A young, tousled-haired boy about the age of seven is slumbering away in his bed, ensconced in a non-descript, middle class bedroom (fig. 1). He is jarred awake by the revelation that his bed is levitating, and slowly floating out his window and into space. So begins an episode of Winsor McCay's epic comic strip adventure, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which appeared in newspapers across the country between 1905 and 1914. Featured on the cover of the New York Herald's Sunday comic supplement (and syndicated nationwide), the comic presented the bedtime adventures of a small boy called Nemo. In the serial's debut, and in the weeks to follow, Nemo repeatedly attempted to reach the enchanted kingdom of Slumberland, only to have the journey preempted when he awakened and found himself safely at home in his bed. It was an ideal subject for a weekly comic in that the curtailed narrative induced readers to purchase the next installment. Such literature also taught its young readers an appreciation for the pleasures of both fantasy and delayed gratification.

A visit to an exotic world followed by a return to reality was a common trope in children's magazines and books, as evidenced by the widespread popularity of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz, and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. The cultural preoccupation with fantastic subjects did not go unnoticed. The writer Brian Hooker wrote in the October 1908 edition of Forum, "The present day is exhibiting a curiously vivid interest in fairy tales," and later pondered, "perhaps our very materialism is responsible for this new hunger after fancy." By the first decade of the 20th century images celebrating wonder and fantasy appeared in everything from picture books and comic strips, to department stores and amusement parks.

Little Nemo's bold visual style and epic story arc distinguished the comic from its competitors. Its ambitions included broadening the audience for comic strips by self-consciously referencing pictorial forms from an expansive range of high and low cultural sources. McCay's comic strips redefined the nascent medium and made an important contribution to the proliferation of fantastic imagery at the dawn of the 20th century. To best understand his cultural contributions it is useful to examine his aesthetic innovations, as well as the social and historical context in which his work found its audience.

Visual Analysis

McCay's work was characterized by its vivid use of color, skillful draftsmanship, intricate detail, and imaginative architectural forms. In this episode dated December 3, 1905, we can see how McCay expanded the narrative possibilities of the comic strip through his embrace of full-page design. Here he creates visual interest and momentum by varying the size and shape of the panels, culminating in the central circular panel, while unifying the entire page through symmetry and repetition. His graceful line work and use of flat areas of color are reminiscent of art nouveau poster art. It is also important to recognize that his fantastic imagery is rooted in the spectacular world of commerce and popular entertainment that ushered in the 20th century. For example, the emphasis on primary colors and the typographical flourishes found in the title panel are reminiscent of circus poster art. The comic's narrative, an imagined trip to the moon, was also the subject of an amusement park ride at Coney Island, a serialized novel published in St. Nicholas, and a 1902 film by Georges Méliès. McCay's comic strips produced a dream world shaped by the visual language of modern urban experience.

As the students read the comic strip, ask them to think about how words and images are combined to create the narrative. Talk about the essential components of a comic strip: the header/title, the panels, the gutters (the space between the panels), and the captions and/or speech balloons. How do these components divide time and space? How do the elements combine to advance plotlines? What is more instrumental to the flow of this narrative, the words or the pictures? Do either contradict or work against one another? How do text and image compliment, or complicate, the story? How are the different visual elements combined to create a unified, full-page design? Why does McCay vary the size and shape of the panels? How does this affect the flow of time within the comic strip? Emphasize scale, which will not be apparent from viewing the image online. Bring in a copy of the New York Times as a visual aid and explain that one Little Nemo comic strip took up the full page of a broadsheet newspaper (about 16 x 22 inches), as compared to newspaper comic strips today, which are compressed in size so as to fit as much content onto the page as possible. How does the size of the image affect the reading experience? The large scale of McCay's fantastical designs contributed to their transportive quality, as children could immerse themselves in scenes of faraway lands and magic kingdoms.

Historical Context

Weekly funny pages, directed at both children and adults, first appeared in newspapers in the 1890s, when the publishing barons Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst vigorously competed with each other for readers. They soon discovered that the colorful comic supplements boosted circulation. The initial audiences for comics were urban, working class immigrants and the content of the newspapers reflected their readership. R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid and Rudolph Dirks' The Katzenjammer Kids drew inspiration from the various ethnic communities who populated the tenements of the lower east side. Common elements of such comics include urban settings, crowded frames, and the use of anti-authoritarian, anarchic humor similar to that found in the slapstick comedy of vaudeville routines, with an emphasis on the child as a trickster figure.

As newspapers became nationally syndicated the content of the comics became less urban and culturally specific so as to appeal to a wider audience. By 1903 comics transitioned from being an urban phenomenon to a national craze. Little Nemo attempted to bridge the gap between the serialized adventure stories found in high-brow illustrated magazines like St. Nicholas, and the low brow humor of the Sunday supplements. This was undoubtedly a strategic move on the part of McCay's employer, James Gordon Bennett Jr., who wished to distinguish the New York Herald as a middle-class alternative to its more sensational counterparts like Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal.

Images glorifying childhood as period of unfettered creativity dominated the visual landscape of early 20th-century American fiction, magazines, and comics. Concurrent with the rapid expansion of mass culture, these dreamscapes directed viewers to revel in fantasy and delight in ungratified longing, thereby inciting the pleasures of consumer desire in its audience of young dreamers. This contributed to a shared visual culture that celebrated fantasy and the imagination. For McCay, Slumberland was a retreat from modernity; yet his spectacular landscapes were peppered with allusions to popular culture. References to circus posters, Coney Island thrill rides, and show window displays abound in his designs. McCay's use of the medium was highly self-reflexive and ambivalent: his work articulated the complex ways in which fantasy and mass culture were entangled at the turn-of-the-century.

Teaching the Source

This striking image is a potential jumping off point for further discussion of the rapid rise of a mass popular culture in American cities in the early 20th century. In my art history course, after dividing into groups to talk about how the visual design and narrative work together, I will ask students to research and write a short report on another example of 20th century visual culture that explores some of the same themes. Examples can take the form of children's literature, early film, amusement parks, poster art, advertising, or illustration. Students present short papers on any number of topics, including L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Georges Méliès' film A Trip to the Moon, the architecture of Coney Island's Luna Park and Dreamland, Barnum & Bailey circus posters, and the commercial illustrations of Maxfield Parrish. Students found commonalities in themes, visual motifs, and subject matter, pointing to the many ways that popular art forms intersected and influenced one another at the dawn of mass culture.

Kerry Roeder

University of Delaware

477

http://www.iln.org.uk/

ILN Publishing Group

July 2010

The Picture Archive of The Illustrated London News (ILN) is most readily accessed through the website of the Mary Evans Picture Library. In principle, the Archive still has its own website, but in practice it is likely to prove inaccessible. Since 2007, following a change of ownership of the ILN Publishing Group, the archive has been housed at Mary Evans. This transfer is unfortunate in some respects, since Mary Evans is a commercial rather than an educational organization and it charges fees to download images. The original site also had extensive background material on the history and printing processes of the ILN that does not appear in the new setting. Nonetheless, one can browse the watermarked images of the Mary Evans Picture Library for research purposes – and its ILN section now has more material than the original site, as new pictures are scanned into it. And of course one can always move from the ILN to scan the whole Mary Evans collection.

The story goes that Herbert Ingram, who founded the ILN in 1842, noticed as a newsagent in Nottingham that when newspapers included pictures, their sales increased. Most journals at this point were still grudging in their resort to illustrations, so when Ingram moved to London and founded a paper committed to lavish use of images, he was immediately successful.

Pictures of dramatic events such as the 1848 Revolution in France and the Crimean War (1853-6) helped its reputation for exciting journalism. By the 1860s, the ILN was selling 300,000 copies per week, far outstripping the circulation of conventional newspapers. To begin with Ingram printed only black-and-white wood engravings, but the ILN later made use of color, and, especially from the 1920s, photographs. Ingram also started a policy of hiring famous illustrators and top writers, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The archive has pictures from issues running from 1842 to 1971, including those from other journals in the "Great Eight" that came together in the 1920s, the best known apart from the ILN being The Tatler.

The search facility allows users to opt for ILN images only. Each of the 10,000 or so in the archive is well referenced with a number, date, description and further details. Searching under children brings up an eclectic collection of 282 images. Some only incidentally concern this heading, for example when King George V appears because there is a mention in the text to his six children.

Others are on the whimsical side: "Caught!" (ref. 10216446) shows children discovered by their parents in the larder scoffing jam from a huge jar. The text informs us that "sentimental or humorous scenes such as these were a popular addition to the ILN, especially over the Christmas period."

The royal families of Europe feature prominently as well as novelties, such as "Children being treated with ultra-violet light" (ref . 10216701). However Ingram, a Liberal MP, had some sympathy with the poor. Hence there are little clusters of pictures depicting children during such events as the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, the United States Civil War, and Jewish migration to London during the 1900s. "Children searching for potatoes" during the Irish famine (ref. 10220183), for example, conveys the desperation of their situation effectively.

More cheerful images from everyday life include "Audience of Children at a London Music Hall, 1882" (ref. 102216500) and "Children at the Circus, 1948," (ref. 10219941). There are also pictures of school strikes, somehow always with a portly-looking policeman in attendance (e.g. from 1889, demanding "shorter hours" and "no cane," (ref. 10219381), a Montessori school (ref. 10215457) and London youth clubs during the 1880s (e.g. 10220713).

In sum, the archive has a variety of delights for the historian of childhood, and a well-organized website, though no great depth of coverage or supporting material.

Colin Heywood

University of Nottingham (U.K.)

The archive has a variety of delights for the historian of childhood, and a well-organized website, though no great depth of coverage or supporting material.</

http://www.morningsun.org/

Long Bow Group

May 2010

Morning Sun is a companion website for a documentary film of the same name about the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in China (1964-1976). The film is only available through the Center for Asian American Media, either to rent or for purchase (it is cost prohibitive for individuals). The documentary film was created by the Long Bow Group, who also created "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," a film and website about the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square.

Unlike the companion site for "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," Morning Sun does not contain any segments from the film, which is a major drawback of this site. If the documentary film is unavailable (as it is to this reviewer), then the site should be able to stand alone, however this is not entirely the case. The site has a wealth of primary and secondary sources, as well as video and audio clips created by the Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution. The site does not express a narrative of the Cultural Revolution; rather it presents the resources created, and leaves analysis and interpretation up to the viewer.

The site, which relies heavily on the use of Java, Shockwave Flash, and Quicktime, is divided into five major sections, each with its own topic. Living Revolution includes very brief clips from radio and television shows, readings, and even lessons taught to school children. The English Lesson is particularly interesting, giving the students an opportunity to study English and learn about racial inequality in the United States at the same time. Direct translations of what is said in the clips is available, but there is no context to help viewers understand the placement of the scene within the larger film, or its overall plot or purpose.

Smash the Old World contains writings about the Red Guard and the destruction of the "Four Olds" ("Old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits"), including "reviews" of older revolutionary films written by Jiang Qing (Mao's wife). These reviews condemn the revolutionary attitudes and attempt to steer the reader toward a more acceptable form of behavior and attitude.

Reddest Red Sun and Stages of History are dedicated to the architects of the Cultural Revolution: Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Jiang Qing, and Lin Biao. Reddest Red Sun tackles the cult of Mao, although again, with little in the way of explanation or analysis. There is a video showing how Mao was able to "cure" deaf-mute children (those who had been abandoned by the Nationalist Party as incurable), using ordinary People's Liberation Army soldiers, Chairman Mao's words, and acupuncture. A note at the bottom of the page of this section indicates that the section is incomplete (there are no discernable dates on the site; however the documentary itself was made in 2003).

Stages of History shows how the Communist Party used place, drama and other media to create official histories of the new, revolutionary China. There is a virtual tour of Tiananmen Square as well as photographic essays on Liu Shaoqi, Jiang Qing, and Lin Biao. Of great interest is the section on Mao's Little Red Book. This includes a pamphlet published by the Communist Party with questions such as "What to do when you hear reactionary statements" and "What to do when you encounter arduous and hard work," all of which can be answered by quotations from Chairman Mao.

The site would be of greatest use to teachers as a supplement to a unit on the Cultural Revolution. The site gives the teacher access to amazing video, audio, and readings showing the lengths to which the Communist Party went in order to keep up revolutionary fervor during this time period. However, students will find the content of the site bewildering if they are not given either a narrative or an analytical guide.

Jessica Hodgson

South County Secondary School, Fairfax County, VA

The site has a wealth of primary and secondary sources, as well as video and audio clips created by the Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution.

459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471

1. Doumato, Eleanor Abdella and Gregory Starrett, ed. Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007.
   The contributions to this edited volume explore the political and social priorities behind religious education in nine Middle Eastern countries. The authors find vast differences in how Islam is presented in textbooks and a general lack of incitement to violence in the name of religion, or for any other reason.
2. Hefner, Robert W. and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ed. Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
   This edited volume looks at Islamic education in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. The contributors demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor medieval, but rather complex and evolving.
3. Nadwi, Mohammad Akram. Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam. Oxford: Interface Publication, 2007.
   This book is an adaption of a larger 40-volume biographical dictionary of female Muslim scholars in the pre-modern period. This book can be used to understand the traditional system of transmission of knowledge and to counterbalance charges of misogyny against Islam.

by Heidi Morrison
(Suggested writing time: 50 minutes)

Using the images, texts, and audio recording in the documents provided, write a well-organized essay of at least five paragraphs in response to the following prompt:

• Imagine you are at a dinner party and the topic of conversation turns to international politics. One person at the table makes the statement, "Since ancient times, children in the Middle East have been taught violence against infidels." Using at least six primary sources related to the history of schooling in the Middle East, write an essay that responds to this theoretical statement.

Your essay should:

• have a clear thesis,
• use at least six of the documents to support your thesis,
• show analysis by grouping the documents into at least two groups,
• analyze the point of view of the documents, and
• recognize the limitation of the documents before you by suggesting an additional type of document or source to make your discussion more complete or valid.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following institutions for primary sources:

• ABC National Radio,
• Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,
• Fethullah Gulen Website,
• Houghton Mifflin Company,
• Library of Congress,
• The New York Times,
• Princeton University Press,
• University of California Press, and
• Yale University Library: Near Eastern Collection.

About the Author

Heidi Morrison is an assistant professor of modern Middle East History at the University of Wisconsin- La Crosse. She is currently writing a book entitled State of Children: Egyptian Childhoods in an era of Nationalism, Modernity, and Emotion. Heidi is also the editor of the forthcoming The History of Global Childhood Reader (Routledge Press, 2011). She is working on a project on the history of boys and mental health in Palestine.

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

In recent years, westerners have been fascinated by the education of children in the Middle East, raising concern over whether or not schools teach extreme radicalism or anti-Americanism. The Arabic word madrasa, which literally means "school," has come to imply in the minds of some pundits and politicians a pro-terrorism center with political or religious affiliation. The situation was very different in the pre-modern era, when schools in the Middle East were world renowned: students from as far away as Spain traveled to regions such as Iraq to study with noted teachers.

In the early days of the Islamic community in the Middle East (i.e., from the death of the prophet Muhammad in 632CE through the four Islamic caliphates and the Umayyad Dynasty in 750CE), the leading Muslims of the Arabian peninsula employed tutors or owned slaves to teach their sons the basics of religion, to read and write, to use the bow and arrow, to swim, and to be courageous, just, hospitable, and generous. The elite expected their daughters to attain skills relating to the household as well as the basics of religion, and sometimes to learn music, dance, and poetry.

The majority of children in rural areas learned how to work the land from their families. The only formal education they received would be from the kuttab, or mosque school, listening to Qur'an readers in mosques, or from informal exchange of information in the family.

In urban areas, boys typically began apprenticeships at around eight years of age to master a craft or skill. In terms of higher education, if a child had memorized the Qur'an (by about 12 years of age) he would often then travel around the Islamic world in quest of a teacher who had an understanding of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Students would gather around these teachers in mosques and master the teacher's approach to law without much questioning.

With the consolidation and cultural development of the Islamic empire during the Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258CE), a systematic method of schooling was established in the Middle East for both elementary and higher education. This remained the main form of education until the 20th century.

A maktab, or "elementary school," was attached to a mosque and the curriculum centered on the Qur'an, which was used to teach reading, writing, and grammar through recitation and memorization. Physical education was emphasized in childhood education because Islam gives importance to the training of the body as well as the mind. (Children of wealthy and prominent families continued to receive individual instruction in their houses.)

After attending a maktab, a student could attend a madrasa, or "higher education institution," attached to a mosque. Individual donors, rulers, or high officials funded these through pious endowments. The endowment funds maintained the building, paid teacher salaries, and sometimes provided stipends for students.

The madrasa founder generally set the curriculum. With a focus on fiqh, schools sometimes also taught secular subjects, such as history, logic, ethics, medicine, and astronomy. Memorization was a critical aspect of a student's training in law. The material memorized formed the base used by jurors to practice ijtihad, or the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of legal sources.

The most famous madrasas in the Middle East were Cairo's Al-Azhar, founded in the 10th century, and Baghdad's Al-Nizamiyya, founded in the 11th century. (Medical schools were usually attached to hospitals.)

The period of the Abbasid Dynasty is often referred to as the Golden Age of Islam, due in large part to the thriving centers of learning. Scholars during this time translated, preserved, and elaborated Greek philosophy (later used in European universities). They also made advances in algebra, medicine, trigonometry, mechanics, optics, visual arts, geography, and literature.

During the early-modern era (1500-1800), education continued to flourish under the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. One study suggests that up to half of the male population was literate in Cairo at the end of the 18th century, implying that maktabs were numerous.

The madrasa continued to be constructed as part of the mosque complex, reflecting the importance of education to religion and the sense that education took place within the religious framework. Scholarship under the Ottomans and Safavids centered on the notion that the most advanced science came from Islam and that scholars before them knew best. This was in contrast to Europe during the 19th century, where higher education in new types of institutions of learning began to free itself from church control to embody the Enlightenment value of questioning religion (i.e. putting the laws of science over the laws of God), although reform of the older universities in Europe proceeded slowly.

In the face of Europe's growing power from advanced technology and commercial wealth, Ottoman rulers entered the modern era (1800-present) with a series of educational reforms. The reforms aimed to modernize the empire by adapting aspects of western life. (In contrast, Iran, under the Qajars, did not undergo the same level of educational reforms.)

The Ottomans sent envoys to Europe to translate their scholarship and learn new scientific discoveries. They secularized society such that educational opportunity became equal for all subjects in state schools. In cities such as Istanbul, Cairo, and Tunis, reforming governments established specialized schools to train officials, officers, doctors, and engineers. Some contesting voices in the Ottoman Empire argued, however, that the problems of the Empire were not from a lack of western ways, but from a need to return to the ways of the early age of Islam and the Golden Age.

Nonetheless, by the end of WWI, almost all of the Middle East had fallen under European colonial rule. The maktab and madrasa system of education began to wane in the place of French and British schools. These schools had limited enrollment due in large part to their scarcity in number; access was restricted to a select local elite trained to enhance colonial administration. Study in the maktab and madrasa no longer led to high office in government service or the judicial system.

Although the colonizing authorities introduced compulsory schooling measures of one kind or another, they often failed to include sufficient funding in colonial budgets, so the percentage of the total child population in schools remained dismally low. Children in rural areas who attended school often studied for a half day and worked the other half. In Algeria, for example, by 1939 the number of secondary school graduates was in the hundreds for the entire country.

Various types of private Islamic schools existed as alternatives to government secular schools, but the colonial governments sought to exercise close control through subsidies, curriculum expansion, and inspection systems. Religious schools often served—as they did in European efforts to extend education to the middle and lower classes—as a base from which to build capacity. A small number of European and missionary schools, as well as some indigenously operated Christian schools existed alongside the government and Islamic schools. In cities, these Christian schools of various denominations sometimes gained importance as institutions where children of elites accessed European education. In this way, a two-tiered education system developed under colonialism. In all of these systems, girls were able to acquire a nominal education; if it continued, it was usually in the form of training for teaching, nursing, or midwifery.

Post-colonial governments in the Middle East prioritized mass popular education to build strong nations. Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser, for example, promoted free education and promised each graduate a position in the public sector. In countries such as Egypt, Syria, Morocco, and Algeria, schools underwent a process of "arabization." This meant a focus on teaching Arabic language and culture. Traditional schools either closed or became incorporated into the state system. Iran, in contrast, had never been colonized. It became increasingly westernized in the mid-20th century, until the Revolution and subsequent Islamization of the state and schools.

While access to education has improved dramatically in the Middle East in the second half of the 20th century, the public education system tends to suffer from overcrowded classes led by poorly-trained, overworked teachers with inadequate materials. The curriculum is for the most part secular, and when the history of Islam is taught, the goal is not to incite children to violence. Many families must hire private tutors to help children with their end of the year exams, which emphasize the memorization of massive amounts of material. If children fail these exams, they can conceivably remain in the same grade level for as many years as it takes to pass, or they fail to qualify for secondary or post-secondary training of their choice. A very small percentage of families can afford to send their children to private European or American schools in the Middle East, which provide a western-style education.

Heidi Morrison

This teaching module provides a wide variety of sources to explore the history of schooling in the Middle East, a topic that is largely misunderstood in the west. Schools in the Middle East today take various forms, from secular to Islamic. Current research of textbooks in the Middle East finds little in them that could be construed as incitement to violence in the name of religion, or for any other reason. Many western pundits, politicians, and academics portray schools in the Middle East as breeding grounds for terrorists and Islamic extremists. These schools are also portrayed as unchanging institutions, which implies that they have not evolved since medieval times and that even in medieval times the schools were static.

The truth is that medieval Islamic schools produced a wealth of knowledge that European scholars translated from Arabic after the 12th century, and incorporated into institutions of higher learning between the 14th and 16th centuries. Furthermore, in today's world, schools in the Middle East take various forms, from secular to Islamic. Current research of textbooks in the Middle East finds little in them that could be construed as incitement to violence in the name of religion, or for any other reason. Wherever military struggle is mentioned, it is always in the context of defense against an aggressor.

With the first four sources, encourage students to explore the various characteristics of schooling in the Middle East in medieval times. In regards to the emphasis on memorization, students should understand that there were scholars who challenged this accepted method, such as Ibn Khaldun. Likewise, students should themselves grapple with finding the strengths in a method of instruction that emphasizes memorization. Do students agree with the Ottoman reformers who thought that a modern nation must have an educational system similar to Europe's? Do students think that the various early 20th-century Middle Eastern reformers' justification for schooling girls marked a step towards modernization?

They key problem governments in the Middle East face today in regards to the educational system is not extremism, but rather identity crisis, underfunding, and conflict. The article on schools in Algeria since independence shows that colonization created an abused collective psyche that initially sought to heal itself through insulation. Might the educational system in Iraq be on a similar path? What evidence do we have that people in the Middle East value education, despite the challenges they have faced in its pursuit in the 20th century?

Discussion Questions

• Look at the two ijazahs (diplomas) from medieval times. Even without reading the Arabic, what stands out to you most about them? For a system of education that emphasized rote memorization, do you discern a sense of creativity?
  
  Possible answer:
  Creativity can perhaps be discerned in the designs on the diplomas and the difference in appearance between the two. The annotation also mentioned that the diplomas used individualized flattery.
• Imagine you are in a debate with Ibn Khadlun. Present an opposing argument, including in your stance some of the merits to memorization that el-Baghdadi lists in his autobiography as well as some of the achievements medieval Islamic society made for humankind as a whole.
• Envisage yourself a student in a medieval maktab: Who would be in your class with you? What would you learn? How would your progress be evaluated? To what might you aspire in terms of higher education?
• Arguably, schools can be viewed as a means of controlling a population. Provide examples of how this has been attempted through physical and intellectual means, particularly under colonialism and the independent nation-state.
  
  Possible answer:
  Some examples to include in the answer would be: schools were funded by endowments in the medieval period and the benefactors set the curriculum; as the devshirme illustration indicates, when first conscripted, the boys were dressed in red to avoid their escape; and, the reform of education during the tanzimat was for the sake of the nation and military; education under the colonists was intended to benefit the British; education in post-independence countries had economic and social development as a main goal. Students might also point out instances of where the student is a free agent, such as in medieval times when he would travel from scholar to scholar seeking knowledge. Generally speaking, students can discuss the role that the individual student can play in thinking on his/her own and not being fully controlled.
• After you summarize the New York Times article about education in Algeria, analyze its tone. What approach does the author take to the issue? Do you notice any bias? Does the author leave out any important issues? How do you think context influences content? What information might this article reveal about modern-day US concerns regarding education in the Middle East?
• The podcast on young people's accounts about war in Iraq focuses almost entirely on their experiences with school. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages to studying political issues through educational institutions? In your answer, reflect as well on some of the other sources provided.

Lesson Plan: Education in the Middle East

by Heidi Morrison

Time Estimated: two to three 45-minute classes

Objectives

1. Be able to accurately and succinctly summarize a document, in the context of the history of schooling in the Middle East.
2. Articulate how context influences content, in regard to various documents published over time about schools in the Middle East and also in regards to one's own knowledge.
3. Gather information about the history of schooling in the Middle East in order to state characteristics that can be used when grappling with regional stereotypes.
4. Use the information about the history of education in the Middle East to formulate opinions on current-day debates about education's role in society.

Materials

Students must come to class already having read the primary documents (in the case of the podcast, listened to it and recorded notes). For this lesson, students will need a hard copy of the documents and/or their notes. A notebook, paper, and pen are also required.

Hook

Share with the students this quote from a widely-cited article in the New York Times Magazine reporting that in Pakistan, "There are one million students studying in the country's 10,000 or so madrasas, and militant Islam is at the core of most of these schools." 1 Tell students that other commentators have suspected that an equally militant spirit pervades schools in predominately Muslim countries.

Ask students what comes to mind when they think about schools in the Middle East, a predominately Muslim area of the world. Have them write down their thoughts anonymously and collect them to read out loud. They may mention variations of such terms as "jihad factories" or "backwards" or "outposts of medievalism." If these subjects come up, ask students to speculate about how and why schools in the Middle East have developed such negative associations with extremism.

Instruct

Explain to students that they will learn about the history of schools in the Middle East. They will study primary sources that will help them understand the characteristics of schools in the pre-modern Middle East as well as the contemporaneous debates around schools. They will also study primary sources that will help them understand the changes that these schools have undergone in entering the modern era. This lesson will help students formulate an informed image of schools in the Middle East, which is the ultimate goal of the Document Based Question.

First Activity
The first activity will focus on piecing together information from the various sources about how schools functioned in the pre-modern Middle East.

Divide the class into four groups. Tell them that each group will be assigned part of the larger project that is to create an imaginary 11-year old male pupil living in the Middle East in the 10th century. After each group completes their part of the project, they will present to the entire class. Every student in the class is responsible for learning all components of the material. Assign each group one of the following topics to describe in detail about the virtual student and tell them to base their answers on the first four sources provided in this module:

• Why he goes to school;
• What he learns in school;
• How he is taught in school;
• His aspirations for the future.

Second Activity
Students will be challenged to advance their understanding of the history of schools in the Middle East, as well as to improve their critical reading skills.

Divide the class into six groups and assign each group one source from sources 6–12 to summarize. Tell students to pay attention to what the sources say about changes schools in the Middle East have undergone in the modern era. When the students are ready, have them present their group summaries to the class.

Now tell the students that there is as much information in what sources from what they don't say as in what they say. Tell the students to return to their groups and decipher new information based on what is not included in their source. When the students are ready, have them present their ideas to the class.

A final step to this activity is to have the students return to their groups and talk together about how context influences content. Students should discuss how the information they garnered from the documents was influenced by what they know about the author of the source and/or what was happening in society at the time of its production. This discussion should force students to reevaluate the information they presented to the class thus far. Each group should do one final presentation to the class about what they know from their assigned document about education in the Middle East in the modern era.

Third Activity
Students will synthesize what they covered in the last two activities.

In a general class discussion, have the students recap what they find to be the main characteristics of education in the Middle East over the pre-modern and modern eras.

After this is completed, tell students there are many ways in which the history of education (as a field) contributes to current-day debates. Now that students possess a wide breadth of knowledge about the history of schools in the Middle East, ask them to articulate their opinions on the following topics:

• Do you think that schools are a means of controlling a given population?
• What do you think are the best pedagogical tools for learning?
• How does access to education, or lack thereof, impact society?

Many students may have a tendency to base their opinions about these questions on their experience/knowledge of schooling in the west. Ask the students to formulate opinions in the framework of their knowledge of the history of schooling in the Middle East. This exercise will force students to integrate what may have previously been foreign to them (schooling in the Middle East) into how they construct their worldview.

If there is time, conclude by telling students to "shift gears" and write down all the associations that come to mind when they hear the words "women in the Middle East" or "religion in the Middle East." Listen to their responses and ask why you might conclude a lesson on schooling in the Middle East with such a question. Encourage students to take away from this module not only information about schooling in the Middle East and an exposure to larger interdisciplinary debates on education, but also an awareness that just as the texts are shaped by their context, so too is our knowledge.

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460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471

http://www.americancenturies.mass.edu/home.html

Memorial Hall Museum and Library, Deerfield, Massachusetts

May 2010

American Centuries displays items from the collection of the Memorial Hall Museum and Library in Deerfield, Massachusetts. This museum specializes in 17th-20th century artifacts of the East Coast, and its online exhibits contain many materials about children's and adolescents' lives from the Colonial period onward.

The website makes its primary appeal to teachers and young students. In addition to the usual elements of internet archives (images, texts, maps), the site offers interactive activities where kids can learn more about historical clothing, how to read old manuscripts, and other topics that draw from the museum's holdings. A section of the site called "In the Classroom" offers numerous lesson plans for elementary and middle-school teachers, some written by museum employees and some by schoolteachers themselves, using materials in the online exhibits.

The exhibits cover multiple aspects of historical New England. Finding materials specific to the histories of youth and childhood is much easier here than in some online archives. Using the "site search" box, which appears on every page, is not the most efficient approach; better, more focused results come from choosing the "Search the Collection" item off the main-page menu. There, typing "children" will yield 488 results that specifically pertain to children's histories, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Even more directly helpful for the young (or old, but impatient) site visitor is the "Highlights" page, which offers artifacts in neatly arranged categories and sub-categories. The "Children" category is the obvious place to start; here, one can find images and information in the sub-categories of children's toys, clothing, furniture, schoolbooks, and even children's own handiwork. The individual pages for each artifact all include an icon called "Look closer"; once clicked, this icon opens a second window with a sophisticated zoom feature, offering several different degrees of close-up views for the artifact. This smart device allows site-visitors an even more detailed inspection of the artifacts than they could glean in an actual museum, where exhibits are separated from visitors by glass and several feet of space. Many of these artifacts are so exceptionally well-preserved that the zoom feature is especially pleasurable; we can revel in the joy of inspecting the hand-painted decoration on an 1835 baby carriage, or the careful stitching on a hand-made cloth doll from 1887.

Artifacts like the antique clothing and dolls are immediately charming; others can be either a bit disturbing, or darkly amusing. The 19th century "baby tender," for example, looks more like a packing crate for produce than a modern play-pen, while the hand-made "Twin Potty-Chair" makes us wonder: should twins really do everything together?

The most intriguingly named sub-category, "Children's creations," shows the woodworking and needleworking products of young people. One item—a stitched sampler—was made by a nine-year-old girl. The other displayed items appear to have been fashioned by people in their late teens, who might not have been considered "children" at the time (1790s-1810s). Still, the degree of skill demonstrated in these creations suggests the many hours of practice that these young artisans must have logged in their earlier years; the images therefore attest to the activities of childhood at the turn of the 19th century.

Do not, however, restrict yourself to the "Children" category of the "Highlights" page; the other categories there also include materials about children, mixed-in with the larger collections of artifacts. As just one example, the "Documents" category offers many texts used in children's schools (different selections from the ones displayed in the Children category). "Learning by Doing at Hampton" allows viewers to see sixteen pages from a 1900 pamphlet about the The Hampton Institute in Virginia, a school where freed African-American and Native American children were taught the customs and values of White society as a means of acculturation. There you can also see pages of a teenage boy's "copy book," with his penmanship, scholarship, and artistic skills displayed, as well as many other documents about children's lives as young scholars. The Documents category also features a "Journals and Diaries" sub-category, which contains several pages of text from the 1859-1860 diary of a twelve-year-old girl. The "Women's Lives" subcategory contains some other material relevant to the study of teenage girls, like the few pages scanned from a girls' 1830 instruction book: The Young Ladies Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits, with rules for proper sitting, dancing, standing, and curtseying.

Nearly every section of the "American Centuries" site contains materials about children and youth, including photographs of children in school, at play, and among their families from the late 19th to early 20th centuries (this one shows a family in 1895 playing croquet on their front lawn).

With its easy navigability, superb detail in images and texts, and rich resources for students and teachers, this site is one of the best internet collections available for the study of childhood and youth in Eastern US history.

Ilana Nash

Western Michigan University

In addition to the usual elements of internet archives (images, texts, maps), the site offers interactive activities where kids can learn more about historical clothing, how to read old manuscripts, and other topics that draw from the museum's holdings.

http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/

British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent

June 2010

Cartoons is a website produced by the British Cartoon Archive, a collection based at the University of Kent (England), dedicated to cartooning in newspapers and other forms of publication in Britain over the past century. It has a collection of around 150,000 cartoons drawn by approximately 300 cartoonists. This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth. The website has a huge amount of material available, and it is well organized to help the researcher find cartoons from a particular cartoonist, or on a particular theme.

The alphabetical list of cartoonists in the Biographies section will include some names familiar to anyone brought up in Britain – and many others they will never have heard of. Fortunately the names of the most famous ones (and the most important newspapers that published them) are specified in the Search section, which helps to orientate the researcher. The site gives a brief biography of each artist, written with a nice light touch. For example, we learn that Barry Fantoni was thrown out of Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1958, accused of "wrecking the home of one of the teachers in a state of drunken madness." Fortunately for him, he was able to continue at the renowned Slade School of Art, and achieve fame and fortune as a pop artist as well as a cartoonist. A particular feature of the Archive is the Carl Giles Collection donated by the artist in 2005. This reviewer must confess to looking forward to seeing his cartoon in the Sunday Express each week during the 1950s and 1960s. His most famous creation was the Giles Family, a "bizarre fantasy," according to the biography, "of a working-class household living a comfortable middle-class life." The outstanding character was surely Grandma Giles, a ferocious looking character whose "anarchic vitality" led to her being heavily into drinking and betting. Also familiar to many will be the figure of Andy Capp, drawn by Reg Smythe under orders to appeal to readers in the north of England. Andy Capp, according to the biography of Smythe, emerged as the "flat-capped, pigeon-fancying, beer-swilling, work-shy northerner," with views on marriage going back to the "Neolithic Age."

The Search facility allows one to choose among numerous subjects. Each cartoon includes: a reference number, caption, embedded text (picking out detail not easily read in the reproduction), notes, the people depicted, and the subjects covered. The very abundance of the material may be a problem, especially as much of it will probably not appear useful to the modern reader. There are, for example, 6,099 entries under the heading of Children. In some cases, the cartoonist wishes to comment on events in contemporary society. W.K. Haselden, for example, turned out dozens of cartoons under this heading during the 1900s. Concerns over the declining birth rate in 1905 led the cartoonist to envisage a future in which babies become rare specimens, exhibited in cages and labelled "born in the managerie" (ref. WHO1490). In other cases, it is a matter of poking fun at politicians by depicting them as juveniles. "A row in the play-ground," by John Doyle, reduces politics in the 1830s to squabbling between Melbourne, Peel, Wellington and others (ref. mudyx9t). The cataloguers have provided numerous headings related to childhood and youth, such as girls, childhood romance, schools, schoolboys, juvenile delinquency, and mothers. Again the researcher will need to sift through the material to separate cartoons focused on that heading in particular from those with only a passing allusion.

The site includes advice on creating a group of cartoons as a teaching pack, to illustrate a particular theme. It provides a number of these but it is doubtless best to create your own, as the site advises. The site also points out in a section on Teaching Aids that "sophisticated searching" allows one to see, for example, what was happening on a specific day in history, by assembling all the cartoons that appeared in the newspapers on that day, or to grasp how politicians or major personalities (such as Princess Diana, with 321 entries) were perceived. This section promises five "resource packages" linked to themes in the British schools curriculum, and resources to help in the reading and analysis of cartoons. There is a section on Articles to help the teacher or researcher, though it remained obstinately stuck on "G" whenever consulted by this reviewer.

Overall, it is clear that a great deal of thought and effort has gone into making the vast collection of material available to the public, and into supporting the cartoons with relevant background information. The standard of presentation and the layout are excellent. It will need an awareness of the political stance of the newspapers involved to make much sense, and a feel for popular culture in Britain. Still, it is a cornucopia of delights.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

This site provides students and teachers alike with a way of enlivening their approach to British political and social history as well as the history of children and youth.

http://www.hiddenlives.org.uk/

The Children's Society

June 2010

Hidden Lives Revealed: A Virtual Archive – Children in Care 1881-1918 is an attractive and well-organized website. It bills itself as an "intriguing encounter with children who were in the care of the Children's Society in late Victorian and early 20th-century Britain."

At its heart is a collection of photographs, case files, and learning materials from one of the many philanthropic societies dedicated to the care of children in Britain at this period. Most of the archive material was previously unavailable to the public, as might be expected with files giving personal details of children who were in care – though of course the anonymity of the children is respected. "No other Internet archive," it asserts, "gives you the opportunity to browse through such unique material – a kind of resource which has the type of information not recorded elsewhere."

Perhaps this is so. In any case, it can claim quite reasonably that it offers something for those studying Victorian history or for university students interested in social work. The Waifs and Strays' Society, later known as the Children's Society, is rather overshadowed in the history books by the Barnardo Homes: further proof, if needed, of the aggressive publicity campaigns that have earned Dr. Barnardo a certain notoriety among historians. 1

A brief History of the Waifs and Strays' Society in a section of the website entitled Articles usefully provides background information. (A link to the website of today's The Children's Society provides further details for those interested.) The Society was founded in London in 1881 by a civil servant and Sunday school teacher named Edward Rudolf.

Rudolf aimed to set up a central home for the poorest and most neglected children cared for by the Church of England. It made a particular point of integrating its homes with the local community, aided by the parish organizations of the Anglican church. Other articles, incidentally, give a short biography of the founder, and introductions to poverty, juvenile delinquency and reformatories during the Victorian era. There is a concise and reasonably up-to-date Bibliography in these areas as well. 2

Photographs is divided into 12 sections, covering such areas as the work, schooling, pets, clothing, illnesses and disabilities, and sporting activities. Each photograph is carefully documented with a date, location, creator, and description. The Homes includes photographs and a detailed description. By 1918 the society had a total of 175 homes. These photographs inevitably look a bit grim now, though the society did have a policy of providing a family atmosphere in homes of around 10 children aged five to 14.

The sample of about 150 Case Files will interest those who want a feel for historical research. Each one contains the detailed application form, including information on family background, health, education, current circumstances, and reasons for application. There is also interesting supplementary material in the form of personal letters, photographs, and school reports. All of these documents are reproduced in the original, and (mercifully) transcribed in print form. They can be browsed by keyword, running from "Abandonment" to "World War I ."

An example under "Running Away" documents a girl who ran away from a home in Croydon, claiming ill treatment and concerns about having her hair cut off because of lice. The file even includes a reproduction of a Christmas card sent by her brother in 1891. Finally, there is a collection of Learning Materials, with exercises to find out "what it was like to be REALLY poor in Victorian and Edwardian times." A sub-section, entitled Rescued from Poverty has, for example, a fact file and questions for students concerning life on the streets and "who would you choose?"

Inevitably with this kind of website, the society responsible gives a positive view of its activities. One might wish to ask further questions such as: whether the laundries and other commercial activities in the homes risked becoming exploitative, the relations between children and those running the homes, and why the photographs suggest that all the girls became maids and the boys soldiers! All the same, the Society is to be commended for providing a very approachable educational site, and for its innovative approach to publicizing its existence.

Colin Heywood

The University of Nottingham

At its heart is a collection of photographs, case files, and learning materials from one of the many philanthropic societies dedicated to the care of children in Britain at this period.

http://www.siris.si.edu/

Smithsonian Institution

May 2010

The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) provides access through its Collections Search Center to over 2.3 million records, with 290,000 images, video and sound files from Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries. More than 10 percent relate to children and youth.

The search engine, designed for researchers rather than the casual browser, is powerful and well organized, allowing both quick access to the collections and an overview of types of media. As this image shows, a user can limit the items by clicking + or –. The number of each item appears in parentheses.

Three searches are representative of the material on children and youth. "Children" results in more than 23,000 hits, including photographs and negatives, sculptures, paintings, advertisements, video, sound recordings and texts.

"Boy" returned 16455 documents, "girl" 20221, and "youth" returned 3005. Some of the results are not associated with images but refer to cataloguing data from a museum, library, or collection. Some of the thumbnail images can be magnified, while others cannot.

The terms tested above returned anything titled, tagged, or captioned with one of the keywords, or in the case of books, where the word appears in the table of contents or summaries. Much of the material on children included photographs from the late 1800s to the present, most of which are not associated with much information as to provenance or subject.

Quite a number of the photographs belong to collections of anthropological studies in various parts of the world. Such collections can be researched further under the photographer's name. Such collections would likely appear in books and articles on the subject.

A number of materials are related to soap advertisements – Ivory, Pears, Breck shampoo, and other brands. This material consists of line drawings, advertisements in magazines, trade cards and booklets. Much about the 19th- and 20th-century culture of childhood and motherhood can be learned from these images and texts. A particularly striking advertisement warns the reader that it is very difficult to find anything as pure, and features a stern patriarch leaning over to inspect socks and stacked laundry that his daughter or servant holds timidly.

These ads took it upon themselves to educate mothers on raising their children, as well as capitalizing on images of sublime motherhood embedded in domestic scenes. On the other hand, an embossed paper Pears' advertising card called "You Dirty Boy" features a buxom, no-nonsense woman roughly cleaning the ears of a chagrinned little boy over a basin. Dreamy, out-of-focus images of blond, blue-eyed Breck girls recall ideals of female beauty from only a few decades ago.

Searching large archives using keywords related to children often brings up surprising items. Children, for example, are frequent subjects of outdoor sculpture, being featured as fountains, as symbols of the virtues, and as capricious traditional bronzes, such as the large, multi-figure statue of the game called "Crack the Whip" by J. Seward Johnson, Jr. Other items include paintings of children, sound recordings of children's songs, songs about children, toys, and ethnographic arts from the National Museum of the American Indian, such as a collection of beaded balls that were fashioned by young girls for eligible young men to whom they were betrothed.

Susan Douglass

George Mason University

The Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) provides access through its Collections Search Center to over 2.3 million records, with 290,000 images, video and sound files from Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries. More than 10 percent relate to children and youth.