniquely applies these principles to just the United States. The middle class began to keep their children home for longer to reap some financial benefits and so children could attend school longer. The emergence of adolescence had its challenges. Society believed that boys were being effeminized because they were supervised by their mothers for a more extended period of time according to Mintz.49 Organizations like the Boy Scouts and the Woodcraft Indians “sought to revitalize masculinity though various forms of primitivism.”62 This led to the establishment of adolescent afterschool activities, which emphasized “manly” activities during the Progressive era. Additionally, Stearns contends the extended time that children stayed with their parents increased societal concerns of premarital sex in the middle classes. As the period in which society deemed an individual to be a child expanded, this led to longer waiting periods for marriage.50 These concerns led to strict supervision of children through extracurricular activities and in education. Zelizer’s emphasis on children as consumers during the turn of the nineteenth century connects to this theme of increased adult supervision, which is prevalent in children’s literature. The children of the McGuffey era were replaced by fragile beings that required constant guidance and protection. Imagination was prioritized over religious instruction. Children’s literature during the Progressive period allowed youngsters to be transported to new worlds as they escaped the supervision of their parents. Mintz argues that “Imaginative literature sustained children’s spirits as their lives grew more rigidly structured.”51 These stories soothed children’s fears and provided them with a fantasy world where they could escape and be empowered.52 This differed from the unrealistic characters of the eighteenth century that lacked depth and simply instructed children on morality. In the midst of the more structured world of the middle-class child, fantastical literature were nostalgic for a simpler past and youthful freedom. As science and cultural phenomena increased knowledge on childhood development, it restricted children’s ability to be free and explore the imaginations that their parents valued. Due to these innovations in childhood health, The McGuffey Readers’ model of education through morals and stories was largely abandoned as Progressive Era reformers began to provide classes to teach practical skills like motherhood, cleanliness, home economics, and organizations to teach boys survival skills. Cunningham looks to philanthropic efforts in the Western world, while Marten focuses on government as the channels for childhood education reform from 1830 to the early twentieth century. In the 1910s, groups like The National Congress of Mothers were determined to “‘battle down the old wall of belief that mother instinct teaches a woman all she

49 Mintz, 192. 62 Mintz, 193. 50 Stearns, 116. 51 Mintz, 186. 52 Mintz 11 needs to know about child nurture.’”53 Nurses started to gain access to working-class families to promote hygiene, and young women were taught skills necessary for motherhood in school. Marten states that the lower classes were not educated on basic health and dietetics, which caused babies to be fed meals that were hard to digest and contributed to their struggle to survive.67 Furthermore, young men became a concern to Progressive Era reformers because adults could no longer assume that boys knew how to survive in the wilderness. Instituting clubs like Boy Scouts, young men were given a chance to learn these pragmatic skills in a supervised, sheltered environment.54 As children shed their perception as miniature adults, they had to be supervised and given tailored experiences for children to learn practical skills necessary for adulthood. This shift in educational priorities aligns with a shift in pedagogy during the Progressive era. As The McGuffey Readers started to phase out in the 1920s, educational theorists like John Dewey promoted a more interactive and personal experience for young students. While McGuffey’s stories and proverbs like “Try, Try Again” did stick with students throughout their lives, the style of teaching was passive and relied on recitation.55 No longer focused on providing students only with a set of moral principles to guide their lives, educators organized their lessons based on student experience and physiological development. Dewey reacted to the inflexible, formal system of nineteenth century education as he promoted a “more democratic and childcentered education."56 He believed that youths should have the opportunity to engage in an interactive experience that is carefully crafted for that specific child. Foregoing the impersonal format of nineteenth century education, Dewey was promoting hands-on methods to learning practical skills in protected environments. Through a more interactive approach to learning, students could actively try the practical skills that Progressive Era reformers believed were necessary for children to be thriving adults. Since childhood shifted from junior adulthood to a separate physiological stages of development where children could not subsist on moral instruction alone and had to have their physical and emotional growth not stifled by harsh labor, children became financial investments. Focusing on the United States, Zelizer develops this concept through a sociological lens and Mintz expands on her ideas as they both argue that this transformation occurs because Americans start to see children as an economic investment “as middle-class parents regarded their children not as sources of labor but as ‘social capital’ requiring substantial investment in time and resources.”71 Unlike the The McGuffey Reader that emphasized childhood independence and work ethic, parents of the twentieth century were vehemently against child labor because it may impede their children’s physical and emotional development. I agree with Zelizer and Mintz that the roots of these values begin in the in early nineteenth century as children were conceptualized through the middle class as more valuable emotionally than financially. But Mintz attributes to the shift in parental ideals to the Enlightenment and new religious ethics. Specifically,

53 Cunningham, 156. 67 Marten, 9. 54 Mintz, 89. 55 Minnich, 110-111. 56 Mooney, 2. 71 Zelizer, 11. 12

Enlightenment thinkers argued that children were “blank slates waiting to be shaped by parental and environmental influences.”57 Breaking away from the Calvinist tones of past religious dogma on children, liberal Protestants believed that children had an inherent innocence that should be guided towards Christ; Evangelicals also paralleled the individual conversion experience to childhood as a series of stages.58 Like Zelizer, Mintz points to how these changes are a top-down cultural transformation as the upper-classes initially pass down these values, but these scholars emphasize that this movement is characterized as middle class. Stearns sees a similar phenomenon of class influence in a global context, especially in Europe, Australia, and the United States. The middle class would strictly adhere to these new interpretations of childhood and would set the standard for their more reticent lower-class counterparts. Mintz outlines the shift in parental responsibility as the upper-class asserted that childhood was meant for extensive schooling until they were approximately fourteen years old and how middle-class mothers had already started taking full responsible for childrearing by the early nineteenth century.59

As childhood became idealized, children lost their financial value and as Zelizer states they became “emotionally priceless.”60 This concept underscores the anger that McGuffeyites felt as The Readers’ values of hard work were rejected in the early twentieth century. Stearns and Mintz speak in broader terms as they recount how the new views on childhood’s malleability and the upper and middle-classes’ assertion of their newfound values on childhood. Stearns does state that this shift was also made possible by industrialization and the rise of most urban areas; so, there was less of a need for agrarian labor.61 Nevertheless, Stearns and Mintz are more apt in explaining the results of these new parenting trends in the twentieth century. Zelizer, however, is an authority on the shift in child labor in the nineteenth century. She posits that children’s worth evolved from “‘object[s] of utility’ to for object[s] of sentiment.”62 Parents were longer having children for additional farmhands. They were for emotional support.63 The priorities for children changed as education became more important than any instant value they have as contributors to their households. While urban, lower-class families depended on children’s supplementary income, child labor became so taboo that the institution of child labor laws and compulsory education ended any attempts to keep the old system of children as financial assets.64 Stearns argues that most commentators during the 1920s assumed that children would still complete household chores, but this work was also replaced by appliances and other hardware.65 Children had to develop their work ethics through school and the example of their parents. As children became more financially dependent on their parents, they became avid consumers of their

57 Mintz, 76. 58 Mintz, 76. 59 Mintz, 76. 60 Zelizer, 15. 61 Stearns, 114. 62 Zelizer, 7. 63 Zelizer., 4. 64 Stearns, 6. 65 Stearns, 120. 13 parents’ money, which contributed to the development in children’s consumerism during the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. While the majority of the historiography on childhood focuses on nationalism, my project contextualizes the changing of concepts in childhood by demonstrating the concerns that society had about child behavior and shows how the perception of childhood changed rapidly between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Zelizer, Mintz, and Stearns agree that mortality rates serve as the catalyst for scientific development and increased sentimentality towards childhood. However, they see these trends from different perspectives as Zelizer is a sociologist, Mintz is providing a larger social history of the United States, and Stearns is interested in trends from a global context, The McGuffey Readers demonstrate this change as they represent the agrarian societies of the nineteenth century that experienced high child mortality rates, which caused the people of the American West to have more children and have a more distant relationship to their children. Yet, Aries’ assertion that societies with high child mortality rates did not care for their children is too simplistic and not entirely correct. Zelizer and later Mintz recognize that the increase in sentimentality towards children can be viewed through the lens of economics as children were laborers for the home. I agree that childhood changed as society shifted from agrarian, large families to industrial, smaller familial structures. While I agree that Zelizer’s emphasis on economics and child mortality rates is important to the study of childhood, Mintz’s argument that science and the creation of adolescence is more important to understanding the shift in the conceptualization of childhood. By the nature of Zelizer’s study, she is more interested in economics associated with children’s mortality, while Mintz explains the trend through exclusive social factors associated with a social history. This is seen by the rejection of The McGuffey Readers starting in the early twentieth century as science learned more about childhood development, and this led to an interest in protecting and fostering the development of the child by outlawing child labor and the start of the toy industry. The McGuffey Readers is a means of understanding the quick shift in society’s conceptualization of childhood as children were no longer molded to be only moral and civic leaders. Instead, they were meant to be guarded from trauma and lost the values of independence and hard work that were presented in The McGuffey Readers. But that does not mean that current young people do not have these values. They are simply a part of a larger schema of educational goals—practical, theoretical, and moral. The belief that children have lost their moral compass and work ethic still permeates today, but I believe that children are learning multiple viewpoints to understanding themselves and the world as they are allowed to grow up in a separate, protected sphere. For the young people who continued to be admonished by the elderly for the values of the past, remember that these morals have not been forgotten but are one of many channels to understand life.

The Significance of the Exhibit The McGuffey House and Museum, where the first four McGuffey Readers were written, is on Miami University’s campus; therefore, this project is a chance to engage with the public on the city of Oxford’s contribution to the history of childhood and juvenile pedagogy. I expect that my exhibit will benefit the community as they learn about how William Holmes McGuffey’s

14 works are representative of a distinctive moment in the history of childhood. Past historiography almost unanimously hail his Readers as important to educational history. Some have gone as far as to claim that McGuffey as the “schoolmaster to the nation” and the “‘most popular, most affectionately remembered person in the nineteenth century, a national grant to be ranked with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.’”66 Previous historiography has elevated McGuffey’s status from a man to a legendary figure. Dwelling more on McGuffey’s supposed genius as he crafted a new vision of American moral character in the American West, The Readers are rarely analyzed on their own. 82

This project is an opportunity to analyze The McGuffey Readers, developed and written at the museum’s site, as emblematic of the early nineteenth century’s perception of childhood, what was deemed to be important for children to learn, and how these ideas influenced one another. Analyzing The McGuffey Readers also shows a distinct shift in how society perceived children throughout the twentieth century and how that influenced early childhood teaching techniques. The McGuffey Readers appeared to be already dated at the turn of the twentieth century due to contemporary pediatrics, the shift from an agricultural to an industrial society, and Progressive Era reformers. While this is the case in mainstream society, there were calls to return to the textbooks as late as in the 1990s. The McGuffey Era represents a period dominated by farming communities and religion as the primary guiding principle in Americans’ lives. As the century turned and shifted its values to include science and influence from the market, societies like The McGuffeyites fought to return to the McGuffey era that had been lost. The McGuffey Readers represent an age that individuals looked to with nostalgia, and I believe that this symbolic meaning behind the textbooks has been left unexplored. I also think that childhood is deeply personal so the exhibit will continue to be accessible and relevant to audiences if The McGuffey House and Museum chooses to keep this exhibit indefinitely. Age groups ranging from children to the elderly will be able to relate to this topic, especially as they engage with tangible items like dolls and tea sets. This exhibit will give the museum another source of publicity and will be an opportunity for patrons, new and returning, to engage in historical education and hopefully gain more appreciation for the humanities and local history in the process. Museum Methodology In contrast to traditional historical scholarship, engaging a broader public is essential for museum work. While academic historians are primarily speaking to their colleagues, public historians must remember that their duty is to educate the public, and the community’s knowledge will vary drastically based on their education and life experiences. For the sake of properly evaluating the importance of The McGuffey Readers to the history of development of modern childhood, I will be combining the academic rigor of the academic historian with the emphasis on community education of the public historian. This will be accomplished through the organization of the exhibit by concept and an object knowledge framework (the recognition that

66 Westerhoff III, 16. 82 Smith, 4. 15 audiences have predeveloped relationships with objects based on facts or emotions)67 as a means to gauge my specific audiences, the McGuffey House and Museum docents, homeschooling families, along with a general audience. With the advent of the internet, the expectations of the visitor experience and the means of providing information changed. Prior to the 1990s, Steven Conn posits that museum organization was hierarchical— staff were divided by knowledge expertise and artifacts within a collection.68 In a top-down system, museum curators, exhibition specialists, and educators all had different duties and approaches to displaying objects. They were not necessarily collaborating with one another, which led to a disconnection in expertise that was passed on to the visitors. This is particularly evident in cases such as the 1960s display, called “Dance and Belief,” where a ritual dance of the Bira people is displayed through models that appear to be in mid-dance, but the placard describes what the dancers would have experienced, not how visitors may be able to relate to this specific cultural phenomenon.85 This disconnection became unacceptable as the internet provided readily available information to anyone regardless of their level of expertise or their particular background. While museums are slowly moving away from past emphasis on collection-based organization, efforts have been made to identify new tactics on how to prioritize visitor experience over displays that explain the experience of the individuals or the objects that the exhibits represent. Specifically, museum specialists have targeted three new approaches to gauge contemporary audiences: the object knowledge framework, conceptual organization of exhibits, and designing museum spaces for particular visitor demographics. I engaged with these three modes of museum design. In regard to conceptual organization, my exhibit emphasizes the evolution of childhood as children changed from being considered junior adults who received religious instruction to members of a separate physiological stage that needed to be taught pragmatic skills in a supervised, sheltered environment. Through themes that will include: comparing the visual representations of children in the nineteenth and twentieth century, memorializing deceased youth, the shift in childhood education, the restriction of juvenile labor, and the rise in toys and children’s literature to promote imagination and enable escapism from adult responsibilities. These direct comparisons will demonstrate the contrasts in these two time periods. McGuffey and other nineteenth century adults idealized childhood as a time reserved for learning Christian morality. In contrast, Progressives also sought to shelter children but as a separate age demographic that needed to learn practical skills, and they supplied parents with the tools to effectively raise their youths based on modern science. With this thematic organization, I will employ the object knowledge framework model as a means of gauging with my audiences on a personal level; I will choose objects that will attempt to evoke identity and memory in accordance with this model. At a fundamental level, recent innovations in museum studies have required a reevaluation of how they relate to visitor

67 Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten F Latham, The Objects of Experience: Transforming Visitor-Object Encounters in Museums (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2014), 24. 68 Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten F Latham, The Objects of Experience: Transforming Visitor-Object Encounters in Museums (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2014), 14. 85 Wood and Latham, 16. 16 experience. Using the object knowledge framework, the material world and human world collide as objects are catered to the individual experience of the visitors, not just the experiences or phenomena associated with the exhibit itself. According to Conn, the object’s place status in museums has depreciated as modern audiences require more experiential learning, more accessible content, and a greater degree in the variety of the information that museums have to offer.69

For my project, I will be utilizing two subsets of the object knowledge framework: objects as identity and objects as memory. For the former, Sherry Turkle posits that exhibits have the ability to “unify life experiences that objects provide to human existence” which can provide a “personal connection” for each patron.70 Wood and Lantham point to the example of a patron who identified with a tablecloth as she recalled her family’s tradition of signing her grandmother’s table cloth every Christmas.71 This is a representation of an object not being described to the museum attendee. Rather, the visitor was enabled the space to find a personal identity and connection with a particular piece. The identity, signified by the object, has the ability to “exist across his or her own lifetime.”89 I will apply the object knowledge framework as objects of identity to my exhibit as I will provide examples of objects as sources of identity like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. For some patrons, the book will evoke a sense of personal connection because they will remember how they related to characters when they were growing up. Visitors will be reminded of their own personal association with certain objects. An example of the object knowledge framework where objects can evoke memory is an ice cream scoop. In this account, a patron discusses how an exhibit piece reminds her of the common kitchen utensil in her house growing up. The object serves as a metaphor to the strength and stability of her family—demonstrated by the durability and material composition of the instrument. Wood and Lantham argue that “As a conduit to memory, this object exposes the ways that museums can link visitors to stories through material dimension of an object.”72 In this same vein, I will use personal connections to objects, specifically children’s toys and literature, as a vehicle to evoke personal connections with my audience. From dolls to toy tea sets, patrons will be transported back to their childhood memories. Arguably the most important tactics for designing an exhibit space is focusing on two specific audiences. I have chosen to target the McGuffey House and Museum’s docents and homeschooled students who use these texts in addition to a more general audience. Due to their highly developed personal contexts with McGuffey and his works already, the docents and homeschoolers will be able to engage critically with my topic. The docents and homeschoolers will not need a rudimentary explanation of McGuffey and his works because they have personally engaged with the Readers in the museum or in the classroom. The docents (with ages ranging from fifty to late eighties) are identified by museum studies specialists as “belongers”

69 Wood and Latham, 17. 70 Ed. Sherry Turkle, Evocative Objects: The Things We Think with (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007), 118. 71 Wood and Lantham, 89 Wood and Latham, 59. 72 Wood and Lantham, 63. 17 due to their age and the contentment and stability associated with retirement, representing thirtynine percent of human beings according to the VALS Double Hierarchy of Psychological Maturity, the docents serve as a large sample of human beings who have the maturity and time necessary for volunteering and educating others about my topic.73 In contrast, the homeschoolers are considered to be “inner directed” meaning that they are generally young and interested in inner growth so they particularly respond to learning by experience so I will provide these students with learning experiences that will allow them to critically engage with the textbook they already use. This project is uniquely able to marry the objectives of public and academic historians. Not only is it important to evaluate the maturity of targeted audience, the key to a successful museum exhibition is also to understand that patrons’ personal context or their motivations to come to museums to fulfill their own personal interests and needs.74 Museum visitors can be categorized into seven categories: facilitators, explorers, professionals/hobbyists, experience seeks, rechargers, peaceful pilgrims, and affinity seekers. The docents can be largely identified as professionals/hobbyists. Since the majority of docents are former educators or have been active in their community for several years, they interpret their role as visitors and museum facilitators is to instruct and foster as of community in the Oxford area. This is particularly true as the majority of the docents have education degrees specializing from early childhood education to the college level. The homeschooling children and their parents have different motivations than the docents because they are not interested in the Oxford community but the symbolic importance of The McGuffey Readers. They can be categorized as affinity seekers because homeschooling families believe in the educational standards and values instilled in the McGuffey Readers. These standards are usually associated with their religious or political beliefs. The homeschooling families are interested in the content of the textbooks, like the docents, but their personal context is much more related to their identity or beliefs associated with their own personhood.75

Understanding personal contexts can enable the museum exhibition designer to design for those audiences and the marketing strategy can speak directly to these personal contexts that motivate patrons to explore museums and to visit the McGuffey House and Museum specifically. These personal contexts will influence my exhibit as I emphasize on education’s influence on the students of the Readers, and my marketing strategy will include having the museum’s debut during a docent monthly meeting and advertising to homeschooling communities in Southwest Ohio, Eastern Indiana, and Northern Kentucky. The second factor that is essential to adhering to particular museum audiences is understanding and identifying sociocultural contexts and interpretation. When studying audiences’ sociocultural contexts, museum specialists are anticipating audience perception developed within “a cultural milieu that influences their language, customs, values, and thought

73 David Dean, Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 1996), 21. 74 John H. Faulk and Lynn D. Dierking, The Museum Experience Revisited. (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2013), 65. 75 Falk and Dierking, 49. 18 processes.”76 The docents are mostly baby boomers who were raised to value the importance of the museum as an institution of learning. I argue that homeschoolers and their families are similar to the docents in this respect. While their parents want to reinforce specific concepts found in the Readers, homeschooling parents want their children to experience the real objects and to have experiential learning incorporated into their curriculum. The docents and homeschoolers may have different sociocultural backgrounds, but they both value the importance of the museum as a learning institution. The docents may be interested in learning purely for the sake of knowledge and to promote local history, while the homeschooling families have differing political and religious views, which motivate them to be interested in museums for their real life experiences and to reinforce the Readers’ content.

76 Falk and Dierking, 66. 19

Creating an Exhibit: A Reflection on the Process Tone, color, word count, and audience reception are just a few considerations that exhibit creators must keep in mind. Utilizing multiple skills from graphic designer to scholar to educator, the public historian’s task of creating an exhibit is challenging and differs from an academic historian. Academic historians learn historiographies so they can provide their own contributions. Public historians differ as they contribute to historiographies by transforming them into experiential narratives for their audiences. My biggest challenges were the demands associated with a visual medium because of my lack of experience with graphic design, from Adobe Photoshop color to theory, and deciding how to design the layout of my exhibit’s narrative; I also had to let go of the nuanced language of academics for the sake of clarity and enjoyment of my audiences. I had to realize that objects will engage audiences on an individual level. I could not dictate my own interpretation of an artifact without recognizing that objects will tell their own stories regardless of what I would like them to say, and audiences will respond to them differently. I could only provide a framework, through a narrative, for visitors to explore and learn. Working with visual mediums is invaluable. It taught me how to relay my argument into a new format that differs from academic historians. Public and academic historians both use visuals to support their arguments but in different ways. Academics may include artwork and images as evidence, but public historians use colors, typeface, sizing, and other means of graphic formatting to support their exhibit’s narrative. I had initially underestimated the difficulty associated with formatting. I quickly began to appreciate the level of calculation and patience that is necessary for graphic design. In particular, I had to learn new programs like Adobe Photoshop and discovered the importance of color theory. This is especially true for finding the right mood for my exhibit without sacrificing readability. Graphic designers of the new millennium are tech-savvy, but I generally have difficulties with technology. I have always preferred toting physical books and notebook paper, over anything electronic. Knowing myself, I was aware of the challenges that electronic graphic design work would involve. Through the consultation of actual graphic designers and online tutorials, I became more accustomed to programs like Photoshop. I was able to combine the elements of several tutorials and experts’ advice. It took weeks to design the exhibit’s flyer and months for the panels. I was under the false impression that I should be able to put together these pieces fairly quickly, but considering individual elements, like color, and figuring out how they added or detracted from the visitor’s experience took a considerable amount of time. An important design element that demonstrated the importance of color theory and graphic design was being able to effectively convey a mood and tone through design elements. Following the advice of Beth Hansen, I considered how design components like color will set the mood for the visitors’ experience.77 While she recommended a “subdued and somber” mood for funerals, my exhibit only had death as one part of the exhibit narrative.96 I decided that visitors should experience a somber but hopeful mood as they interacted with the space. I consulted a graphic designer who recommended springtime pallets like teals, purples, and periwinkle. I

77 Beth Hansen, Great Exhibits! An Exhibit Planning and Construction Handbook for Small Museums (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 29. 96 Hansen, 29. 20 decided on a darker teal and blue after exploring color palettes online. I chose these particular hues because they are symbolic of spring’s hopeful nature and childhood itself. Spring is an intermediary season. It is not cold like winter, but spring is also not hot like summer. While spring can have unpredictable weather, it is a season of freshly bloomed flowers and change. This parallels childhood—an intermediary phase between infancy and adulthood. Childhood is hopeful and a stage of new growth and opportunities. I decided that teal and blue were emblematic of the optimism and opportunities associated with spring and childhood. Armed with my color swatches, I designed my flyer and panels with color theory and readability in mind. Label expert Beverly Serrell stated that “Regardless of the choice or combination of colors, the most important thing is contrast.”78 While it would have been more aesthetically pleasing for me to use exclusively teal print, I knew that it would be difficult for my audience to read. Also, I purposefully chose white backgrounds with black text because it is the easiest for audiences of all ages to read.79 I did make exceptions by including a dark teal for certain sections of text that I found especially important. I made the decision that the typeface was dark enough to sacrifice slight readability for the sake of catching the audience’s eye. Most of the panels are written in black text though. Since my primary audience are The McGuffey House and Museum’s docents, who tend to be more advanced in age, accessibility was a primary concern. Generally, accessibility should always be a priority regardless of audience though. Decisions like the color of text took weeks of reflection as I had to consider my audience and the physical abilities of various peoples. After discovering the right tone and mood for my exhibit, I had to develop the right voice for my labels and panels. After reading numerous guides on constructing labels, I became too rigid following handbooks’ guidelines. For example, a general rule was “start with the object.”99 My rigidness translated into a boring first draft. The label for the picture of allegedly William Holmes McGuffey’s son began: “This is a photograph of Charles “Charley” McGuffey (18351851), son of William and Harriet McGuffey.” Since it was a first draft, it was not meant to be the final product, but I became too dedicated to these ‘rules’ that it actually became a detriment. I realized they were more useful as valuable suggestions. By the fourth draft, this artifact’s label started with the sentence, “Pictured here is Charles McGuffey (1835-1851), son of William and Harriet McGuffey.” Unlike previous drafts where I had explicitly stated what the object was, I devised more creative ways to still say that it was photograph. In actuality, this fact should have been assumed. After consultation with Dr. Sheumaker, peer editors, and physically printing out the objects’ pictures and using sticky-notes, writing the labels became more natural as I saw the artifacts I was writing about right in front of me. My final label for Charley’s picture began as “Legs dangling from his chair, a boy believed to be Charley McGuffey sits up straight while the man takes his picture.” From actually seeing the objects outside of the confines of a computer screen, I understood that visitors did not need the reminder that this was a photograph. After I reminded myself that audiences would be able to see and interact with the photograph

78 Beverly Serrell, Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996), 275. 79 Serrell, 192. 99 Hansen, 43. 21 themselves, I realized that I should be taking the opportunity to grab my reader and give the audience the stories they crave in a museum setting. The progression from the first label draft to the last shows a fundamental difference in academic versus public history’s purpose and goals. Apprehensive that my argument and the work I had conducted for this project would not shine through, I followed the guidelines to the letter. I also was repetitive. I emphasized my argument in ways that made the labels uninteresting to read and too harsh for what I was truly trying to express. When I realized that I was trying to write a label like a thesis, I understood the nuance associated with labels. It is not in the same way as a thesis, manuscript, or article. It is a combination of creative writing and abstaining from writing more. I could write a manuscript on each label, but that is not their purpose. They are supposed to guide the observer through their own experience interacting with the exhibits. I should be showing a larger narrative associated with these objects—individually and as a collection. However, the confines of a label meant that I could only tell a condensed version of the story, or my argument. Through purposeful syntax, my labels had to be accessible to a wide variety of people; I learned that the difference between a manuscript and a museum is the objects themselves. The artifacts can speak for themselves—to a degree. I did not need to over-explain them. I was simply providing a space for visitors to have their individual experience, albeit guided by my narrative, with the objects. I understood that visitors will also interpret the objects. I had to allow that to occur instead of dictating what the objects meant because sometimes, the artifacts were not always telling the story that I wanted them to tell. Recognizing that the objects had to tell their own story in addition to my exhibit’s narrative, I had to decide how to construct a storyline. I wanted to keep the panels organized by concept, but I also recognized the importance of letting the objects tell the history of childhood by lining up pieces in chronologically. This is best exemplified by my first panel, “Visual Representations of Children.” I decided that I wanted to have my first panel serve as an introduction to the topic. I use six objects that trace how youths have been depicted in art and photography from 1837 to 1944. This panel has a theme—how children are represented visually. Conceptual organization was not sufficient however to effectively display my panel’s argument. I arranged the objects in chronological order and had the first work, a portrait from 1837, and a painting that included children in 1944 to directly show the differences in how children are visually represented within a hundred year span. This enabled the audience to see a progression over time as children shed their role in society as miniature adults in world defined by Christianity to children being seen as separate from their elders as they were understood in scientific terms. Putting these images together effectively demonstrated the dramatic contrast in the conceptualization of children in the McGuffey Era and the twentieth century. The floor plan of the exhibit is radial, but it can be viewed in a random order after the third panel. Hansen states that visitors have a “‘tendency to turn to the right upon entering a gallery.”80 This floor plan caused the exhibit to be radial to an extent. As patrons enter the room, they see panel one to their immediate right. This panel, “Visual Representations of Children,” discusses the visual representations of youths from the 1830s to the 1940s in paintings and photographs. The two pieces that patrons will see on the panel is a portrait of Sylvester Gould

80 Hansen, 32. 22 from 1837 and Marston Hodgins’ Oxford Salutes from 1943. I purposefully chose these two works to show the dramatic changes in children’s representation in visual mediums. Sylvester sits gallantly with his cane and eloquent suit, while Hodgins’ children run through the painting’s scene clad in tank tops and a toy drum set. Audiences can view the other photographs that chronologically fall in between these two artifacts to show the progression of this change over the century. When visitors travel to panel two, “Death: How Children are Remembered,” they will learn about high juvenile death rates and how children were memorialized after their deaths, which served as one the reasons why society began to demand more research on pediatric medicine and changed the conceptualization of childhood by extension. Specifically, audiences will engage with a picture of Donald Beard’s open casket in the McGuffey House parlor after he died of influenza in 1919 and a portrait of Louis Fitton from 1866, which was painted post mortem. Patrons will reflect on these sad circumstances that served as a catalyst for new medical research on childhood health. Continuing their walk through the radial floor plan, panel three asks, “Are Children Adults?” This question forces patrons to ask the question that society had started to ask itself during the Progressive Era. The panel includes pieces like a nineteenth century China doll, a facsimile of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and a toy stroller to show how toys reflect the changing perception of children. Beginning in the McGuffey era, children must work and do not have as much time to play so they have fragile keepsake like the China doll. During the Progressive era, children have more leisure time and play is used a tool to stimulate youths’ physiological development and to prepare them for adulthood. The use of literature and toys that mimic girls’ future role as mothers sparked creativity and provided a chance to learn practical skills. Children were no longer expected to take on the same level of responsibility at such a young age and did not have to learn real-life skills immediately for the sake of their families’ survival. These three panels set the stage for observing how childhood changed in specific ways—education, labor, and the toy industry. The last three panels can be read interchangeably without losing the exhibit’s narrative, but the exhibit is designed to be radial so the audience can read the first three labels in order so they can properly engage with the exhibit’s argument. If the visitor continues to travel around the room, panel four is titled “A Shift in Childhood Education.” It highlights the shifts in pedagogy between the moral-infused, storybased learning of pieces like “Thee Three Boys and the Three Cakes” from the Second Eclectic Reader to a newspaper clipping from 1935 where parents from Hamilton, Ohio could learn the latest scientific knowledge on childhood development and apply it to their parenting approaches. This panel demonstrates the transition from moral-based learning to the introduction of modern pediatrics and psychology into education. The fifth and last panel is titled “Redefining Child Labor.” It focuses on three distinct moments where child labor evolves from a necessary practice for the sake of the family’s survival to an idealized version based on class and gender to finally a moment where children become consumers themselves. These moments are captured by “The Contented Boy” from McGuffey’s Third Eclectic Reader where the boy refuses to be paid for his labor, a stereoscopic

23 image of two girls working in their mother’s garden in 1892, and a newspaper cartoon from 1937 of a little girl who wants to ask for goods at a department store. As visitors leave my exhibit, the lasting effect that visitors should have is a newfound appreciation of how childhood has changed over time as they relate the McGuffey period to their own experiences, which are the result of Progressive reforms. Patrons will be able to relate to certain objects from their childhood and connect their past to the larger context of childhood’s evolution. This particular form of childhood, unique to middle-class Americans of the twentieth century, resonates with my particular audiences, and I hope that this exhibit will enable to reflect on their own childhood. I also believe that visitors will be able to take their childhood experiences and put it into context with how childhood changed between the McGuffey period and the Progressive era. Using The McGuffey Readers to provide a context as to how childhood was viewed from the 1836 to 1880, audiences will be able to see how the McGuffey era informed and served as a catalyst to the changes in pediatric medicine, psychology, child labor, education, and the toy industry that my audiences are accustomed to from their own life experiences. My project enabled me to practice the skills of an academic historian and to translate them into a new discipline, museum studies and public history. Research, argumentation, and writing are essential skills I had learned through my training as an academic historian. However, I refashioned my writing and stepped outside of the written word. I was open to learning how to use visual media as another means of communicating a historical argument. From color to label writing, I provided an experience for individuals as they engaged with objects that conveyed ideas that I deemed important. However, I allowed audiences to come to their own conclusions. I created a learning opportunity for the public and removed myself from this exhibit to allow visitors to take their own knowledge and experiences and interpret the materials for themselves.

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Conclusion The Victorian adage, “Children should be seen, not heard” remained true for historical studies until the 1980s. Youths were left in the periphery as historians focused on the history of adults. In 1985, Viviana Zelizer inspired historians to study children when she published her work, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Zelizer’s study pushed historians to analyze youths as a separate group of historical study. As a new field, childhood historians have evaluated children’s role in nationalism and factors that contributed to the reconceptualization of childhood during the Progressive era. While the Progressive period is important for the social reforms associated with children’s rights, historians have isolated this era. I contribute to the scholarship by demonstrating a larger historical context for the “Century of the Child.” Using frontier schooling and The McGuffey Readers, I have contributed to the theories of Viviana Zelizer, Steven Mintz, Hugh Cunningham, and Peter Stearns by showing the social and economic motivations associated with the reconceptualization of childhood during the Progressive era. I argue that the McGuffey era and the Progressive epoch both idealized young people and worked to provide youths with skills and the proper upbringing to be productive members in American society. Frontier schooling viewed children as “imperfect” adults that needed moral instruction. With a strong sense of Christian ethics, children could properly interact with the adult world based on a strict moral code. Since children had to work and learn practical skills from a young age, The McGuffey Readers served as primarily a source of moral instruction. While Progressive reformers valued morality, Christian ethics became less important as youths were viewed in scientific terms. Due to the high mortality rates and low fertility of the McGuffey era, society pushed for more research into pediatric medicine, which informed Progressive reformers perception of childhood. Pediatrics helped save youths’ lives but also demonstrated that children were not “imperfect” adults; children were physiologically developing and could not be considered adults until they reached mental and physical maturity. Progressive reformers took this scientific knowledge and the attitudes of upper middle class families and enacted programs and laws that protected childhood development. Reforms included restricting childhood labor, enacting educational programs that were interactive and taught pragmatic skills. Pediatrics also influenced parenting and the rise in the toy industry as reformers started programs to teach parents modern childcare, and toys were used to create childproof experiences that would stimulate physiological development. Children’s lives became more sheltered as their physiological development was protected from potential damage from engaging in the adult world. While McGuffey’s era structured children’s lives and education based on a moral code, the Progressive era viewed childhood through a scientific lens that resulted from a desire to fight juvenile mortality. My exhibit demonstrates the reconceptualization of childhood where the exhibit space is organized by concept, has a partially radial design, and evokes memory and identity for my audiences: The McGuffey House and Museum docents, homeschooling families, and a general audience. To ensure that my narrative remained clear throughout the exhibit, I designed my panels based on five themes: visual representation of children, memorializing youths’ deaths, how childhood became separated from adulthood, child labor, early childhood education, and

25 children’s toys and literature. I purposely designed the exhibit based on studies that show that patrons tend to turn to the right as they enter a space. The exhibit follows a partially radial floorplan so patrons can get the context they need by reading the first two panels on the right side of the room, but they are free to explore the other three panels in no particular order. I chose a partially radial design because I had to remind myself that my narrative is important, but patrons must be allowed the freedom to interact with the objects in their own individualized way. Since I prioritized the audience’ individualized experiences with the pieces in the space, I chose objects that would evoke identity and memory for the docents, homeschooled children, and a general audience. I chose to include sophisticated but understandable language on the panels that analyzed the importance of The McGuffey Readers for the homeschooled children who are interested in learning about the textbooks they use. The youths will have a connection to the Readers as they serve as a reminder of their own identity as students, and they are likely to ascribe to the belief system that the textbooks promote. I also included objects that were local to Oxford to appeal to the docents’ pride in their community. This includes examples of objects related to the McGuffey House and Museum itself like the picture of Donald Beard’s funeral that took place in the McGuffey parlor. Docents can relate to objects that represent their own identity as Oxford residents, and they are likely to reflect on their memories that are associated with those objects. In regard to the Beard photograph, a docent may remember their experiences giving tours in the parlor space and reflect on the parlor’s many uses over time. I integrated objects and text that evoked memory and identity for my specific audiences, but I also designed the space for a more general viewer. Objects like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or a doll are popular features in a youngster’s life, and I believe that they will enable any viewer to have their own reaction to the objects and the exhibit’s narrative as whole. While graphic design dominated stages of this project, the primary learning outcome that I took away from this project was the importance of the patron’s individual experience with the objects. As I started to write my labels, I forgot that objects have their own stories. My initial label drafts pushed my argument but did not account for the objects. I spent time with the objects so I could appreciate the nature of the exhibit as a visual medium and to include the objects’ voices into the labels. I realized that my purpose was to guide the visitor, not force them to have a certain experience. After I allowed the objects to speak for themselves and I remembered that my job was to guide instead of to explain, the labels were more accessible. Aside from learning graphic design work, the biggest takeaway from this project was to keep the visitor’s experience the priority when designing an exhibit. Visuals speak for themselves—whether that is the mood of a color or a tea set. I allowed my visitors to have the experience with the exhibit that they were going to have and did not force my objects and patrons to be not true to themselves. Due to the nature of a project that has a written portion and an exhibit, I learned the importance of the two mediums. This project enabled me to contribute to the history of childhood by using The McGuffey Readers as a means of contextualizing the reforms and reconceptualization of childhood associated with the Progressive era. I designed an exhibit based on a scholarly argument and theories in museum studies, but I learned quickly that my plan, based on theory, had to evolve and change as I actively applied the theories to my exhibit. I had to be open to learning how colors, typography, and objects contribute to a space. While I could control which colors and fonts I used, these visual elements required extensive reflection and

26 attention to detail. I allowed my objects to speak and enabling visitors to engage with the pieces without me trying to force my argument. I worked with my objects and presented a narrative that allowed visitors to explore and have their own learning experience. This project challenged me as I presented a work of scholarship and translated into a visual medium. In this project, I formulated a scholarly argument and presented it to a non-specialized audience in exhibit form. This experience was valuable because I believe that it is important for history to be accessible to the general public.

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References Aries, Phillipe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. New York: Vintage Books, 1962. Cunningham, Hugh. Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005. Dean, David. Museum Exhibition: Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 1996. Faulk, John H. and Dierking, Lynn D. The Museum Experience Revisited. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2013. Glass, Kenneth M. Golden Anniversary of the National Federation of McGuffey Societies and the Sesquicentennial of the publication of the McGuffey Readers. Oxford: The National Federation of McGuffey Societies, 1986. Hansen, Beth. Great Exhibits! An Exhibit Planning and Construction Handbook for Small Museums. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Heywood, Colin. A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. Leicefter Ford, Paul, ed. The New England Primer. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899. Marten, James. Childhood and Child Welfare in the Progressive Era: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. McGuffey, William Holmes. Old Favorites of the McGuffey Readers. Edited by Harvey Minnich. Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936. Minnich, Harvey. William Holmes McGuffey and his Readers. Cincinnati: American Book Company, 1936. Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge: Harvard College, 2004. Mooney, Carol Garhart. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget, and Vygotsky. St. Paul: Redleaf Press, 2000. “POP1 CHILD POPULATION: NUMBER OF CHILDREN (IN MILLIONS) AGES 0–17 IN THE UNITED STATES BY AGE, 1950–2017 AND PROJECTED 2018–2050.” Child Stats. Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Last revised December 2014. https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp. Ruggles, Alice Morrill. “A Daughter of the McGuffeys: Fragments from the Early Life of Anna McGuffey Morrill (1845-1924).” Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 42, no. 3 (July 1933): 250-285. Shahar, Shulamith. Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1990. Serrell, Beverly. Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996. Smith, William. About the McGuffeys: William Holmes McGuffey and Alexander H. McGuffey, who Compiled the McGuffey Readers of which 125,000,000 Copies have been Sold. Oxford: Cullen Print Company, 1963. Stearns, Peter. Childhood in World History. New York: Routledge, 2011. Sherry Turkle, ed. Evocative Objects: The Things We Think with. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2007. West, Elliott. Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far-Western Frontier. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Westerhoff III, John H. McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America. Milford: Mott Media, 1982.

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Wood, Elizabeth and Kiersten F. Latham. The Objects of Experience: Transforming Visitor Object Encounters in Museums. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2014. Wright, Chester W. Economic History of the United States. New York: McGraw Hill, 1941. Zelizer, Viviana. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 1985.

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Appendix A: Exhibit Photographs

This is a picture of Panel One: “Visual Representations of Children.” Taken by Kristen Schunk.

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This is a picture of Panel Two: “Death: How Children are Remembered.” Taken by Kristen Schunk.

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This is a picture of Panel Three: “Are Children Adults?” Taken by Kristen Schunk.

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This is a picture of Panel Four: “A Shift in Childhood Education.” Taken by Kristen Schunk.

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This is a picture of Panel Five: “Visual Representations of Children.” Taken by Kristen Schunk.

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