Childhood and Youth, History of

Introduction

The history of childhood and youth is a lively scholarly focus, reflecting several decades of innovative pedagogy and research. It is now an “energetic field of inquiry that provides critical insights into the human past and contemporary social experience” (Fass 2004, xi). Historically, childhood “reveals important assumptions and constraints in the larger social environment” (Stearns 2006, 3). Certainly this field is most pertinent to educational scholarship, and its teaching often sits squarely within education studies. Schooling and education framed more broadly both figure prominently in recent historical writing about childhood and youth. Yet the field is not restricted by this; historians of childhood and youth are to be found teaching and writing about it across many academic contexts, drawing on a rich diversity of historical and interdisciplinary perspectives. Furthermore, they do so from a wide range of global contexts, utilizing comparative studies to paint a...