1. Maynes, Mary Jo. Schooling in Western Europe: A Social History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.
   This book offers a concise introduction to the history of modern school systems in Western Europe and uses a social history approach to explain the impact of those systems upon the experience of children and communities. Maynes' book helps to place the case of Meiji Japan in the context of slightly earlier efforts in Western Europe to establish compulsory, state-run school systems.
2. McClain, James. Japan: A Modern History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002.
   This is an excellent introduction to the history of modern Japan, with a few chapters that deal specifically with the Meiji Era and the transformative effects of the reforms undertaken by the new government.
3. Platt, Brian. Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.
   This book focuses specifically on Japan, looking at patterns of schooling in pre-modern Japan and the efforts by the Meiji state to build a centralized, compulsory school system based largely on Western models. Platt explores the experience of local communities as they negotiate with the Meiji state over the shape and control of the new schools.
4. Stearns, Peter. Childhood in World History. New York: Routledge, 2006.
   This book provides a broad, synthetic treatment of the history of childhood. Its particular merit is that it offers a truly global perspective, providing a broader context for understanding Western Europe and Japan. It also deals with a longer sweep of history, dealing not only with the inception of modern school systems but also with earlier and more recent developments.

by Susan Douglass
(Suggested writing time: 45-50 minutes)

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

• Based on analysis of evidence in the documents, assess the importance in Meiji Japan of developing a system of universal education as a requirement of nation-building.

Include in your discussion evidence of:

• leaders' and intellectuals' views on the purposes and goals of education,
• elements identified as needing change in Japanese society, and the obstacles to achieving it,
• justifications for achieving educational goals by establishing universal, compulsory education, and
• the sources of motivation for reforming education and the models on which the new education system would be based.

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:

[Information Coming Soon]

About the Author

Brian Platt is an Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University. He is the author of Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750-1890.

About the Lesson Plan Author

Susan Douglass is a doctoral student in history at George Mason University, and also serves as education outreach consultant for the Al-Waleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Publications include World Eras: Rise and Spread of Islam, 622-1500 (Thompson/Gale, 2002), the study Teaching About Religion in National and State Social Studies Standards (Freedom Forum First Amendment Center and Council on Islamic Education, 2000), and teaching resources, both online and in print, including and the curriculum project World History for Us All, The Indian Ocean in World History, and websites for documentary films such as Cities of Light: the Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain and Muhammad:Legacy of a Prophet.

Soon after overthrowing the Tokugawa government in 1868, the new Meiji leaders set out ambitiously to build a modern nation-state. Among the earliest and most radical of the Meiji reforms was a plan for a centralized, compulsory educational system, modeled after those in Europe and America. Envisioning a future in which "there shall be no community with an unschooled family, and no family with an unschooled person," Meiji leaders hoped that schools would curb mounting social disorder and mobilize the Japanese people against the threat of encroaching Western imperialism.

The purpose of this module is to use the example of Japan to illustrate some key themes in the story of the rise of modern education: the connection between modern educational systems and the formation of the nation-state; the impact of European imperialism upon the spread of those systems; the increasingly inseparable association of "education" with "schooling"; and the accompanying impact of modern schooling upon the culture and social experience of childhood.

The Meiji government's decision to create a centralized school system can be seen in the context of two broad transformations in the concept and practice of education that have occurred worldwide in the last 400 years. The first is the widespread proliferation of educational institutions for commoners. This transformation occurred first in Western Europe and North America during the 17th and 18th centuries, when clergy and local elites, convinced that a limited education for local masses would have a positive effect upon the moral climate and the level of religious devotion in their communities, established schools for local children. Meanwhile, the expansion of the written word into the social and economic lives of ordinary people enabled them to conceive of the potential value of such schools.

This convergence of factors established the context for an unprecedented expansion in both school attendance and popular literacy. In England, France, New England, and parts of Germany and Italy, more than half of the male population, and over a quarter of the female population, had received some form of schooling and achieved at least a modest level of literacy by the end of the 18th century.

At that time, Japan was just beginning to undergo a similar transformation. However, a rapid increase in the number of schools enabled Japan to achieve comparable rates of school attendance and literacy by the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

While these changes were taking place in Japan during the early 19th century, a second transformation in education was underway in Europe and America. What defined this transformation was not a fundamental change in the number of schools or the patterns of attendance and literacy, but one in the organization and control of educational institutions. What we see, for the first time in history, is the systematic intervention of the state in the education of ordinary children.

Two key factors set the stage for this phenomenon. The first was the rise of industrial capitalism. Industrialization may or may not have stimulated a demand for education among the general population; however, what is clear is that the demographic shifts and social dislocations associated with industrialization begat new anxieties among elites about popular unrest.

Old fears about the danger of over-educated commoners gave way to the even more threatening specter of uneducated urban masses who lay outside the influence and regulation of social elites. Such concerns generated new ideas about how to prevent unrest through techniques of social management. Schooling came to be conceived as one of these techniques. Social elites, intellectuals, reformers, and government officials realized that the school could be used as a vehicle through which to properly socialize the lower classes—namely, to teach them discipline, frugality, and other values conducive to their new role in an industrializing society.

Another major development that formed the context for the intervention of governments in education was the emergence of the nation-state. This new political formation was premised on the active involvement of the entire population in the life of the nation. Governments at this time sought to integrate people into the institutions of the state, mobilize them for various kinds of service to the nation, and inculcate in them a personal identification with the nation. It was soon recognized that schools could facilitate these efforts.

Just as schools could prepare people for their new economic roles in an industrialized society, they could prepare people for their new political roles as participants in the nation-state. Schooling was therefore a task too important to be left uncoordinated. Nor could the responsibility for schooling be relegated any longer to local elites or the Church, who themselves constituted a threat to the power of the central government.

Thus the rationale of the nation-state required that governments assume an educative role, instructing people—particularly children—in values and habits conducive to building the strength of the newly-conceived national community. Childhood therefore became a window of opportunity during which the state could shape its citizenry and thereby strengthen the nation in an era of international competition.

By the mid-18th century, then, schooling in Western societies was closely bound up with industrial development and the emergence of a new kind of polity that relied upon the integration and mobilization of the masses. This was not lost on those Japanese who had opportunity to investigate conditions in the West. They had already discerned that the power of Western nations derived precisely from their industrial might and their ability to tap into the collective energies of their respective populations.

In the years following the Restoration, Meiji leaders also determined that widespread, centralized schooling would be essential if Japan were to harness these new forms of power for herself. Very early in Japan's state-building project, Japan's leaders hitched educational reform to the goals of strengthening the nation and protecting its independence; this much was agreed upon, even though officials diverged widely on many key aspects of educational policy. Much was riding on the creation of a new educational system, and as such, it became the nation's "urgent business" (kyūmu)—one of a number of terms that would be repeated endlessly by local officials during the early years of educational reform.

While the public educational systems in mid-19th century Europe and America represented the cumulative product of several phases of interventions by the state, in Japan the urgency of this task would not allow for such a fitful process. Rather, the creation of a new educational system would be attempted in one sudden, systematic, sweeping intervention.

While this module is part of a larger project on the history of youth and childhood, the sources deal mainly with the history of schooling and education. More narrowly, they deal with the issues faced by a single country—Japan—as it attempted for the first time to establish a national education system. For this reason, instructors should be prepared to help students make connections between the specific sources in this unit and the larger issues relating to the history of youth and childhood.

First, instructors may need to make explicit the connection between the history of childhood to the history of schooling and education. The connection may seem self-evident: after all, childhood is the stage of life when people go to school and receive an education. However, this has not always been the case. For the overwhelming majority of people, and for most of human history, formal schooling has not been a part of the experience of childhood.

The sources in this unit focus precisely on the moment when the Meiji government, in its efforts to modernize the Japanese nation, sought to make schooling an essential part of being a child. Furthermore, it is in large part through modern schooling—through the exercise of moving children out of the home and into a distinct institution charged with their care—that childhood as we know it has been defined. Instructors using these sources should try to point out this larger context, to help students to understand that their automatic association of childhood with schooling was something that has not always existed, and that these sources come from a time when it began to exist.

Second, students may require some assistance in placing the case of Meiji Japan in a global historical context. As I discuss in the introductory essay, there are two larger contexts in which Meiji-era education can be understood. First, it is an example of the initial efforts by modernizing governments to intervene in society's efforts to educate children by creating compulsory, state-run school systems. This is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, and the case of Meiji Japan should be seen as part of this larger historical movement.

Third, many of the sources in this unit can be best understood within the context of the history of Western imperialism. While several of the sources in this unit reveal an enthusiasm for Western models of schooling, it is important to remember that the specter of imperialism loomed behind all discussions of childhood and education. Japanese leaders understood that the adoption of Western models for schooling were part of the effort to overturn unequal treaties and prevent future incursions upon Japan's sovereignty. The context of imperialism, in turn, helps us to understand how the issues of childhood and education get wrapped up in discussions about tradition and national identity. Efforts to model Japan's education on the example of the West—the very nations that Japan perceived as threats—naturally spurred anxiety about the loss of tradition. Discussions of schooling and childhood—like discussions of gender, for example—were often proxies for discussions about tradition, modernity, imperialism, and national identity.

Discussion Questions

To help draw out these contexts, instructors might want to ask questions that encourage students to connect these sources to larger issues in the global history of childhood. For example:

• What kinds of ideas about the purpose of education would not lead to the creation of school systems?
• How do you think the onset of compulsory schooling changed the experience of childhood? (A more informal, personal version: How would your life be different if schooling were not a part of it?)
• What motivations might governments have for investing so much effort into creating systems of education? What kinds of obstacles might governments face in attempting to do so?
• Why do you think that children might have become so important to governments beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries? How does the issue of childhood reflect larger questions about national identity?
• How do you think the debates about education and schooling we see in Meiji Japan might have played out differently in 19th-century Europe and the U.S.?

Lesson Plan: Educational Reform in Japan (19th Century)

by Susan Douglass

Time Estimated: two to three 45-50-minute classes

Objectives

1. Explain the relationship between modernizing the Japanese education system and Japanese nation-building.
2. Explain the identification between education and schooling in the modernizing state.
3. Assess the impact of modern schooling on Japanese culture and changes in children's lives.
4. Analyse the impact of European imperialism on the decision-making process regarding educational reform.

Materials

• Printouts of primary sources sufficient for each student to have a full set of the texts and images in the Educational Reform in Japan (19th c.). 1

Day One

Hook
Compare the two images of Terakoya vs. Meiji School. Jot down a list of characteristics that describe the first school and th e second one. How does the nature of education seem to have changed? Which one would you rather attend, and why? What may have been lost and gained in the process of change?

Making Sense of the Sources
The most difficult task in using this teaching module is differentiating among similar ideas expressed in the written documents, and matching them with the various quarters of society in which they originated. It is necessary to identify the voice (traditional elements, progressive modernizers, state officials) and record their keywords and viewpoints, the outlines of debates and issues, tensions between the need to reform and the need to preserve, the social tensions and practical issues involved. Use the graphic organizer to collect and summarize ideas expressed in the documents about the nature and purpose of education in Meiji Japan, filling in the chart as an individual or small-group activity. Debrief after filling out the chart, discussing the change in the subjects, objects, and purposes of education these writers contemplated or realized. Finally, what evidence do the documents present concerning the sources of pressure to change the education system?

Use the Kaichi and Mitsuke Schools image to describe the physical setting of the modernized schools, including the second and third of the series of classroom images in Terakoya vs. Meiji School. Discuss the change from traditional education to modern education in light of what the documents reflect of Japanese intellectuals' and officials' vision of a modernized Japanese society. How do the school buildings reflect both traditional Japanese and Western influences?

Day Two

How do you think this new form of education affected children in rural and urban areas? How did it change the position of the child among adults, and the family's and the child's relationship to the state?

Using the image of rural children together with the attendance table, identify the obstacles and challenges to instituting universal schooling in Japan. Identify documents in the group that discuss difficulties to attaining education among the various classes. Compare these problems with contemporary challenges to school attendance and parental involvement in your own school and in contemporary discussions of education reform in the media.

Ask students individually or in groups to come up with an additional type of document or information set that would help clarify the issues raised in the document based question. [For example, the documents reveal nothing about the proposed curriculum for these schools, to answer the question of balance between traditional learning and modern learning, academic subjects vs. practical /vocational learning and the arts. This is especially interesting in the case of Japan, whose educators were more attentive than some modernizing states to traditional arts and crafts, for example.]

Day Three

The culminating activity is writing the DBQ essay, which can be done as an outside assignment or a timed activity, at the instructor's discretion. In the latter case, this would add one class period to the length of the activity.

Differentiation

Advanced Students
Students may research additional information on Japanese schooling during the Meiji period, such as curriculum and images of textbooks, narratives about school days from literature and film, for example.

Less Advanced Students
Remedial students can focus on a more limited range of documents and themes and could be given a modified question that of more limited scope. Alternatively, they can be given more time and scaffolding to help identify the issues. A small-group activity, for example, would have each student become very familiar with just one of the documents, and represent that voice and point of view in a panel discussion role-playing a debate among Japanese policy-makers on how to reform the schools. Their preparation could be supported by reading textbook summaries on the social history of Japan during that period, in order to identify the various interest groups and associate them with the positions taken in the documents.

The Children's Charter, White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, November 22, 1930

PRESIDENT HOOVER'S WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE ON CHILD HEALTH AND PROTECTION, RECOGNIZING THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD AS THE FIRST RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP, PLEDGES ITSELF TO THESE AIMS FOR THE CHILDREN OF AMERICA.

• I. FOR every child spiritual and moral training to help him to stand firm under the pressure of life.
• II. For every child understanding and the guarding of his personality as its most precious right.
• III. For every child a home and that love and security which a home provides; and for that child who must receive foster care, the nearest substitute for his own home.
• IV. For every child full preparation for his birth, his mother receiving prenatal, natal, and postnatal care; and the establishment of such protective measures as will make child-bearing safer.
• V. For every child health protection from birth through adolescence, including: periodical health examinations and, where needed, care of specialists and hospital treatment; regular dental examinations and care of the teeth; protective and preventive measures against communicable diseases; the insuring of pure food, pure milk, and pure water.
• VI. For every child from birth through adolescence, promotion of health, including health instruction, and a health program, wholesome physical and mental recreation, with teachers and leaders adequately trained.
• VII. For every child a dwelling-place safe, sanitary, and wholesome, with reasonable provisions for privacy; free from conditions which tend to thwart his development; and a home environment harmonious and enriching.
• VIII. For every child a school which is safe from hazards, sanitary, properly equipped, lighted, and ventilated. For younger children nursery schools and kindergartens to supplement home care.
• IX. For every child a community which recognizes and plans for his needs, protects him against physical dangers, moral hazards, and disease; provides him with safe and wholesome places to play and recreation; and makes provision for his cultural and social needs.
• X. For every child an education which, through the discovery and development of his individual abilities, prepares him for life; and through training and vocational guidance prepares him for a living which will yield him maximum satisfaction.
• XI. For every child such teaching and training as will prepare him for successful parenthood, home-making, and the rights of citizenship; and for parents, supplementary training to fit them to deal wisely with the problems of parenthood.
• XII. For every child education for safety and protection against accidents to which modern conditions subject him---those to which he is directly exposed and those which, through loss or maiming of his parents, affect him directly.
• XIII. For every child who is blind, deaf, crippled, or otherwise physically handicapped, and for the child who is mentally handicapped, such measures as will early discover and diagnose his handicap, provide care and treatment, and so train him the he may become an asset to society rather than a liability. Expenses of these services should be borne publicly where they cannot be privately met.
• XIV. For every child who is in conflict with society the right to be dealt with intelligently as society's charge, not society's outcast; with the home, the school, the church, the court and the institution when needed, shaped to return him whenever possible to the normal stream of life.
• XV. For every child the right to grow up in a family with an adequate standard of living and the security of a stable income as the surest safeguard against social handicaps.
• XVI. For every child protection against labor that stunts growth, either physical or mental, that limits education, that deprives children of the right of comradeship, of play, and of joy.
• XVII. For every rural child as satisfactory schooling and health services as for the city child, and an extension to rural families of social, recreational, and cultural facilities.
• XVIII. To supplement the home and the school in the training of youth, and to return to them those interests of which modern life tends to cheat children, every stimulation and encouragement should be given to the extension and development of the voluntary youth organizations.
• XIX. To make everywhere available these minimum protections of the health and welfare of children, there should be a district, county, or community organization for health, education, and welfare, with full-time officials, coordinating with a state-wide program which will be responsive to a nationwide service of general information, statistics, and scientific research.
  This should include:
  1. a.) Trained, full-time public health officials, with public health nurses, sanitary inspection, and laboratory workers
  2. b.) Available hospital beds
  3. c.) Full-time public welfare service for the relief, aid, and guidance of children in special need due to poverty, misfortune, or behavior difficulties, and for the protection of children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, or moral hazard.

FOR EVERY CHILD THESE RIGHTS, REGARDLESS OF RACE, OR COLOR, OR SITUATION, WHEREVER HE MAY LIVE UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE AMERICAN FLAG.

Why I Taught the Sources

On April 18, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI told the United Nations General Assembly, "The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security" [full text]. Like Pope Benedict, many scholars of international diplomacy and foreign policy talk about the history of human rights as a key shift in international policy after the Second World War.

Few, however, connect the history of human rights to the children's rights movement that marked the opening and closing decades of the 20th century. Further, examining children's rights as human rights provides avenues for understanding the complexity of creating and implementing universal declarations of rights. In addition, for students, including children's rights makes international diplomatic history more approachable.

My teaching experience is with college students, but the topic of children's rights as human rights is adaptable for use in the elementary grades through high school. Focusing on human rights as a concept underscores the social construction of many ideas taken for granted by students. It also offers students the opportunity to research the current status of children from around the world.

How I Introduce the Sources

This teaching-case study utilizes three primary source documents to link the history of children's rights and human rights in 20th-century diplomatic history.

1. 1930 White House Conference Children's Charter
2. 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
3. 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

For students with no previous exposure to the notion of rights, I begin class discussion by introducing the opening section of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Even students with only a limited knowledge of U.S. history recognize the reality that "unalienable rights" was malleable at the time and broadened to include a larger number of American citizens over time. With upper-level students I find it useful to also include references to the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

I explain that by the early 20th century, urbanization and industrialization led many reformers to focus on child welfare and a recognition of children's rights as separate from those of adults. For example, in 1905, American social worker Florence Kelley published Some Ethical Gains through Legislation. Kelley argued for the establishment of a federal bureau focused on children's issues and their "right to childhood."

Nine years later, Congress responded by creating the U.S. Children's Bureau. The bureau was the first federal agency in the world mandated to focus solely on the interests of a nation's youngest citizens. Similarly, in 1909, Swedish author and social critic Ellen Key declared that a new era had arrived, "the century of the child."

Reading the Sources

By 1930, the White House Conference on Child Heath and Protection spelled out the specific rights of modern childhood in a 19-point Children's Charter. I talk about the document in the context of the onset of the Great Depression and use stories from my book, The Greatest Generation Grows Up to inform the discussion. The 1933 William Weld Movie, Wild Boys of the Road, is also a useful classroom tool for showing students conditions for young Americans in the Great Depression.

Ask students: Does the Children's Charter include rights different from those assumed for adults? What would be necessary to fulfill the rights spelled out in the charter? What does the charter suggest government should do to ensure rights for children?

Students usually conclude that the document is more sentimental than effective as a policy tool. However, its very existence shows the influence of the idea of children's rights as human rights by 1930.

I then introduce the second primary source, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified on December 10, 1948. By the late 1940s, the exposure of Nazi war crimes, along with the world-wide refugee problem that existed after World War II influenced the three-year old United Nations to pass its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1

Students read the declaration and discuss the specific protections and rights included in the document. I ask them to consider if the children's rights movement had any influence on the document. This discussion highlights the fact that children's rights and interests are defined by, and must be secured by, adults.

Eleven years after ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in November 1959, the U.N. adopted the Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Three decades later, in November 1989, it ratified as the UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child. By the fall of 1990, 20 U.N. member nations signed the document, qualifying it as international law and by 2007, all member nations except the U.S. signed the document.

This important document clearly argues that despite the ratification of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, children need special protections. Students always note somewhat ironically, that while this declaration takes the history of children's rights full circle, the United States has not signed the document. 2

Reflections

This lesson highlights the importance of including the history of childhood and youth in historical interpretation and how difficult it is to create and enforce a single universal model of children's rights.

Additional Resources:

Lindenmeyer, Kriste. The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American Childhood in the 1930s. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.

Sealander, Judith. The Failed Century of the Child: Governing America's Young in the Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University, 2003.

United Nations, UNICEF, The State of the World's Children 2007: Women and Children the Double Dividend of Gender Equality http://www.unicef.org/sowc07/docs/sowc07.pdf (accessed March 10, 2008).

Veerman, Philip E. The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1992.

Burns H. Weston's Child Labor and Human Rights: Making Children Matter provides evidence of the work that still needs to be done to improve the situation for many of the world's children (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 2005).