Examining children's rights as human rights provides avenues for understanding the complexity of creating and implementing universal declarations of rights and makes international diplomatic history more approachable; the case study offers students the opportunity to research the current status of children from around the world, and connects the history of human rights to the children's rights movement that marked the opening and closing decades of the 20th century. echo [more]

Much of early modern Europe saw increasing numbers of abandoned children, and new institutions designed to care for them. Published notarial documents, such as the two excerpted here, allow a glimpse into the fortunes of individual orphaned children… [more]

Many African boys, teachers, and community leaders were genuinely inspired by scouting and founded their own unauthorized independent troops. In other cases, individuals dressed as scouts to claim the benefits of belonging to the movement. Scout… [more]

This module examines the founding principles of Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement in terms of its vision for decreasing social tensions and fostering adherence to generationally transmitted values; the module illustrates the complexities of the Scouting movement among African youth living under European colonial rule.

This module examines the impact of colonization on childhood experiences in New Zealand’s bicultural society of indigenous Maori and mostly European Pakeha between the first encounter in the 18th century to the 20th century, including issues of language, child labor and schooling as well as changing values concerning family structure, identity, and social policy. [more]

This extract from an annual report on Native Affairs reflects two realities of the 1870s: the on-going disruption of indigenous communities caused by settler and state demand for land acquisition; and the diversity of Maori experience, even within… [more]

These tables give details on three health-related facets of young New Zealanders' lives as interpreted from data recorded in the 1996 Census: levels of educational qualification in school leavers, unemployment rates, and youth mortality. The… [more]