Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class
How did we come to imagine what "ideal childhood" requires? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German child-rearing radically transformed, and as these innovations in ideology and educational practice spread from middle-class families across European society, childhood came to be seen as a life stage critical to self-formation. This new approach was in part a process that adults imposed on youth, one that hinged on motivating children's behavior through affection and cultivating internal discipline. But this is not just a story about parents' and pedagogues' efforts to shape childhood. Offering rare glimpses of young students' diaries, letters, and marginalia, Emily C. Bruce reveals how children themselves negotiated these changes.

Revolutions at Home analyzes a rich set of documents created for and by young Germans to show that children were central to reinventing their own education between 1770 and 1850. Through their reading and writing, they helped construct the modern child subject. The active child who emerged at this time was not simply a consequence of expanding literacy but, in fact, a key participant in defining modern life.
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Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class
How did we come to imagine what "ideal childhood" requires? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German child-rearing radically transformed, and as these innovations in ideology and educational practice spread from middle-class families across European society, childhood came to be seen as a life stage critical to self-formation. This new approach was in part a process that adults imposed on youth, one that hinged on motivating children's behavior through affection and cultivating internal discipline. But this is not just a story about parents' and pedagogues' efforts to shape childhood. Offering rare glimpses of young students' diaries, letters, and marginalia, Emily C. Bruce reveals how children themselves negotiated these changes.

Revolutions at Home analyzes a rich set of documents created for and by young Germans to show that children were central to reinventing their own education between 1770 and 1850. Through their reading and writing, they helped construct the modern child subject. The active child who emerged at this time was not simply a consequence of expanding literacy but, in fact, a key participant in defining modern life.
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Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class

Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class

by Emily C. Bruce
Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class

Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class

by Emily C. Bruce

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Overview

How did we come to imagine what "ideal childhood" requires? Beginning in the late eighteenth century, German child-rearing radically transformed, and as these innovations in ideology and educational practice spread from middle-class families across European society, childhood came to be seen as a life stage critical to self-formation. This new approach was in part a process that adults imposed on youth, one that hinged on motivating children's behavior through affection and cultivating internal discipline. But this is not just a story about parents' and pedagogues' efforts to shape childhood. Offering rare glimpses of young students' diaries, letters, and marginalia, Emily C. Bruce reveals how children themselves negotiated these changes.

Revolutions at Home analyzes a rich set of documents created for and by young Germans to show that children were central to reinventing their own education between 1770 and 1850. Through their reading and writing, they helped construct the modern child subject. The active child who emerged at this time was not simply a consequence of expanding literacy but, in fact, a key participant in defining modern life.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781625345622
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Publication date: 07/30/2021
Series: Childhoods: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children and Youth
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

EMILY C. BRUCE is assistant professor of history at the University of Minnesota Morris.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Sentiment and Self-Control

Approaching Childhood in the Age of Revolutions 1

Chapter 1 Reading Serially

The New Enlightenment Youth Periodical for the New Youth Subject 24

Chapter 2 Telling Tales

Folklore Transformed for Middle-Class Child Readers 58

Chapter 3 Reading the World

German Children's Place in Geographic Education 85

Chapter 4 Writing Home

Letters as a Social Practice 125

Chapter 5 Writing the Self

Growing Up with Diaries 144

Conclusion Furnishing Their Own Age 175

Appendix A Enlightenment Youth Periodicals

Two Examples 183

Appendix B Geography Schoolbook

Typical Table of Contents 187

Notes 191

Selected Bibliography 231

Index 241

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